To the Dark Star

The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg #2

by Robert Silverberg

This story, "To See the Invisible Man," written in June of 1962, marks the beginning of my real career as a science-fiction writer, I think. The 1953-58 stories collected in To Be Continued, the first of this series of volumes, are respectable professional work, some better than others but all of them at least minimally acceptable--but most of them could have been written by just about anyone. Aside from a few particularly ambitious items, they were designed to slip unobtrusively into the magazines of their time, efficiently providing me with regular paychecks. But now, by freeing me from the need to calculate my way around the risk of rejection, Fred Pohl allowed--indeed, required--me to reach as deep into my literary resources as I was capable of doing. I knew that unless I gave him my very best, the wonderful guaranteed-sale deal I had with him would vanish as quickly as it had appeared. Therefore I would reach deeper and deeper, in the years ahead, until I had moved so far away from my youthful career as a hack writer that latecomers would find it hard to believe that I had been emotionally capable of writing all that junk, let alone willing to do it. In "To See the Invisible Man" the distinctive Silverberg fictional voice is on display for just about the first time.

--Robert Silverberg

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Collections, Fiction

393 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 1, 2007

About the author

There are many authors in the database with this name.

Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.

Reviews

[Ignacio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volumen en el que se inicia la etapa de esplendor de Silverberg. La base de relatos muestra la progresión respecto a los 50: sigue habiendo aventura espacial en la línea de Vance, humor de la veta de Sheckley, alguna cosilla siguiendo la senda de Kuttner o Dick, pero ahora ya evidenciando los temas fundamentales en su obra posterior. Es cierto que la mitad siguen siendo material de fondo de las revistas de la época, no ya lejos de la maestría de sus maestros. Están a bastante distancia de los mejores cuentos del propio Silverberg aquí recogidos. Pero se leen con agrado y abren cuestiones interesantes. En este sentido me ha gustado releer "El día en que desapareció el pasado", una novela corta que estaba en La otra sombra de la Tierra y que, a partir de uno de los miedos muy de los 50 y 60 (un loco echa "drojas" en el suministro de agua de una ciudad), plantea una narración de catástrofes sobre la culpa, el perdón y la tensión entre olvido y recuerdo. Ese asunto de la memoria, individual o colectiva, es un arsenal del cual se nutren otros relatos bastante atractivos donde lo relativamente aperturista en ciertos temas a ratos se retuerce con un tonillo carca. Nada sorprendente en un conservador de Nueva York con una formación muy clásica.

Los cuentos fundamentales ("Ver al hombre invisible", "Estación Hawksbill", "Moscas", "Danza del sol"), con ese individuo siempre ya en el centro de la historia, asediado o destruido por una entidad o una colectividad inflexible a sus deseos y necesidades, se mantienen bien. Y lo que cuenta sobre la escritura de alguno, con varias correcciones siguiendo opiniones externas ("Pasajeros"), muestra su cambio de paradigma: de alguien que simplemente quería publicar a alguien que quería ver publicado lo mejor que pudiera escribir.

Respecto al anterior volumen hay un detalle que se siente peor: las introducciones pierden un poco de mordiente biográfica y se circunscriben demasiadas veces a lo bibliográfico. Aun así, con muchas ganas de leer los dos próximos volúmenes, tarea inexcusable para el 2021.

[Craig Childs · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a four-year hiatus from science fiction, Robert Silverberg was persuaded to return to writing for Galaxy and If magazines by his friend and editor Frederik Pohl. This retrospective spanning 1962-69 showcases a more mature author with a now decidedly unique voice. His willingness to play with any and every trope in the genre remains the same. These are some of the most enduring short stories of his career:

To See The Invisible Man -- In a totalitarian future where the government monitors his every action, a man is convicted of the crime of "coldness" towards his fellow man. His punishment is to be branded as an Invisible. For one year, no one can speak to him or acknowledge his existence in any way. The leads both to opportunities for crime and voyeurism, as well as crippling emotional isolation. Adapted into a Twilight Zone episode.

The Pain Peddlers -- In 2008, unscrupulous television networks broadcast feeds of medical patients being operated on without anesthetics. This visceral, punchy story anticipates the rise of virtual reality technology.

Neighbor -- For over a century, two neighbors feud on a harsh, sparsely populated winter planet because one of them built his castle blocking the other's view. Tensions escalate until one day the older man asks for a life-or-death favor.

The Sixth Palace -- Two adventurers vie for the right to claim a priceless ancient treasure, but first they must solve the riddle of the robot that stands guard. Features a great opening line: "There was the treasure, and there was the guardian of the treasure. And there were the whitening bones of those who had tried in vain to make the treasure their own."

Flies -- Cassidy's damaged body is repaired by a godlike alien race known as the golden ones. They tweak him to make him more sensitive to the emotions of his fellow man, then they release him back to Earth as a sort of science experiment to understand pain. I feel like this is Silverberg's attempt to one-up Harlan Ellison's story "Paingod". Silverberg describes this story as "a demonstration of the random viciousness of the universe and a little blasphemy on the side."

Halfway House -- Alfieri travels through the singularity of a collapsed star in order to access other universes in which doctors can save him from his terminal disease. In return, he must agree to serve five years as the gatekeeper of worlds, in which he alone will determine who can pass through and who will die. Not only is this an interesting examination of the multiverse, but it is a memorable parable about the burdens of leadership.

To The Dark Star -- Three scientists--a human from Earth, an adapted humanoid from the colonies, and an alien--become the first people to observe the formation of a black hole. Tensions escalate when one of them must be chosen for a hazardous task--who should take the risk?

Hawksbill Station -- In 2039, political prisoners are sent back in time to the Cambrian era and forced to live in isolation on a planet where land life has not yet evolved. This is a leisurely paced character-driven story with incredible world-building. Nominated for both Hugo and Nebula awards. Later expanded into a novel of the same name.

Passengers -- The planet has been invaded by invisible aliens who like to temporarily possess or "ride" human bodies on debauched pleasure sprees. They delight in degrading us. Two lovers try to snatch pleasure and dignity from their brief periods of lucidity. This short story won a Nebula and is often cited on the genre's best-ever lists. One of my all-time favorites.

Bride 91 -- A man enters into a six-month marriage contract with an flower-like alien woman. They face numerous challenges ranging from the physical (how to have sex) to the cultural (her physical strength upends any notion of a husband-protector). This is a lively, irreverent, and funny take on interspecies relationships. This is a much better examination of the theme than Silverberg's earlier story "One-Way Journey".

Going Down Smooth -- An AI that provides psychiatric counseling to humans begins to experience bizarre visions and becomes increasingly foul-mouthed and aggressive.

Fangs of the Trees -- A farmer faces financial ruin when his crop of hallucinogenic fruit is threatened by a blight. He must kill the infected trees to save his business. These trees are semi-sentient. They have distinct personalities; they feel pain; they eat meat; and they fight back when threatened.

Ishmael in Love -- A dolphin with advanced speech and reading skills falls for a beautiful young woman at a Caribbean desalination plant where he is employed to do maintenance. The results are tragic but hilarious.

Ringing the Changes -- In the future, it is fashionable to take "vacations" by shunting your personality into someone else's body to live a different life for a while. In this instance, the shunt fails and one man finds himself being cycled through a series of bodies. He considers whether to steal another body on a permanent basis. This is a fun story that left me wanting more. While it is perfectly complete as-is, I wanted to know more about what was going on with the other characters. The concept of shunting also appears in the novel Tower of Glass.

Sundance -- A descendent of the Sioux nation Tom Two Ribbons participates in exterminating millions of herbivores on a faraway planet to make it ready for human colonization. He faces a crisis of conscience when he begins to believe they may be more intelligent than previously believed. There is a lot going on in this story: It is a rumination on the distinction between sentient vs. non-sentient life; it is an analogy for the Native American experience; it is a cautionary tale about anthropomorphism; it is a depiction of a man who loses his grip on reality while under the influence of drugs… most of all it is just an engaging story. The ending is ambiguous; it offers several varying explanations of Tom's predicament.

How It Was When the Past Went Away -- Someone poisons the San Francisco water supply with memory-deleting drugs, causing the entire city to get collective amnesia. The story follows several characters over the next week to explore how they cope. For some loss of memory is a blessing, for others it destroys their livelihoods. Silverberg wrote this story for a themed anthology with the premise that reliance on technology increases a society's vulnerability to natural catastrophe.

A Happy Day in 2381 -- This is an interesting vision of how families may evolve in the far future. Earth's population has topped seventy-five billion. Humans live in skyscrapers a thousand floors high. They have developed a culture that celebrates fertility and open marriages. Became the first chapter of the 1971 novel The World Inside.

(Now + n, Now - n ) -- A man who can communicate with both past and future versions of himself uses his ability to manipulate the stock market. All goes well until he falls in love with a woman who dampens his psionic powers. This is a loopy but fun time travel tale, played for laughs.

After the Myths Went Home -- 10,000 years in the future, humans reanimate the heroes of myth and legend and reincorporate them into modern society. This is a fun story and a reminder that no matter how sophisticated society becomes, we will never outgrow our need for role models and visionary leaders.

The Pleasure of Their Company -- A deposed president flees his planet rather than face probable execution in a military coup. He has no time to rescue his family and friends, but he takes their personality cubes which allows him to interact with their computer simulations. However, on the long space voyage, he gradually begins to suspect they are only telling him what he wants to hear. This story has a strong premise but dissipates near the end.

We Know Who We Are -- A free-spirited, worldly-wise woman arrives to an ancient city where no one travels and everyone's needs are instantly met through technology. She tempts one citizen to venture into the forbidden Knowing Machine, which she believes can provide physical pleasure and omniscience. This fable closely parallels the story of the Garden of Eden.

4 and a half stars.

[Joe Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've heard of Robert Silverberg, of course. It's hard to be fan of the "golden age" of science fiction and *not* have heard about Silverberg. But I've never really read him before. (My library growing up had a far larger selection of Asimov and Heinlein than it did of Silverberg.) In many ways, this was my first real exposure to his stories.

And what an exposure it is. All of these short stories are excellent. As he explains in the introduction, this was the beginning of the period in which he began to take his craft seriously and to write stories that he could be proud of. These are, dare I say it?, literary science fiction stories. Oh, the wonder of strange things is there. But the stories are more focused on what it means to be human than they are on what the technology is.

My favorite story of the collection also happens to lead off the collection: *To See the Invisible Man*. What if your sentence was to be legally invisible for a year—no one can respond to you, talk to you, help you, or hinder you in any way. Would it be heaven? Or hell?

*Neighbors* concerns two men who have hated each other their entire lives. *Hawkwsbill Station* is a bleak story about political prisoners who have been exiled to the Paleozoic era, where trilobites are the only life. *Bride 91* concerns a man who marries for the 91st time—every marriage to a female of a different alien race. All of these stories are superbly written and bleak in some way that's truly human.

This is probably the best volume of short stories that I've read in a long time.

[Dalibor Dado Ivanovic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odlicna zbirka, stvarno izvrsnih prica ima. Neke koje nisam procitao prije a dojmile me se trenutno:
Passengers
Bride 91
Fangs of the trees
A happy day in 2381
Pleasure of their company
We know who we are

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The science-fiction author Robert Silverberg began his career in the 1950s and kept writing into the new millennium. His output has been prodigious, far beyond most other science-fiction writers. While not everything he did is worthwhile, and he has suppressed a lot of hack work from especially the late 1950s and early 1960s, even the stories he acknowledges run to thousands of pages. Subterranean Press gave this body of work a nice treatment by reissuing these stories in nine volumes moving chronologically. In each volume, Silverberg provides a general introduction to that overall era of his writing, as well as shorter remarks before each story nothing how it came to be.

This volume, which collects his short stories from 1962–69, marks a significant turn in his career and is essentially. In the Fifties, Silverberg had turned out relatively low quality work. After a brief hiatus from science-fiction, he came back to the field mainly at the invitation of Frederik Pohl. He now had great freedom, and his long years of apprenticeship were now giving way to a mature career, some products of which retain their value decades later.

This volume contains Silverberg’s Nebula-award-winning (and Hugo-nominated) “Passengers”, one of his best works ever. Its tale of human being who, after an invasion of incorporeal alien bodysnatchers, go into days-long fugues when they are controlled by these hosts and, after coming to, do not remember their actions. The prose here is sparse and mournful, but the author manages to say so much in such a low word count. And as Silverberg, like some of the other representatives of the 1960s science-fiction "New Wave", was interested in the sexual revolution and some perennial features of human psychology, “Passengers” can move readers even today.

The second best thing here is “Hawksbill Station”, the original short story version of what Silverberg later expanded to a novel. It tells of a prison set up in Earth’s pre-Cambrian geological era – 1 billion years before present – which an authoritarian government that has mastered time travel uses as a “humane” form of punishment for political dissidents. This is a lot of fun, but the attraction of the story is mainly Silverberg’s worldbuilding; the prose is merely functional, nowhere near as poetic as “Passengers”, which speaks to just how inconsistent Silverberg could be even in this halcyon era.

The other stories here are less classic. Many of them, of course, now come across as too dated to even get into. "Bride '91", in which an Earthman signs a marriage contract for six months with a member of an alien species, still has some chuckles in it, although its view of relationships between men and women is now so antiquated that I wonder if the youngest readers today will even understand it.

Another strong story is

[Michael Samerdyke · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb collection of science fiction stories that cover a breathtaking range. It starts with social science fiction, like "To See the Invisible Man" and "The Pain Peddlers." It includes catastrophe stories, such as "How It Was When the Past Went Away." There are stories of time travel, such as "Hawksbill Station." "To the Dark Star" is a poetic story of an expedition to observe a black hole. Other stories reveal science fiction's increasing interest in myth during the Sixties.

As always, Silverberg's introductions to each story shed light on how the genre was changing over time.

A superb collection, highly recommended to anyone interested in the development of science fiction and one of its major authors.

[Timothy · Rating 4 out of 5]

To See the Invisible Man (1963)
The Pain Peddlers (1963)
Neighbor (1964)
The Sixth Palace (1965)
Flies (1967)
Halfway House (1966)
To the Dark Star (1968)
Hawksbill Station (1967)
Passengers (1968)
Bride 91 (1967)
Going Down Smooth (1968)
The Fangs of the Trees (1968)
Ishmael in Love (1970)
Ringing the Changes (1970)
Sundance • (1969)
How It Was When the Past Went Away (1969)
A Happy Day in 2381 (1970)
{Now + n, Now - n} (1972)
After the Myths Went Home (1969)
The Pleasure of Their Company (1970)
We Know Who We Are (1970)

[Chris Aldridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mindwebs audiobook 21. Also in "the farthest reaches". 3 scientific astronauts go to observe a star collapse in to a black hole. Tension and conflicts between the crew members are threatening the mission.

[Roger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Silverberg is my favourite author, and his short stories are among my favourites of the form.

This collection shows a clear evolution from his earlier works as a rookie author transitioning into someone that’s a master of their craft.

[Larou]

In To Be Continued, the first volume of Robert Silverberg’s Collected Stories, not every story was good, but each one was interesting – due to no small part to the introductory note by Silverberg himself prefixed to each story: Taken together, those notes provided a fascinating account of what it was like to be an American Science Fiction writer in the 1950s. The second volume, which is titled To the Dark Star and covers the period from 1962 to 1969, again has those introductions, but they are for the most part more limited in scope – they still are interesting to read, but as contributions to a biography of Silverberg rather than as giving an overview over the state of Science Fiction literature in the United States at the time (although that aspect has not completely vanished, it just has receded into the background). On the plus side, the stories they are introducing are significantly better at this stage in Silverberg’s writing career, and the reader starts to get an idea of why Silverberg is not only considered one of the most prolific but also one of the best SF authors.

The quality still varies a bit, as it will in almost any collection, but it does so at a consistenly high level. Many of the stories come across as somewhat gimmicky (a problem with a large amount of short form Science Fiction), because they are either too much streamlined towards their punchline or based on just a single idea and not moving beyond that. The best ones, though, have a richness of invention and a narrative momentum that makes them linger in the reader’s mind for a long while after having read them, as if they were not quite containable in the story form. In that light, it is probably not an accident that two of my favourite stories in this collection, “A Happy Day in 2382″ and “Hawksbill Station” later became part of or were expanded into a novel.

One reason why the introductions are not quite as informative about the period in general might be that the stories themselves are – there is a pronounced shift in both subject and form here, away from adventure tales on far-away planets towards an exploration of the conditio humana by means of speculative narratives whose formal and technical range widens as it subject matter deepens. Some stories that I particularly enjoyed and that showcase this development are “Passengers”, “Going Down Smooth” and “Sundance” all of which show Silverberg experimenting with form and language as he explores extreme and alien mindstates. You really can tell that the Sixties have arrived and that suddenly a lot of things became possible that weren’t before, and I think some of the enjoyment Silverberg seems to have had in trying out new themes and techniques and in pushing boundaries transmits itself to the reader.

But something else also becomes more noticeable in this volume than it was in the previous one, and that is Silverberg’s somewhat problematic attitude towards females. I would not go quite so far as to call him mysogynistic as I’ve seen some do, but it is hard to ignore the quite sharp contrast between the generally politically advanced and liberal tone of these stories and the way they portray women as weak, passive and mere victims. This seems a weird residue from the conservative Fifties that persists in the midst of a body of work that in all other respects breathes the spirit of the progressive Sixties.

How much one feels bothered by this will of course depends on one’s own sensibilities. I for one found it occasionally quite grating – not even that much in and of itself but because it clashes so dissonantly with the otherwise enlightened attitudes – but overall just a minor flaw in an oeuvre that despite this puzzling inconsistency remains among the most impressive in the genre.

[Jared Millet · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second (or third, depending on which you count) collection in Subterranean's Silverberg retrospective hits the transitional period where you can see RS making the deliberate switch from unabashed-pulp-hack Silverberg to literary-Silverberg. The transition's a little rough, but it's early days yet and it's fun to see him experimenting and stretching himself. (Since the story notes serve as biography, it's also neat to see how events in his real life were directly or indirectly affecting his writing.)

It's also a product of its time. The Sexual Revolution was heating up, and as I imagine a lot of the men of his generation did, Silverberg seems to have taken to it with about as much maturity as 13-year-old me did when I discovered my cousin's stack of Penthouse magazines. The sexual politics that made The World Inside an uncomfortable read are on display here (the first story of that collection is included). The openness of sex hasn't lost its shiny novelty yet in this era, but Silverberg's (and all his contemporaries', I'm sure) views on gender roles are still locked in the 50s. Men have all the agency and women are simply now sex objects instead of mere damsels in distress.

So, knock off a star for icky gender stuff. There are still a plethora of gems here.

[Larry · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a four-year hiatus, young Silverberg returns to SF with a new maturity and power.

We begin to see the New Wave influence in his work.

I didn't enjoy this as much as I thought I would. For me, this marks the beginning of a 15-20 year interlude during which SF somewhat lost its way, though a lot of good stories were still written during this time. I was in my late childhood and early teens when this was happening and I wanted black holes and galactic empires, not character development and social relevance.

[Grady · Rating 4 out of 5]

One advantage of being a skilled and prolific author is that one is likely to have lots a great material with which to fill a 'collected works'. At any rate, Silverberg certainly does. This second volume includes 21 of his best stories, written between 1962 and 1969. They are consistently interesting and un-hokey, which is no small thing in this genre.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

Silverberg has hit his stride by the time of these stories, very well written, provocative, and exploratory of the human condition in different cultural environments. Some very good stories here, light years beyond the first volume in terms of individual quality.

[Lord Humungus · Rating 2 out of 5]

best ones are only good

[Chanpheng · Rating 5 out of 5]

Real classics in this collection. Even though these stories were written in the 60's, most are very fresh and 'modern'

[Michael D · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mix of the occasionally brilliant, and frequently average.