Robert Silverberg’s Reflections: July 2014
‘Where Silverberg goes today, the rest of science fiction will follow tomorrow’
Reflections is a regular column by multi-award-winning SFWA Grandmaster Robert Silverberg, in which he will offer his thoughts on science fiction, literature and the world at large.
This month: Longevity
I’ve known most, practically all, of the leading science fiction writers of the past sixty years. I never met L. Ron Hubbard, I never knew Chad Oliver or Walter Miller or Fletcher Pratt, Henry Kuttner died before I ever had a chance to meet him, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft were before my time, and Paul Linebarger (“Cordwainer Smith”) was too reclusive, but that’s just about the whole list of those I never encountered.
I began attending science fiction conventions in 1950, when I was barely into my teens and practically the entire first generation of American science fiction writers was still alive, and so I had the opportunity of meeting such pioneering figures as Ray Cummings, Will F. Jenkins, E.E. Smith, Frank K. Kelly, Raymond Z. Gallun, Ross Rocklynne, Frank Belknap Long, and Edmond Hamilton. In later years I met – and in many cases became close friends with – nearly all the great figures who dominated science fiction in the 1940s and 1950s, Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov and James Blish and Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick and Theodore Sturgeon and so on and so on, along with some, like Daniel Galouye and Mack Reynolds and Alan E. Nourse, whose moment of fame came and went long ago . . .
You can read the rest of the column here, and find Robert Silverberg’s eBooks here. Please note: each column will remain on the site for one month only.
