Conquerors from the Darkness/Master of Life and Death

by Robert Silverberg

Book by Silverberg, Robert

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

386 pages, Paperback

Published July 1, 1979

About the author

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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

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume collects two early Silverberg novels from 1957, though it has a single cover and isn't printed in the back-to-back tête-bêche classic Ace Double format. (The cover illustrates Conquerors from the Darkness and the artist is not credited, but it looks like a Frazetta. Or someone trying hard to look like Frazetta.) Conquerors from the Darkness is an expanded version of Spawn of the Deadly Sea from the April 1957 issue of Science Fiction Adventures magazine edited by Larry T. Shaw, with a very good Ed Emshwiller cover. Silverberg expanded it in 1965, and it was published by Holt, Rinehart, & Winston under the latter title and was published as a juvenile (or YA) in hardback. It's a very fun action-adventure story of the sword-and-planet variety that would have been right at home in an issue of Planet Stories next to Leigh Brackett or Edmond Hamilton. It's full of exotically named characters and settings, and chapter titles like The Coming of the Sea-Lords Pirates of the Western Sea and The Star Beasts and The Armada of Earth. Master of Life and Death first appeared as half of a true Ace Double in 1957, backed by James White's The Secret Visitors. It's a straight science fiction story in which he tried to throw in as many genre tropes as he could, introducing new ones and bigger problems with each chapter. Immortality, aliens, overpopulation... The only problem is that the plot became so convoluted and recursive that there's no room left for character. It's an entertaining read, but because of the novelty, not the writing. I preferred the blood-and-thunder but thought both were worthwhile entertainments.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two early novels by Robert Silverberg in this volume. I read Master of Life and Death first, Silverberg’s first attempt at a full length novel, a science fiction novel about over population where he experiments with plotting, complicating the action every chapter with a reversal, ratcheting up the stakes. As a novel, though, it is very dry and workmanlike, nothing like Silverberg’s later work.

I then read Conquerers from the Darkness which is an early fixup novel of an early sword and planet story Silverberg wrote for Science Fiction Adventures. And, ironically, though it is not the cool cerebral science fiction Silverberg likes to write, it is a satisfying adventure tale well told. If you are a fan of sword and sorcery or sword and planet tales, this is in essence, Water World with swords. (At one point its title was indeed Water World). We have a world of city islands who supply food and tribute, the Sea Kings who receive that tribute and protect shipping against pirates, and the Seaborn Ones, humans genetically altered to live under war, who hate and are killed by the Sea Kings whenever possible. This is the result of mankind losing a battle to the Star Beasts many generations previous. Great fun, and good writing.

[Ed Messina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early fare from one of SF's great masters. Rather dated, not nearly as sophisticated as his later work, but both are entertaining books.