RS BLOG 2010

A Yahoo discussion group dedicated to the work of Robert Silverberg was established in 1999. I joined the group in January 2006. I have found it to be an interesting and exhilarating experience, particularly because of the input that we get from Mr. Silverberg himself. He has kept us informed of his activities, and takes note of our suggestions for reprints or choices of stories for collections. I am most gratified that he has responded to several of my posts, and I also enjoy the camaraderie and insights of other membes of the group. I have decided to go through the postings since I became a member, and to transfer selected items to my web site, as a sort of Robert Silverberg blog. The pieces below are coded by colour: my contributions are in black, the responses of other members are in green, and Mr. Silverberg's commentys are in blue.

Jan. 15	Happy birthday	CR	I'd like to add my best wishes for your birthday, particularly because I celebrated my 75th on January 3. As I get older and my physical facilities fail me, I find it increasingly difficult to engage in my favourite pastime,namely reading. I am coming to rely more and more on large print and audio books. However, nearly everything that is available in our local public library is either mystery or western. The only sf title I have found in large print is The Mountains of Majipoor. The librarian told me that there just aren't any sf titles available. Mr. Silverberg, perhaps you could persuade your publishers to issue more of your books, and other sf writers, in large print and audio, for old fogeys like me.
Jan 16	Happy birthday	RS	Good morning, you old fogey, you. I'm always glad to be reminded that there are people older than I am. (I was grumbling about my birthday the other day to Jack Vance. "Ah, you're just a kid!" he said. He is 93. I can't do much about the large-print problem, though, because I don't know to go about establishing a publishing relationship with the large-print publishers. I'll have to look into this. And, if you'll permit a slightly younger fogey to boast a little, I'd like to tell you that I still don't wear eyeglasses. Went to renew my driver's license last week, took the mandatory eye test, passed it! I think the secret of my unusual vision is that when I was a boy I read science fiction late at night under the covers, using a dim flashlight. But I'm very sorry to hear of your own troubles. I know how important reading must be to you and it must be terribly distressing to have one's vision beginning to fade. (Although Jack Vance is blind at 93, and spends the whole day happily "reading" audiobooks. But I doubt that I would be as cheerful about that, or about anything else, as he is.)
Jan. 17	Happy birthday	RS	I asked my agent what could be done to get my books issued by the large-print publishers, and this was his reply: "Most of the large print publishers have gone the way of the dinosaurs.... and they only did "bestsellers." of course, with electronic readers like Kindles and Nooks, all books are in large print formats because you can simply change the font. What the large print people didn't anticipate was many older people who have a tough time with small print prefer audio books." I suppose he has something there -- not just the audio books, but the Kindle thing. But, of course, the very people least likely to have Kindles are the older readers most in need of large type. I'll continue to explore this whole issue.







March 10	Audiobooks and e-books	CR	Regular contributors to this forum may remember that a couple of months ago, I asked about the availability of sf and RS books in audio format. Mr. Silverberg responded that his agent had told him that audiobooks were going out of fashion, and that most readers of the younger generation preferred bestsellers in e-book format. However, acting on a hunch, I searched the Internet and discovered that there are in actual fact a great many science fiction works, and books by Mr. Silverberg, in downloadable audio and e-book format. Some are free and in the public domain, and others cost between $5.00 and $25.00. It is worth checking out the following web sites for downloadable titles in both formats, free and for a cost: audible.com, librivox.org, gutenberg.org, bookrix.com, booksonboard. com, kobobooks.com, theaudiobookstore.com. Project Gutenberg provides access to most of the world's literature that is in the public domain,from your computer, and there are several sf anthologies containing hard-to-find classic sf stories. I have successfully downloaded to my computer the entire text of "Lord Valentine's Castle" in three parts (19 hours reading time) as well as a couple of other novels, and a rather curious and rare recording of an episode of "X Minus One" based on RS's story "Double Dare" which was broadcast on NBC radio in December 1957. The problem now is to figure out how to transfer these recordings to my iPod, which has so far defeated me.
March 10	Audiobooks and e-books	RS	The Project Gutenberg material was public domain -- I deliberately let it go out of copyright, long ago, because I didn't want to reprint such feeble stuff and never suspected that Project Gutenberg would come along and do it. I have asked them to remove my stuff. Audible.com probably has the right to distribute my work. The old radio broadcasts were never owned by me in the first place, and I am amused to find them now available on the Internet -- I have a link to them, and wonder whether I can record them on DVD for archival purposes, but I have not given it a lot of thought. All sorts of Silverberg stuff is on line all over the place. (A woman in New Zealand liked "The Pope of the Chimps" so much that she posted it on her web site, innocently thinking that listing proper copyright notice was sufficient. She posted a Bradbury story the same way. At my suggestion she has now taken them both down. But for each takedown there are ten new unauthorized ! postings elsewhere,
March 10	Audiobooks and e-Books	CR	I did finally manage to get "LVC" into my iPod, after I struggled through the voluminous user manual. Like everything else in life, it is easy when you know how. The files are in MP3 format, and are downloaded into the sub-folder "Audiobooks" of "My Library" in iTunes, and then transferred to an external device. I paid $22.95 for "LVC" and I assume, correctly, I hope, that a percentage of this went into Mr. Silverberg's pocket as royalties. For the shorter pieces, like the "X minus one" radio broadcast, it is easy to "burn" them onto a CD or DVD. One can, of course, get a lot of current best-sellers and classics which are already on CD, and the average novel would need about 6-9 disks. A personality flaw of librarians like myself, is that we tend to be excessively anal-retentive, and want to keep EVERYTHING, in case someone, somewhere, might find it useful some day. For instance, during my teenage years I was very fond of the turgid novels of Harrison Ainsworth and H. Rider Haggard, but printed copies of most of their lesser-known works seem to have vanished into a black hole. If the entire Project Gutenberg were loaded onto a space probe, imagine the excitement of the aliens who retrieved it a million years from now, and got an insight into our culture and civilization!

April 14	Fantasy/sf	CR	<>I was pleased to see Mr. Silverberg's clarification of a question that has perplexed me for years, as to whether LVC is fantasy or sf. My introduction to RS was through H.G. Wells's "Time Machine" via "Absolutely inflexible" (one of his very first short stories, and one of the most imaginative time travel stories ever) to "Hawksbill Station." For many years I didn't read the Majipoor books, because I thought they were fantasy, which I didn't care for. I equated this with titles such as "The Wizard of Earthsea", "Darkfever" and "Mistress of dragons" to name only a couple of current titles that booksellers insist on lumping in with sf. Only years afterwards did my step-dauughter, who was into fantasy, role playing and otherworldliness, demand that I read it, and I did, to get her off my back. Since then I have read all of the Majipoor books several times. Recently I have been listening to audio books, because of failing eyesight, and I have just finished listening to the audiobook of LVC. It was a marvellous experience, and gave me new insights into this wonderful story. The production was very well done, and the images and the evocative language came alive like never before. I am now about to download "Chronicles of Majipoor" and "Valentine Pontifex" and transfer them to my iPod. I also listened to "House of bones" which is a story I had not previously encountered. It is a sort of reverse time travel "Ugly little boy" story, set in the same universe as Jean Auel's "Clan of the Cave Bear." If one had to categorize "Bones" and "Bear" I suppose you could describe them as "speculative pre-history." Anyone who is interested in other titles that are available should check Audible.com, and search under "Silverberg."





July 26	Time Travel	CR	Mr. Silverberg addressed this theme of time travel viruses in one of his very early and one of his most brilliant and innovative stories,"Absolutely inflexible." If you haven't read it, find it (it is in vol. 1 of his continuing "Collected Stories" series) and read it. It will blow your mind. It was this story, and "Hawksbill Station" that got me hooked on Silverberg. Time travel is a wonderful theme in sf, if done skilfully. I read H.G. Wells's "The time machine" when I was ten years old, and my life has never been the same since then.

July 10			The discussion on getting royalties for books written very early in a writer's career, brought about an interesting train of thought. I recently bought a book which is supposedly the first book that Robert Heinlein ever wrote (1938/39): "For us, the living." It was first published in 2003. I haven't yet read it, but I wonder about the ethics of a literary agent or a family member digging up early manuscripts like this, which were either unpublishable during the author's lifetime, or which the author had never bothered to submit for publication. I doubt very much that it could be described as "a little classic." I suppose one could argue, as was argued in justifying the publication of this Heinlein first book, that it does provide a foretaste of what was to come. It was compared with H.G. Wells' "The Sleeper awakes" and "The Shape of things to come." I remember reading a comment by an author whose early work I very much enjoyed and admired, referring sneeringly and disparagingly to her "juvenalia." > But some of those other very early novels are little classics, I think. The ones I'd put in the classic or near classic category would be Revolt on Alpha C, Master of Life and Death (maybe should be retitled Gateway to Utopia?), Invaders from Earth, Collision Course, Stepsons of Terra, and even Starhaven, which I think shows some very nice influence from Philip K. Dick. But I'm afraid Chalice just seemed like a pulpy potboiler to me. But maybe I missed something. It's quite possible because I did indeed scan and skip over quite a few pages in the middle.
July 26	Time Travel		> Ju Mr. Silverberg addressed this theme of time travel viruses in one of his very early and one of his most brilliant and innovative stories,"Absolutely inflexible." If you haven't read it, find it (it is in vol. 1 of his continuing "Collected Stories" series) and read it. It will blow your mind. It was this story, and "Hawksbill Station" that got me hooked on Silverberg. Time travel is a wonderful theme in sf, if done skilfully. I read H.G. Wells's "The time machine" when I was ten years old, and my life has never been the same since then. > One problem some time travel yarns do not address are the plethora of germs, bacteria, and viruses (viri?) in the distant past or far future. Our current bodies have evolved, naturally or with medicine, to withstand all the bad microbes of the past 500-1000 years...but say a time traveler goes a million, ten million years in the past, there will be bacteria and germs that didn't make it to now that would love a new body from the future...ditto on future travel a million years from now, when new strains would be present. This holds the same for interplanetary travel. (In UFO lore, some believe the "aliens" are just body suits to prevent infection, like wearing deep dive suits.) >> Seems that a time traveler could be innoculated for such things, but at the expense of previous travelers, who either going to the past or future, returned sick and died, but in their bodies the doctors would know what to make the next traveler immune...plus, returning time travelers would need to be quarantined. >> I thought of this too when reading UP THE LINE and all the promiscuous time travel sex -- what if someone from the future introduced an STD strain 700 years in the past, that would certainly alter the timeline...
		RS	I was about twenty when I wrote "Absolutely Inflexible." To my surprise, it went on to become an Internet best-seller in the early days of electronic publishing, 35 years later. I'll have to look at it now to see what I said about those viruses.