Böcker av Robert Silverberg

The seductive thrill of uncharted worlds, of distant galaxies... and the unknown threats that lurk in the vastness of the cosmos. From Foundation to Lensman, Star Wars to Guardians of the Galaxy, space opera continues to exert its magnetic pull on us all.

In an archaic, feudal empire on the giant world of Majipoor, Valentine, an itinerant juggler, wakes up one morning with only a vague and troubled idea of who he is. His dreams suggest he is the ruler of Majipor - but no one will believe him.

From Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, Robert Silverberg comes the classic: The Book of Skulls. Four friends embark on a cross-country trip in search of a legendary monastery. There, they hope to find the secrets of immortality promised in an ancient manuscript, the Book of Skulls There, they will present themselves-and pay the horrific price demanded. For immortality requires sacrifice. Two victims to balance two survivors. One by suicide, one by murder. Beneath the gaze of grinning skulls, the terror begins. . . .

Six Frightened Men, is a classical and a rare book, that has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we at Alpha Editions have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted, retyped and redesigned. These books are not made of scanned copies of their original work, and hence their text is clear and readable. This remarkable book falls within the genres of Language and Literatures, American and Canadian literature

The eighth in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality and importance to the science fiction genre.Here is another set of the best stories, stories which were ahead of their epoch when they were new, which display a freshness and vigor that make them almost indistinguishable from the best of today's s-f, and which set the standard by which modern writers have guided their careers.A DUSK OF IDOLS: Not only are the gods cruel, but they can make you like it.THE HUMAN OPERATORS: The great ships possess unlimited cruising range--and unbounded ferocity.WARM: It's just a simple guessing game: to be? or not to be?KLYSTERMAN'S SILENT VIOLIN: Powerful weapons are a fine thing--but you wouldn't want your lover to marry one.THE NEW REALITY: It's amazing how much destruction you can wreak with a few simple tools--if you put your mind to it.These and six other tales of the highest quality--the most amazing conviction

From Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg comes, To Open The Sky. The Atom was their God-but there was something stronger... At the beginning of the 22nd century, Earth colonies were established on Mars and Venus. But the ultimate dream - to travel to the stars - was still an impossibility. Cults, fads, madnesses of various kinds swept the population. The maddest--and so far the most permanent--were the Vorst worshipers, the atom adorers, the believers in immortality through technology.Yet there were the Harmonists, who believed that technology could never do it. And the hatred between the two factions was too deep to be reconciled - until a conflict on Venus between a Vorster priest and his Harmonist opponent resulted in unexpected developments.

The seventh in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality and importance to the science fiction genre.Since its inception in 1970, the Alpha series has been dedicated to the proposition that science fiction can be a literature not only of stimulating and unfamiliar ideas but also of skilful and vigorous writing. Thus far Alpha has offered sixty-odd stories that exemplify the best of science fiction: challenging, provocative views of the universe, presented in crisp, sparkling prose. The volumes in the series offer some of the liveliest work produced in the short-story form anywhere in the world, and not just of the science-fiction category.Alpha serves a secondary purpose: to rescue from oblivion stories that might otherwise be undeservedly forgotten. Herewith, the seventh feast of outstanding fiction.

The ninth in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality and importance to the science fiction genre.The ALPHA series-now in its ninth volume-has by now become an eight-inch shelf of the best in short science-fiction stories. Our editorial bias is doggedly middle-of-the-road, or so we like to think; that is, (writes renowned editor Robert Silverberg) I try to avoid the worst excesses of the avant-garde on the one hand, and the blast-and-slash foolishness of pulp adventure fiction on the other. Of course, one reader's traditional and staid is another's wild experimentalism-very likely the fans of Hugo Gernsback's pioneering Amazing Stories of the 1920's muttered angrily in their soup over the gaudy innovations of John Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction in 1939-and so the best I can do is provide a sampler of the sort of science fiction that pleases me, that defines by example what I think science fiction ought to be, and hope that others will agree.Herewith, another such treasury of bright, sparkling, imaginative fiction!(Note, Alpha 9 is the final volume produced.)DUMB WAITER: The war was over, but nobody had bothered to tell the machines...THE FUNERAL: It was quite a ceremony; after all, it was a world that had died...THE SLICED-CROSSWISE ONLY-ON-TUESDAY WORLD: Man could travel between the stars, but not between the Days...GOODLIFE: The Starship was as ancient as Time itself, but it still remembered its mission: DESTROY MAN!THE DUSTY ZEBRA: There are certain problems involved in setting up an inter-dimensional trading post...NOBODY'S HOME: The children are tired of chasing the sun. They want cruelty, glory and dirt...And mo

The sixth in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality.More of the same, the mixture as before--so Silverberg is tempted to describe this sixth Alpha collection. Not unfair phrases, either, for, like its five predecessors, Alpha Six is a volume of science-fiction stories that have no thematic links, that are held together only by their literary excellence and stimulating science-fictional content. As before, Alpha owes no allegiance to any single literary "school" within the faction-ridden science-fiction cosmos: it hews to a solidly middle-of-the-road line, seeking strong narrative drive and avoiding the excesses of the zap-zap ray-gun school on the one hand and the evanescently precious avant-garde on the other. As always, Silverberg's selection of stories represent the best across a four-dimensional slice of science-fiction publishing.

The first in a series of superb science fiction.Alpha is, aside from the first letter of the Greek alphabet, a term that denotes excellence and primacy in a variety of disciplines: in nuclear physics, for example, it is the name of a particle of unusually large mass and charge. It seemed a useful label to attach to this volume, the first of an intended series of collections of science fiction stories.The Alpha series of anthologies will center on no particular theme except that of literary quality. The presence in any one volume of a cluster of stories bearing other thematic resemblance-as in this volume, where there are four or five time-travel stories-will be purely coincidental. I propose to cull the files of the science fiction magazines for stories that an educated and sophisticated reader will find stimulating, and to assemble them in books of roughly equal size that will appear once a year over the next few years. Some of the stories will be fifteen or twenty years old and richly in need of restoration to print. Others will be quite recent: the literary level of the science fiction short story has undergone an extraordinary transformation in the past few years, a fact that demands recognition here.Appropriately enough, this first volume of the ALPHA series covers a roster of writers from A to Z. Specifically, Aldiss to Zelazny-although this coincidence in alphabet is merely incidental to the fact that both these gentlemen, and the several others represented in this anthology, all write superb science fiction.Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories-literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling-brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny-and several steps in-between.So much for policy. The nine volumes of this series provide an exciting cumulative view of a field in which some of the most vigorous and inventive fiction of our times has been produced.Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers.

The fourth in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality.Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories-literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling-brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny-and several steps in-between. Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers.While a small number of science fiction writers are immensely well known, the Alpha series is intended, in part, to draw attention to some of the lesser known writers, whose work is equal in vision and artistry of those who have become household names.

The fifth in a series of superb science fiction.The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality.Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories-literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling-brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny-and several steps in-between. Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers.This group of stories gives pleasure by demonstrating the richness and variety of the science-fiction form. The stories show the reader visions he has not previously had, and send him away transformed and enlarged. The fifth volume of this highly acclaimed series features stories by promising new talents and by several of the field's most honored writers.Some of the stories in this year's Alpha show us, with painful clarity, the approaching consequences of our most recent miscalculations; other stories take a longer view, portraying events in the remote galaxies that have only metaphorical applications to our immediate lives. Here are ten more visions of times to come, glimpses of the roads ahead.

The third in a series of superb science fiction. The Alpha series of anthologies center on no particular theme except that of literary quality. Two criteria were used in the selecting of these stories-literary merit and importance to the genre. The result is that the variety of subjects is matched only by the richness and diversity of their handling-brilliant, frightening, clever, bizarre, powerful, witty, funny-and several steps in-between. Simply put, here is the best science fiction from the best science fiction writers. The main intent of the Alpha series is to assemble groups of stories that give pleasure by demonstrating the richness and variety of the science-fiction form. Quality of storytelling is the touchstone; I make no effort to gather the stories in any one volume according to any thematic pattern. Yet thematic patterns seem to creep into the books like insidious invaders from far galaxies. The first Alpha contained a cluster of tales dealing with travel through time-relativity gone topsy-turvy all over the book. The second volume, through no prior intent of the editor, seemed to deal almost entirely with the tensions arising out of man's confrontation with technology. And in this third one, I find, a prevailing theme in nearly every story is the conflict between ourselves and strangers. Again and again, through some odd accident of balance, you will find tales of tense encounters, showing protagonists facing the unknown quantities of time and space. Freud tells us that nothing ever happens by accident. Perhaps so. These anthologies are not assembled in a random process, and no doubt the editor's mind serves as a thematic filter in ways that are not clear to the editor himself except in hindsight. And one can reasonably object that virtually every good science-fiction story deals in meetings with the unknown, so that the supposed theme detected here is no true theme at all, but only a universal characteristic of the genre. In any event, here are ten outstanding stories. I think they achieve what is for me the basic science-fiction accomplishment: they show the reader visions he has not previously had, and send him away transformed and enlarged. Go thou and read. Go and be changed.

GUTTER ROADIf only Fred Bauman hadn't stopped that rainy night and offered the young woman a ride, his life wouldn't be such a hell now. How was he to know that Joanne was working a con on him when she enticed him in the front seat of his car? Now he's paying more blackmail than he can afford to keep her from crying rape. Fred certainly doesn't want his wife Ethel to find out about his crazy indiscretion. But what he doesn't know is that Ethel has issues of her own. To stave off sexual boredom, she keeps a hidden bottle of vodka for her afternoons, dreaming of a man who can offer her some excitement of her own. Joanne's simple con sets the wheels in motion, and they're all heading down a road that will change their lives forever. YOU CAN'T STOP ME When Lou Andreas is a teenager, filled with the lust of youth, all he wants to do is lose his virginity. But his first experience is a fiasco, and the young prostitute berates him for his failure. Filled with rage, Andreas finds another prostitute, and kills her. After that, sex and death become all mixed up in his head. He kills only prostitutes, but it becomes a compulsion. Then he meets Tony, and for a while Andreas knows what it's like to have a normal relationship. She is everything he could want in a woman. But Marian makes the mistake of falling in love-she wants marriage, which is the last thing on Andreas' mind. And besides, there are so many more streetwalkers who need killing...

Master of Life and Death, has been regarded as significant work throughout human history, and in order to ensure that this work is never lost, we have taken steps to ensure its preservation by republishing this book in a contemporary format for both current and future generations. This entire book has been retyped, redesigned, and reformatted. Since these books are not made from scanned copies, the text is readable and clear.

Join us as we step into the blossoming spring with Superbloom, by cover artist Weiwei Xu, and disappear into future past with feature author Robert Silverberg's 'Chip Runner' and Leo X Robertson's 'Bar Hopping for Astronauts'. Take a deep breath and let the aroma of the blossoms permeate your senses because taste and scents infuse Michelle Goddard's 'Bhut', 'The Shepherdess: Merveilles' by JM Landels, and 'The Smell of Screaming' by SiWC runner-up Adrienne Gruber. We witness the powerful and varied effects of death and mourning in 'Life Supports' by Claire Lawrence, and in Raven Contest winner 'Good Intentions' by Nancy Ludmerer. We cross the fourth wall in Erin MacNair's Raven Contest runner-up 'It Can Be Done with Words', we cross the desert in Paige Elizabeth Wajda's rhapsodic 'Heaven or Las Vegas', and we cross dimensions in PG Streeter's homage to Shakespeare in 'The Earth Has Bubbles'. Phoebe Mol washes away her troubles in the graphic version of Edna St Vincent Millay's 'O World' while Marietta puts out fire with gasoline in the next chapter of Mel Anastasiou's The Extra, 'Frankie Ray and the Blazing Anubis'.

Aliens in all shapes and sizes-some fearsome, some outlandish, and some just plain fun-fill the pages of these hand-picked classic stories by sci-fi grand master Robert Silverberg, each featuring a new introduction by the acclaimed author.Every day we are discovering new worlds in far-reaching galaxies which may or may not sustain life as we know it. InAlien Archives: Eighteen Stories ofExtraterrestrial Encounters, sci-fi Grand Master Robert Silverberg collects his finest short stories and novellas about one of the genre's most enduring themes. Spanning fifty years of writing from the Science Fiction Grand Master, this collection of alien encounters features new introductions to all fifteen stories, including the Hugo Award-nominated "e;Schwartz Between the Galaxies"e; and HBO adapted "e;Amanda and the Alien."e; In these pages lie tales of a young man venturing into the occupied territory of an alien conquered United States to rescue his brother, three visitors from a very strange alien world arriving on Earth and meeting a tragic fate, and a dangerous life-form from a far-off world finding that suburban California holds some beings that are even more dangerous than it is. With Alien Archives, Silverberg puts us in contact with extraterrestrial beings of all shapes, sizes, and personalities-some fearsome, some outlandish, and some just plain fun.The Associated Press says, "e;Done Silverberg's way, science fiction is a fine art."e; With sheer force of imagination and incredible storytelling skills, Alien Archives confirms that Silverberg's classic work continues to resonate for readers today.

The story of the American mining frontier can be traced through the ghost towns that dot the western landscape to this day, from the camps of Californias forty-niners to the twentieth-century ruins in the Nevada desert. These abandoned towns mark an epoch of high adventure, of quick wealth and quicker poverty, of gambling and gunslinging and hell-raising. Those who have seen the Old West movies sometimes think that the legends of the Wild West were invented by screenwriters. The ghost towns remain, and their battered ruins testify that the legends are true. Behind the tall tales is a history where a fortune could be made in a week and lost over the course of an evening.With a historians attention to fact and a novelists gift for dramatic storytelling, celebrated science fiction author Robert Silverberg brings these adventures back to life in the rowdy splendor of their heyday in Ghost Towns of the American West. History and travelers tales are woven together with clarity and wit to create a lively account of a fascinating era in our history. Lorence Bjorklunds illustrations, rich in detail, portray the ghost towns in their glory and in their dusty decline.

From the intense and brooding Magellan and the glamorous and dashing Sir Francis Drake; to Thomas Cavendish, who set off to plunder Spains American gold and the Dutch circumnavigators, whose numbers included pirates as well as explorers and merchants, Robert Silverberg captures the adventures and seafaring exploits of a bygone era. Over the course of a century, European circumnavigators in small ships charted the coast of the New World and explored the Pacific Ocean. Characterized by fierce nationalism, competitiveness, and bloodshed, The Longest Voyage: Circumnavigators in the Age of Discovery captures the drama, danger, and personalities in the colorful story of the first voyages around the world. These accounts begin with Magellans unprecedented 151922 circumnavigation, providing an immediate, exciting, and intimate glimpse into that historic venture. The story includes frequent threats of mutiny; the nearly unendurable extremes of heat, cold, hunger, thirst, and fatigue; the fear, tedium, and moments of despair; the discoveries of exotic new peoples and strange new lands; and, finally, Magellans own dramatic death during a fanatical attempt to convert native Philippine islanders to Christianity.Capturing the total context of political climate and historical change that made the Age of Discovery one of excitement and drama, Silverberg brings a motley crew of early ocean explorers vividly to life.

KILLERHoward Gorman has to have Marie all to himself. She's everything he wants in a woman, and more. But in order to have Marie, he must first get rid of his wife, Ethyl. So Howard hires a hit man, Lee Floyd, a polished professional, to do the job-and remove Ethyl. But Marie has plans of her own, and they don't involve Howard. He's too fat and old for her. Marie is only in it for the money. So when she finds out about the hit man, she decides to get in touch with Lee herself. After all, if he's been paid to shoot Howard's wife, perhaps he can be persuaded to get rid of Howard as well...

A disgraced LA music star faces execution for a crime he didn''t commit in the long-lost crime novel of Robert Silverberg, SFF Writers of America Grand Master, available for the first time in over 60 years.HAD L.A.’S HOTTEST BANDLEADERBECOME AN INSTRUMENT OF DEATH? Before his extraordinary career as a grandmaster of science fiction, Robert Silverberg honed his craft as a writer for a variety of pulp magazines, including crime digests with titles like Trapped and Guilty Detective Story Magazine. He also wrote this long-lost novel, which appeared under the pen name “Stan Vincent” in 1960 – and has never been published since.  Meet Bob McKay: once a rising star in the toniest nightclubs of Los Angeles, now a down-and-out denizen of tawdry bars where B-girls hustle drinks and brawls break out nightly. When one hustler winds up strangled, McKay lands on Death Row. Can a starlet and a sympathetic newspaper columnist clear his name before his date with the death chamber?  Featuring a new introduction by the author and three bonus stories from Guilty and Trapped, THE HOT BEAT offers readers a trip through time back to the pulp era, when a future star was making his bones with stories of murder, betrayal, and dangerous desires…