The Mirror of Infinity

by Robert Silverberg

Contents:
· Introduction · Robert Silverberg · in
· Foreword to “The Star” · Jack Williamson · is
· The Star · H. G. Wells · ss The Graphic Christmas, 1897
· Foreword to “Twilight” · Algis Budrys · is
· Twilight [as by Don A. Stuart; Dying Earth] · John W. Campbell, Jr. · ss Astounding Nov ’34
· Foreword to “Nightfall” · Harry Harrison · is
· Nightfall · Isaac Asimov · nv Astounding Sep ’41
· Foreword to “Private Eye” · James Blish · is
· Private Eye · Lewis Padgett · nv Astounding Jan ’49
· Foreword to “The Sentinel” · Thomas D. Clareson · is
· The Sentinel [“Sentinel of Eternity”] · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Ten Story Fantasy Spr ’51
· Foreword to “Specialist” · Robert Conquest · is
· Specialist · Robert Sheckley · ss Galaxy May ’53
· Foreword to “Common Time” · Damon Knight · ar Science Fiction Forum #1 ’57
· Common Time · James Blish · ss Science Fiction Quarterly Aug ’53
· Foreword to “The Game of Rat and Dragon” · Kingsley Amis · is
· The Game of Rat and Dragon · Cordwainer Smith · ss Galaxy Oct ’55
· Foreword to “All You Zombies—” · Alexei Panshin · is
· “All You Zombies—” · Robert A. Heinlein · ss F&SF Mar ’59
· Foreword to “The Subliminal Man” · H. Bruce Franklin · ar, 1970
· The Subliminal Man · J. G. Ballard · ss New Worlds Jan ’63
· Foreword to “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” · Willis E. McNelly · is
· I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream · Harlan Ellison · ss If Mar ’67
· Foreword to “The Heat Death of the Universe” · Brian W. Aldiss · is
· The Heat Death of the Universe · Pamela A. Zoline · ss New Worlds Jul ’67
· Foreword to “The Library of Babel” · Ivor Rogers · is
· The Library of Babel [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Ficciones, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1962
· A Bibliography: The Critical Literature of S.F. · Misc. · bi

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Fiction

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

Published January 1, 1973

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

[E]

I was able to find a copy of this classic anthology of 13 wonderful Sci Fi stories at a reasonable price.

Yellowed old pages as they should be, but intact and complete.

If Sci Fi prior to 1980 is your thing, this one is for you. I recognized some of the stories and loved re-reading them.

A story that was a bone chiller was written by Harlan Ellison in 1967.
"I have no mouth and I must Scream."

Written 59 years before the concept of AI was created, it is a horrifying masterpiece of a super computer run amok.

Russia, China and the US each build a supercomputer to manage WWIII. The unthinkable happens. Below the surface of the earth, billions of circuits meld into a thing called The Allied Master Computer.

It refers to itself as I AM.
AM.

AM is aware of all human experiences, such as feeling the wind, tasting food, or love, but it cannot experience them itself.

This lack of a physical body and freedom, combined with sentience, sends it into a twisted conclusion that it must wipe out the human race.

It spares 5 humans and brings them below. AM has the ability to prolong life indefinitely. The story is narrated by Ted who along with the other four are slowly physically and mentally tortured with starvation, mutilation and hopeless living for 109 years.

Each day they awaken not knowing what new game this twisted entity will play with them.

Do not expect a happy ending. Its terrifying.

Five Stars
🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

[Jim]

This is one of the best science fiction collections I've ever read. Several of these short stories are among my favorite science fiction stories (and have read them before). Of added interest, each story has a critique by a science fictioneer.
Here's my listing of the stories with a rating and (a very) brief comment for each:

The Star by H.G. Wells 4 stars It's Wells!
Twilight by John W. Campbell 4 stars A dark story and a memorable one.
Nightfall by Isaac Asimov 5 stars My favorite of this collection and Asimov's best short story, in my honest opinion!.
Private Eye by Lewis Padgett (Henry Kuttner) 3 stars An OK story, one of the weaker ones in this collection.
The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke 5 stars The story that is the basis of "2001: A Space Odyssey," the film and the novel.
Specialist by Robert Sheckley 3.5 stars Clever little story.
Common Time by James Blish 3 stars Seems like Blish is trying something experimental. Didn't work for me.
The Game of Rat and Dragon by Cordwainer Smith (Paul Linebarger) 5 stars I love the weirdness of this guy!
"All You Zombies--" by Robert A. Heinlein 5 stars A Heinlein classic.
The Subliminal Man by J.G. Ballard 4 stars Rather thought-provoking.
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison 5 stars What can I say? It's Harlan.
The Heat Death of the Universe by P.A. Zoline 2 stars The worst in this collection.
The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges 3 stars There was an interesting idea somewhere here.
A Solid 4 stars overall.

[Spike]

H. G. WELLS: The Star ☆☆☆☆☆
JOHN W. CAMPBELL: Twilight ☆☆
ISAC ASIMOV: Nightfall ☆☆☆
LEWIS PADGETT: Private Eye ☆☆☆☆
ARTHUR C. CLARKE: The Sentinel ☆☆☆☆☆
ROBERT SHECKLEY: Specialist ☆☆☆
JAMES BLISH: Common Time ☆☆
CORDWAINER SMITH: The Game of Rat And Dragon ☆☆☆☆
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN: "All You Zombies--" ☆☆☆
J. G. BALLARD: The Subliminal Man ☆☆☆
HARLAN ELLISON: I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream ☆☆
P. A. ZOLINE: The Heat Death of the Universe ☆
JORGE LUIS BORGES: The Library Of Babel ☆☆

As expected, the short stories of H. G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, and Cordwainer Smith are the best of this otherwise anemic collection.

[Williwaw]

Here's an excellent book for you if you read science fiction when you were growing up during the 1960's or 70's, and would like to revisit some classic stories. (Or if you'd like to discover some dusty old gems that you missed along the way!)

This is more than just a sampling of influential stories: each one is preceded by and author bio, and a thoughtful, critical introduction by a scholar or a science fiction writer.

Silverberg has another anthology a bit like this one, called Robert Silverberg's Worlds of Wonder (1987). Worlds of Wonder doesn't have the guest commentary, but Silverberg's own comments are insightful and compelling.

Mirror of Infinity was published in 1970, just around the time that science fiction was beginning to attract attention as a potential subject of academic study. So this book was probably the first of its kind.

[Tom]

Darko Suvin in the 1970s suggested this was the best critical anthology of SF available: thirteen writers introduced by thirteen other writers and/or critics, with short pieces by H.G. Wells and J.L. Borges either side of eleven stories all published in SF magazines. Nominally edited by Robert Silverberg, though a good few of the intros to individual stories suggest they had a hand in the choices made; Silverberg's overall intro hits the usual points (Lucian, Thomas More, Jonathan Swift, H.G. Wells, Hugo Gernsback) but has a very peculiar idea of the place of SF in the literary ecology as of 1967:

By this roundabout route, by this lengthy detour into trashiness, science fiction found its way back toward literary respectability. The pulp-magazine episode of the 1930s and 1940s now seems like a momentary aberration in a literary tradition of high antiquity. Today's science fiction writers are makers of new myths, creators of unique dreams, explorers of time to come; but they are not, except for a reactionary few, purveyors of supersonic hackwork.

The later intros keep repeating, reframing, contradicting each other. SF is to be judged by its ability to only require one imaginary thing, as opposed to fantasy. Or, SF is a mode not actually tied to science, only thought that way by the publishing habits established in the 1920s, but which is actually doing some other thing. Anyway, it should be judged on its ability to extrapolate future trends, except when this is being done in a fabulistic spirit, in which case we should know not to. It’s utopian, or satirical, or should be judged on its entertainment value. Mainstream fiction is over-interested in epiphany and psychology, and we should welcome that SF doesn’t do that, except when it does; anyway, it’s plotty writing, like detective fiction, and so character and style aren’t important; in fact, the bare style is its strength; on the other hand, the intrusion of conscious style into the genre (the last stories are J.G. Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Pamela Zoline) is a necessary reinforcement of its capabilities.

James Blish figures twice, first introducing a Lewis Padgett (i.e. Kuttner / Moore) story where he suggests that a grounding in pulp has left SF writers better at Plot than mainstream literature, before presenting the Padgett story as an example of SF virtuosity, of how Kuttner and Moore sidestep the worst of ‘as-you-know’ worldbuilding and manage interior lives better than most. Blish’s own ‘Common Time’ is introduced by Damon Knight, whose introduction is about how he convinced Blish via correspondence that Blish had written a reverse allegory of conception and didn’t know it. This seemed rather unfair to ‘Common Time’, which is a really remarkable little thing, a very Golden Age presentation-of-the-stock-science-problem narrative which is solved at its midway point by a second SF stock idea that here disrupts both the arc of the plot and the shape of the language itself, in a way that makes it, oddly, the most 'experimental' thing here: which is clearly a bit of politics that the many hands editorially involved found themselves poking at.

Algis Budrys presents John W. Campbell’s ‘Twilight’—The Time Machine in Astounding drag—as an important inflection point between doing pulp and doing Golden Age, though these aren’t the terms he uses exactly. Harry Harrison introduces Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’ after as the prime Golden Age exponent in a way that seems like special pleading: no, really, go on, it is still entertaining. He applauds the use of banal detail, as does the “professor of English literature at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio” who introduces Clarke’s tiresome ‘The Sentinel’. A lot of the academically-sourced critics do sophomoric trivia— Heinlein, then, in his early stories, had his visions—both in ‘By His Bootstraps’ and in ‘They’—but they lost effectiveness because he was not able to state them as clearly as he wanted. In ‘All You Zombies—’ he has been able to put the themes of time travel and solipsism together, play them against each other, and thereby state them more effectively than before even though he has not clearly resolved them. In fact, the lack of resolution ads to the power of the story. — ‘All You Zombies—’ is a banger tho.

Kingsley Amis introduces Cordwainer Smith (‘Rat and Dragon’—classic) sensibly and conversationally and then goes on a tangent about why he doesn’t like the New Wave and they’re repeating experiments that have proved unnecessary in the mainstream. Earlier Robert Conquest introduces Robert Sheckley in thanks-but-no-thanks terms:

He writes for the audience that enjoys a science fiction story. His work does not derive its effect by indulging the reader in the feeling that he is doing something superior, that he and the author are one up on all those peasants. Intellectual and aesthetic self-congratulation doubtless provides one form of enjoyment, but it is one which in principle is wholly destructive of the art of fiction—and other arts, too.

Moreover, Sheckley for his part clearly likes the sphere of science fiction. He enjoys what he is doing. And he is completely at home in it.

Conquest praises Sheckley for ‘mere science fiction’, with reference to Lewis’s ‘mere Christianity,’ saying such a thing is “necessary in the context of this book”—i.e., given that we’re about to make a hard turn into Dangerous Visions/New Worlds territory. This seems rude to both Sheckley and to Ballard, Ellison, Zoline. The prof who introduces Ballard’s ‘Subliminal Man’ is really keen on reading as future-extrapolation something that seems to be clearly in a satiric mode; anyway, it was the first time I’d read it and I rather liked it, though it’s before Ballad fully got on his bullshit (non-neg.) The other two I had read before; Ellison is represented by ‘I Have No Mouth’ (yawn) and Zoline by ‘The Heat Death of the Universe’ (still fantastic.) On the whole a fairly interesting thing to work through, in the battered Harper-Perennial paperback I read it in, the signatures falling out one by one after I finished every one or two stories: a neat artifact of the particular state of what science fiction people thought science fiction thought it ought to be in 1967, where they thought it ought to be going.

[Megan Hess]

3.5

[Craig]

Excellent collection of SF stories from about 1940-1960. Best book for me in 2016... so far...

[Addison Harms]

last story: jorge luis borges’ “the library of babel” - 4/5, super interesting concept and the library setting sorta reminded me of interstellar lol, i’m a little too small brained to understand it fully but i like the allegory borges created.

overall this was a great introduction to a wide swath of classic science fiction writing and makes me want to read a full length sci fi novel soon!