SOURCE: “Robert Silverberg,” in Science Fiction Writers: Critical Studies of the Major Authors from the Early Nineteenth Century to the Present Day, edited by E. F. Bleiler, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1982, pp. 505-11.

In the following essay, Edwards provides an overview of Silverberg's life and career.

Robert Silverberg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on 15 January 1935, an only child. He was an introverted and precocious boy, who discovered science fiction at an early age and was already submitting stories (without success) to science fiction magazines by the age of thirteen. (This part of his life is discussed in greater detail in his autobiographical essay “Sounding Brass, Tinkling Cymbal,” 1975.) He studied English at Columbia University and, while still a student, began to sell stories with some regularity; his first sales, in January 1954, were the short story “Gorgon Planet” (1954) and the juvenile novel Revolt on Alpha C (1955), although the latter had...