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Hot Spice and Majipoor Are you currently writing full time now, or are you fitting in the odd day-job for variety?
When and why did you begin writing? When did you first consider yourself a writer? I began writing stories when I was about seven, mainly imitations of things I had been reading. I got more serious about writing as a career when I was twelve or thirteen. It seemed obvious to me that I had a gift for it and I was fairly sure I could succeed at making it my profession, this by the time I was nineteen. How has becoming a published author impacted your lifestyle? I hardly know how to answer that. I've been a published author all my adult life -- my first book was published in my third year at college --and so being a published author has BEEN my lifestyle. How do you see the future of science fiction literature in the 21st century? Anything that involves actual reading of actual books seems to me to face a very bleak future. One of the nice things about getting old, perhaps the only nice thing about it, is that I won't be here to see it. Do you tend to read the work of many other SF/F authors? I used to read all the s-f that was published, back in the days, thirty or forty years ago, when that was possible. Nowadays I read very little, sometimes none at all for a year or more at a stretch. I still go back and re-read old favorites like Vance, Dick, Kuttner, Sheckley, van Vogt, Heinlein, or Eddison and Dunsany among the fantasists. What's your favourite SF/F movies and TV? Don't watch TV much. I thought THX-1138, or whatever the number was, was a fascinating vision of the future, but I don't generally go to see s-f movies. Do you use an agent?
How long did you spend in rejection letter hell before you were first published? From about age thirteen to seventeen, but you don't seriously expect to get published when you're an adolescent anyway. From age eighteen on I sold just about everything I wrote. Did you always want to be a writer? Yes. Though for a little while around the age of eight I thought it might be cool to be a paleontologist. My dinosaur era, that was. Where, when, and how do you write? Half past eight to noon, five days a week, from November to April. I never work afternoons, weekends, or summers. I use a computer, revise on screen, get the job done quite quickly most of the time.
What are you reading now? A history of the Library of Alexandria. Did you come up through the writing short-stories route, or did you get published in novel-form first? Sold a novel right off the bat, and have written at all lengths ever since.
How would you quickly summarise the Majipoor series for someone who hasn’t read any of the novels yet? An immense planet, not very technologically advanced but inordinately beautiful and ecologically complex, is populated by the descendants of colonists from Earth and half a dozen other intelligent races, one of them native to Majipoor. The Earthmen have established a non-hereditary monarchy and a kind of feudal government. The books deal with intervals of strife on a largely peaceful world.
If your Majipoor series was going to be made into a film, who would be your dream producers/actors for the role? Can't imagine. Valentine and Prestimion, my two heroes, are both men in the 35-40 year age range, and I don't know who the really good actors of that age are these days. Valentine would have to be blond and rangy and athletic, Prestimion compact, muscular, intense. Do you ever attend SF-cons, and what has your experience with them been? Been going to them for more than forty years. They are part of the annual rhythms of my life, though I like them less and less now that they are so huge and crowded with non-literate kids, and I tend to stick close to my own little group of friends when I attend. Would you ever consider writing in a different genre, or are you content with SF/F? I've written scholarly books, popular-science texts for young readers, erotic novels, a couple of mystery stories, etc., etc. But I haven't written anything but s-f or fantasy for many years, and have no plans to go back to other fields now.
What are your hobbies? I collect artifacts of various kinds, ancient and modern; I travel widely; I am an active reader and collector of books; I am an avid opera-goer; I take dining seriously; I admire cats, good rum, red wines, and spicy food. What were the reasons for the various retirements you've announced through your career? There were only two. About 1958 all the s-f markets collapsed at once; I didn't so much retire as take refuge in other areas of writing. When things began to improve around 1963 I returned to s-f. In 1974, troubled by the change in the s-f field in the direction of greater commercialism and exhausted by my own strenuous writing activities, I did announce an actual retirement and did no writing for nearly five years. Since returning in 1978 I have written steadily although in diminishing volume, preferring to take more time off as I get older. What advice would you give to budding SF writers? Read as much as you can, write as much as you can, live as much as you can.
What was it like living in the same building as Harlan Ellison and collaborating with him in the early days? Living next door to him was quite lively. I need hardly elaborate. We did hardly any actual collaboration, though -- two or three short stories at most.
Are you from the 'writing tightly against a full outline school' or the 'make it up as you go along' school? I always have an outline that clearly plans the beginning and the end of a story or a book -- the middle generally takes care of itself if I know where I'm supposed to be heading -- and I like to have a title before I start, too, since the title encapsulates the meaning of a work for me and if I don't know what the thing is going to be called I probably don't entirely know what it's about, either. How much do you base your characters against people you actually know? Impossible not to use actual people to some degree, but I have made very few attempts at direct portrayal. When it comes to your drafts, how much do you tend to re-write? Each morning I revise the work of the day before as my first task. Eventually I print out the accumulated manuscript, read it through, and make hand corrections before printing a final draft. Of the work you've penned, what's your favourite novel to date been? Dying Inside, I suppose, with Lord Valentine's Castle and Son of Man running close behind. Of all your books, what's been your best selling work? Lord Valentine's Castle.
What do you think makes for a realistic villain in a novel? Intensity and plausibility of motivation.
What made you want to write 'The Longest Way Home'? Was the back-story of the Folk and the Masters influenced by any current political or ethnic conflicts? No. What kinds of manuscript changes have been made to your published works? In modern times, none at all. Thirty or forty years ago publishers would sometimes make surprising changes and not tell the writer at all, but I have fixed all of those in newer editions. The last time a work of mine was seriously mutilated was around 1973, in an anthology, and I got the text restored by the time the paperback edition of the book came out. I always warn my publisher when submitting a book to leave my text alone, and they do.
Of the feedback you have heard people come back on about your novels, what's your favourites? The woman who read Dying Inside, which is about a telepath, and said, "I didn't know you were one of US, Mr. Silverberg!" I told her that if I really were one of you, you would have known it already.
What amount of research do you do for your books? Does the science part of the fiction come easy to you? I do enormous quantities of research. I have a broad but not particularly deep knowledge of science and I readily consult those whose expertise in some field is more thorough than my own.
How long does it take you to write a novel? These days, four to six months. In the 1960s, two to three weeks. Shorter books then, though. Are you still the youngest author to have won a Hugo Award? I believe so. My goal now is to become the oldest to win one, but Jack Williamson, who won a Hugo at the age of 91 or so a few years back, has made that a very difficult challenge. How many others genres have you worked in, and has SF been the most rewarding of them? I've already listed some of the other genres. But s-f has been the most rewarding, yes, both artistically and financially. What are you working on at the moment? A summer holiday. As an old hand at the SF/F 'game', what changes have you noticed along the way, and do you think SF is in a better or worse state today than when you started writing. The intrusion of hundreds of thousands of Star Trek and Star Wars readers into what had been a small cult of aficionados has permanently skewed s-f publishers toward the commercial end of things and has put a premium on superficiality of content and shallowness of style. I'm not pleased by this, of course, but I've had a fine long career and am indifferent now to what has happened, though it used to make me furious. I would feel quite differently about things if I were forty years old, say. If I were just starting out I suppose I'd write whatever I needed to write in order to pay the rent, that is, formulaic space opera or Tolkienesque trilogies, and would be forever unaware that I had the potential to do something finer. (c) Stephen Hunt 2002
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OTHER CONTENT - July 2002
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Author
Robert Silverberg interviewed by Stephen Hunt. The grand old man
of science fiction and fantasy chats about his lust for spicy food,
the genius of Majipoor, and living with Harlan Ellison.
I've
been a full-time writer since 1955. Have never had a day job, or,
for that matter, any sort of job at all. Writing has been my sole
means of livelihood.
Yes.
Always have. But I maintain close personal contact with my publishers
as well.
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