Though none of his best-known or award-winning stories are included, these selections, which Silverberg deems the best of his early era, illustrate his apprenticeship and presage the Grand Master he has become.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Gorgon Planet
The Road to Nightfall
The Silent Colony
Absolutely Inflexible
The MacAuley Circuit
The Songs of Summer
To Be Continued
Alaree
The Artifact Business
Collecting Team
A Man of Talent
One-Way Journey
Sunrise on Mercury
World of a Thousand Colors
Warm Man
Blaze of Glory
Why?
The Outbreeders
The Man Who Never Forgot
There Was an Old Woman
The Iron Chancellor
Ozymandias
Counterpart
Delivery Guaranteed Views: 601
A Clean Romance Showcasing a Love which Endures a Thousand Years ...Nicole Bessam had finally found him. After long, fruitless years of searching, after countless missteps and mistakes, she had at last reunited with the man she had pledged her heart to. He was right there in front of her.But he didn't remember her face.Commander Jon Paxton was transfixed by the woman before him.A Clean Romance Showcasing a Love which Endures a Thousand Years ...Nicole Bessam had finally found him. After long, fruitless years of searching, after countless missteps and mistakes, she had at last reunited with the man she had pledged her heart to. He was right there in front of her.But he didn't remember her face.Commander Jon Paxton was transfixed by the woman before him. He'd had relationships in the past, certainly - women who eased his loneliness. But none had ever called to him the way Nicole did. None had ever fit into his life as neatly as a key fits into its lock. And there seemed to be so much more beneath the surface - but he just couldn't reach it.Nicole had to move as carefully as a cat negotiating a thin ledge high above a desolate abyss. One reckless step, one shift in the wrong direction, and the love they had treasured for a thousand years could be forever lost.Aquarian Awakenings is the first of four novellas in the Collective Saga series. They can be read singly or as a boxed set. They contain no explicit violence nor intimacy. As such, they are suitable for teens and up.All proceeds from the Collective Saga series benefit battered women's shelters. Views: 601
A storm was coming.Antonia, who was all-too-often alone, could feel it in the air. She could feel it in her blood, in her bones, and in the words of her unusual, diminutive friend: the mouse whose warnings rang in her ears.This is the story of how she lost her home ... and found another.The Skylands are floating continents, islands in the sky, of a fantasy realm known as Talvali. It is a patchwork world into which pieces of other lands are taken. But where do its inhabitants come from? Who are the men, women, and children who make up this diverse, strange world?Antonia was just a child when The Storm came. Powerful and foreboding, she nonetheless has one person at her side: a very special friend ... a human-shaped mouse who could speak. But on the playground, as the winds rise, she is torn between what she knows she must do and the words her diminutive companion tells her of the dragons to come.Cover art by Louis Frank. Views: 600
The vampire drug, brew, nearly ruined Gwen Sparks’ life. Just when things started to get back to normal between her and Aiden, she is summoned by the North American Witches Council to their central city of Moon. A war is imminent between vampires and witches, and Gwen’s experiences with brew are being used to fuel the fire. She is about to discover just how powerful she is with the help of the ruggedly handsome Angel of Death and just how far some people will go to get what they want. Gwen is going to learn exactly what it means to be Deceived. Views: 600
The genealogist Draston has failed to find a royal ancestor for his master, Hamvok the Merciful. To save himself, Draston promises to prove the tyrant is descended from a god. In doing so, he commits himself to a path of forgery and sacrilege. His enterprise will risk the wrath of gods. But, far worse, it will draw him to a shadowy figure more terrible than all the gods combined, the Fate Healer.A five thousand word short story where the quill proves to be more dangerous than any sword. The genealogist Draston is charged with the impossible. His master, Hamvok the Merciful, craves a royal ancestor or two to legitimize his tyranny. But every avenue of Draston’s research comes to a dead end. Nobility has never sneezed on Hamvok’s ancestors, much less married into them. And now Draston’s time has run out. To save himself from Hamvok’s violent displeasure, Draston promises to prove the tyrant is descended from a god. In doing so, he commits himself to a path of forgery and sacrilege. His enterprise will risk the wrath of gods. But, far worse, it will draw him to a shadowy figure more terrible than all the gods combined, the Fate Healer. Views: 600
"Magnificent and unsettling." --Marie Lu, New York Times Bestselling author of the Legend Trilogy
A death-defying tropical adventure delivers a frightening message about dabbling with creation from the talented author of Origin.****
On a remote island in the Pacific, Corpus scientists have taken test tube embryos and given them life. These beings—the Vitros—have knowledge and abilities most humans can only dream of. But they also have one enormous flaw.
Sophie Crue is determined to get to Skin Island and find her mother, a scientist who left Sophie behind years ago. She enlists hunky charter pilot Jim Julien to take her there. But once on the island, Sophie and Jim encounter more than they bargained for, including a charming, brilliant Vitro named Nicholas and an innocent, newly awoken one named Lux.
In a race for their lives, Sophie and Jim are about to discover what happens when science stretches too far beyond its reach. Views: 600
Brusenna is the last.
All the other witches have been captured, their songs stolen and twisted from harmony and growth into chaos and death. She alone must stand against an evil much older and darker than anything she could ever imagine—an evil every witch before her has failed to vanquish.
Brusenna must be the first. Views: 600
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Stolen Child comes a hypnotic literary horror novel about a young boy trapped inside his own world, whose drawings blur the lines between fantasy and reality.
Ever since he nearly drowned in the ocean three years earlier, ten-year-old Jack Peter Keenan has been deathly afraid to venture outdoors. Refusing to leave his home in a small coastal town in Maine, Jack Peter spends his time drawing monsters. When those drawings take on a life of their own, no one is safe from the terror they inspire. His mother, Holly, begins to hear strange sounds in the night coming from the ocean, and she seeks answers from the local Catholic priest and his Japanese housekeeper, who fill her head with stories of shipwrecks and ghosts. His father, Tim, wanders the beach, frantically searching for a strange apparition running wild in the dunes. And the boy’s only friend, Nick, becomes helplessly entangled in the eerie power of the drawings. While those around Jack Peter are haunted by what they think they see, only he knows the truth behind the frightful occurrences as the outside world encroaches upon them all.
In the tradition of The Turn of the Screw, Keith Donohue’s The Boy Who Drew Monsters is a mesmerizing tale of psychological terror and imagination run wild, a perfectly creepy read for a dark night. Views: 600
He was not sure what he had been looking for. He only knew that he had not found it.
Shadow Moon has been away from America for nearly two years. His nights are broken with dangerous dreams. Sometimes he almost believes he doesn't care if he ever returns home.
In the Highlands of Scotland, where the sky is pale white and it feels as remote as any place can possibly be, the beautiful and the wealthy gather at a grand old house in the glen. And when the strange local doctor offers him work at the party, Shadow is intrigued.
He knows there is no good reason for him to be there.
So what do they want with him? Views: 600
An innocent man has been imprisoned. Hoping to see his son one last time, he composes a letter explaining the devastating event for which he's been blamed. LETTER FROM A DESPERATE FATHER is a chilling tale of grief and betrayal with supernatural elements."I know how my recent actions must seem. My story is not a simple one, though it pains me to dwell on how things turned out. All I ask is to see my son, and I hope you’ll be willing to help me after reading this letter."An innocent man has been imprisoned. Hoping to see his son one last time, he composes a letter explaining the devastating event for which he's been blamed. LETTER FROM A DESPERATE FATHER is a chilling tale of grief and betrayal with supernatural elements. Views: 600
Imagine that the creature we call cow evolved into a beast with near-human intelligence, who thinks of herself as a person . . . But this is Phildee\'s story, and Phildee is a boy. Or that\'s what he\'d call himself if you asked him. He\'s out and about, and playing games that come from his imagination. The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, is a B-72, a fort, a foxhole -- any number of things, depending on Phildee\'s mood. Today it was a jumping-off place. Phildee slipped out of his dormitory and ran across the yard to the feed-house. Then, abruptly, the Reimann fold became a concrete visualization. And Phildee twisted. He twisted into Riya\'s world -- Riya is that creature we were discussing up above. And spring has come to Riya\'s world. . . . Views: 600
No power on Earth can resist the might of Imperial Rome, so it has been and so it ever shall be. Through brute force, terror, and sheer indomitable will, her armies have enslaved a world. From the reign of Maximilianus the Great in A.U.C. 1203 onward through the ages -- into a new era of scientific advancement and astounding technologies -- countless upstarts and enemies arise, only to be ground into the dust beneath the merciless Roman bootheels. But one people who suffer and endure throughout the many centuries of oppressive rule dream of the glorious day that is coming -- when the heavens themselves will be opened to them...and the ships they are preparing in secret will carry them on their "Great Exodus" to the stars. Views: 600
