SF Luminaries: Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg (2005)

My PhD supervisor at the University of Edinburgh, Colin Manlove, a noted authority on Fantasy and SF, once told me that Robert Silverberg was his favourite writer in the genre, referring to him as 'the perfect Science Fiction machine.'

Robert Silverberg: Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)

Of course, that was back in the 1980s, shortly after Silverberg had staged a spectacular come-back, after a five year hiatus from fiction-writing, with Lord Valentine's Castle. But it was probably not such later works as the Majipoor series Colin had in mind so much as Silverberg's immense output as a Jack-of-all-trades pulp writer from the mid-1950s to roughly the mid-1970s.

The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: Pluto in the Morning Light (1: 1992)

The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg: The Secret Sharer (2: 1993)

The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg (3-6: 1994-2000)

Recently I've been rereading all six volumes of The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg issued by the HarperCollins UK imprint Voyager between 1992 and 2000. There's a couple of thousand pages of material in there, 106 stories in all - to which should be added another 16 collected in its immediate predecessor, The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984). It ranges from a selection of his earliest magazine publications in the early 50s to his later work from the 80s and 90s.

Robert Silverberg: Collected Stories (9 vols: 2006-14)

Characteristically, though, Silverberg ultimately repudiated this series - which does, admittedly, range somewhat arbitrarily over time and space - in favour of an even more comprehensive assemblage, the 9-volume Collected Stories pictured above (you'll find further details in my somewhat SF-weighted attempt at a Silverberg bibliography below).

Robert Silverberg: In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (2006)

Even this 9-volume, 151-story version (supplemented by another couple of volumes - 33 stories - of "Tales from the Pulp Era") is a mere selection from his actual production over this period, though.

Robert Silverberg: Early Days: More Tales from the Pulp Era (2016)

So is "Robert Silverberg" just another version of Kurt Vonnegut's imaginary Kilgore Trout, a pulp-sci-fi-churning prodigy renowned for the quantity rather than the quality of his output? Readers who confined themselves solely to his early work might be forgiven for thinking so.

Reddit: Kilgore Trout Memorial (1907-1981)

I think what interested Colin Manlove most, though, were the insistent themes and motifs which recur throughout Silverberg's work, but particularly after the late 1960s: themes comparatively unusual for SF at the time, such as:

1. the strong desire of so many of his protagonists to be subsumed in some sort of a cosmic all;
2. a fascination with doubles and alternate selves;
3. & a far greater preoccupation with sex (and gender politics generally) than previous SF writers had been allowed - or had allowed themselves - to explore.

One could easily protract the list, but each of the three above could easily generate enough material for a critical monograph or (shudder) a Doctoral thesis ...

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Robert Silverberg: Gilgamesh the King (1984)

There is, however, another side to Robert Silverberg. From the early 1960s until roughly the mid-1970s he wrote an immense amount of non-fictional prose, focussing - for the most part - on subjects from archaeology and ancient history.

Many of these works remain worthwhile in themselves, but they also had the added advantage of opening up a new set of settings and ideas for his fictional work. His biographical novel Gilgamesh the King, for example, led directly to the afterlife story "Gilgamesh in the Outback", eventually collected in the novel-in-linked stories To the Land of the living (1990).

Roma Eterna, Sailing to Byzantium, Thebes of the Thousand Gates, and a number of his other novels and novellas are set either in ancient, or recreated alternative worlds of antiquity. His best-known and most popular series, the Majipoor books, are also heavily influenced by this atmosphere of antique immensity and imperial intrigue.

Robert Silverberg: Great Adventures in Archaeology (1964)

How, then, can we even start to sum up this most protean and prolific of SF writers? It's perhaps not so much that the sheer extent of his work defies categorisation and definition, as that that may not the most interesting way to read it.

These endless tallies of words published in a given year, fees earned from short-lived pulp magazines, emphases on his immense profligacy of invention are very much Silverberg's way of talking about himself.

It's better, then, to focus on the details: particular stories, particular visions - to give up trying to see him as a whole, but instead as a series of fractured parts. He is, after all, no Philip K. Dick. Unlike Dick, it's not in his overall themes he prevails but in the individual facets of his Balzacian overview of the human condition: past, present, and to come.

To start off with, you might try a couple of his later novels, the ones he published alongside the ongoing Majipoor Series about Lord Valentine and his successors (and predecessors). The Face of the Waters (1991) and Kingdoms of the Wall (1992) are two of my favourites: fascinating pieces of pure SF. However, if eco-fiction is more your thing, his 1994 novel Hot Sky at Midnight may seem startlingly prescient of our everyday climate woes right now.

One or other of his various assemblages of short stories is also a must-read. Only there can you get some sense of the prodigious energy and technical mastery which made him a legend among his peers - and, now, his successors.

Robert Silverberg (1971)

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Internet Fiction Spéculative Base de Données: Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg
(1935- )

Books I own are marked in bold:

Novels:


1. Revolt on Alpha C (1955)
2. The 13th Immortal (1956)
3. Master of Life and Death (1957)
4. [with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall] The Shrouded Planet (1957)
5. Invaders from Earth (1958)
6. [as Calvin M. Knox] Lest We Forget Thee, Earth (1958)
7. Stepsons of Terra (1958)
   • Stepsons of Terra. 1958. An Ace Science Fiction Book. New York: Ace Books, Inc., 1983.
8. [as David Osborne] Aliens from Space (1958)
9. [as David Osborne] Invisible Barriers (1958)
10. [as Ivar Jorgenson] Starhaven (1958)
11. Starman's Quest (1958)
12. [as Calvin M. Knox] The Plot Against Earth (1959)
13. [with Randall Garrett, as Robert Randall] The Dawning Light (1959)
14. The Planet Killers (1959)
15. Lost Race of Mars (1960)
16. Collision Course (1961)
17. The Seed of Earth (1962)
18. Recalled to Life (1962) [Rev. ed. 1972]
19. Blood on the Mink [aka 'Too Much Blood on the Mink'] (1962)
20. The Silent Invaders (1963)
21. Time of the Great Freeze (1964)
22. Regan's Planet (1964)
23. [as Calvin M. Knox] One of Our Asteroids is Missing (1964)
24. Conquerors from the Darkness (1965)
25. The Gate of Worlds (1967)
26. Planet of Death (1967)
27. Thorns (1967)
    • Thorns. 1967. An Orbit Book. London: Futura Publications, 1987.
28. Those Who Watch (1967)
29. The Time Hoppers (1967)
30. To Open the Sky (1967)
    • To Open the Sky. 1967. Sphere Science Fiction. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1977.
31. The Man in the Maze (1968)
    • The Man in the Maze. 1968. A Tandem Book. London: Tandem Publishing Ltd., 1977.
32. Hawksbill Station (1968) [Best]
    • Hawksbill Station. 1968. A Star Book. London: W. H. Allen & Co., Ltd., 1982.
33. The Masks of Time (1968)
34. Nightwings (1969) [Best]
    • Nightwings. 1969. Sphere Science Fiction. London: Sphere Books Ltd., 1974.
35. Across a Billion Years (1969)
36. Three Survived (1969)
37. To Live Again (1969)
    • To Live Again. 1969. Fontana Science Fiction. London: Fontana/Collins, 1977.
38. Up the Line (1969)
39. Downward to the Earth (1970)
    • Downward to the Earth. 1970. Pan Science Fiction. London: Pan Books, 1978.
40. Tower of Glass (1970)
    • Tower of Glass. 1970. Panther Science Fiction. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1976.
41. World's Fair 1992 (1970)
42. Son of Man (1971)
    • Son of Man. 1971. Panther Science Fiction. Frogmore, St Albans, Herts: Granada Publishing Limited, 1979.
43. The Second Trip (1971)
44. The World Inside (1971)
45. A Time of Changes (1971)
    • A Time of Changes. 1971. Gollancz Classic SF, 3. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1986.
46. The Book of Skulls (1971)
    • The Book of Skulls. 1972. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton Paperbacks, 1981.
47. Dying Inside (1972)
    • Dying Inside. 1972. VGSF Classics, 31. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1989.
48. The Stochastic Man (1975)
49. Shadrach in the Furnace (1976)
50. Homefaring (1982) [1: Pluto]
51. Lord of Darkness (1983)
52. Gilgamesh the King (1984)
    • Gilgamesh the King. New York: Arbor House, 1984.
53. Sailing to Byzantium (1985) [1: Pluto]
54. Tom O'Bedlam (1985)
    • Tom O'Bedlam. 1985. An Orbit Book. London: Futura Publications, 1987.
55. Star of Gypsies (1986)
    • Star of Gypsies. 1986. An Orbit Book. London: Futura Publications, 1988.
56. At Winter's End (1988)
    • At Winter's End. 1988. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books limited, 1990.
57. Project Pendulum (1989)
58. Letters From Atlantis (1990)
59. The New Springtime [aka 'The Queen of Springtime'] (1990)
    • The Queen of Springtime. 1989. A Legend Book. London: Arrow Books limited, 1991.
60. To the Land of the Living (1990) [Living]
    • To the Land of the Living. 1990. VGSF. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1990.
61. [with Isaac Asimov, based on his 1941 story] Nightfall (1990)
62. Thebes of the Hundred Gates (1991) [Thebes]
    • Thebes of the Hundred Gates. 1991. HarperCollins Science Fiction and Fantasy. London: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 1994.
63. The Face of the Waters (1991)
    • The Face of the Waters. 1991. A Bantam Spectra Book. New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
64. [with Isaac Asimov, based on his story 'Lastborn' (1958)] Child of Time [aka 'The Ugly Little Boy'] (1991)
65. Kingdoms of the Wall (1992)
    • Kingdoms of the Wall. 1992. Grafton. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
66. [with Isaac Asimov, based on his story 'The Bicentennial Man' (1976)] The Positronic Man (1992)
67. Hot Sky at Midnight (1994)
    • Hot Sky at Midnight. 1994. A Bantam Spectra Book. New York: Bantam Books, 1995.
68. Starborne (1996)
    • Starborne. 1996. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
69. The Alien Years (1998)
70. The Longest Way Home (2002)
    • The Longest Way Home. Gollancz. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2002.
71. Roma Eterna (2003)
    1. Prologue (AD 450)
    2. With Caesar in the Underworld (529)
    3. A Hero of the Empire (612)
    4. The Second Wave (1108)
    5. Waiting for the End (1198)
    6. An Outpost of the Realm (1453)
    7. Getting to know the Dragon (1790)
    8. The Reign of Terror (1815)
    9. Via Roma (1850)
    10. Tales from the Venia Woods (1897)
    11. To the Promised Land (1970)
    • Roma Eterna. Gollancz. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2003.
72. The Last Song of Orpheus (2010)

Majipoor:


73. Lord Valentine's Castle (1980)
    • Lord Valentine's Castle. 1980. London: Pan Books, 1981.
74. Majipoor Chronicles (1982) [Majipoor]
    Prologue
    1. Thesme and the Ghayrog (1982)
    2. The Time of the Burning (1982)
    3. In the Fifth Year of the Voyage (1981)
    4. Calintane Explains (1982)
    5. The Desert of Stolen Dreams (1981)
    6. The Soul-Painter and the Shapeshifter (1981)
    7. Crime and Punishment (1982)
    8. Among the Dream Speakers (1982)
    9. A Thief in Ni-moya (1981)
    10. Voriax and Valentine (1982)
    Epilogue
    • Majipoor Chronicles. 1982. London: Pan Books, 1983.
75. Valentine Pontifex (1983)
    • Valentine Pontifex. 1983. London: Pan Books, 1985.
76. The Mountains of Majipoor (1995)
    • The Mountains of Majipoor. London: Pan Books, 1995.
77. Sorcerers of Majipoor (1997)
    • Sorcerers of Majipoor. London: Pan Books, 1997.
78. Lord Prestimion (1999)
    • Lord Prestimion. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1999.
79. King of Dreams (2001)
    • The King of Dreams. 2001. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.
80. Tales of Majipoor (2013)
    1. The End of the Line (2011)
    2. The Book of Changes (2003)
    3. The Tomb of the Pontifex Dvorn (2011)
    4. The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2004)
    5. Dark Times at the Midnight Market (2010)
    6. The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar (2009)
    7. The Seventh Shrine (1998)
    • Tales of Majipoor. Gollancz. London: Orion Publishing Group, 2013.

Short Stories:


81. Next Stop, the Stars (1962)
82. Godling, Go Home (1964)
83. Needle in a Timestack (1966)
84. The Calibrated Alligator (1969)
85. Dimension Thirteen (1969)
86. The Cube Root of Uncertainty (1970)
87. Parsecs and Parables (1973)
88. Moonferns & Starsongs (1971)
89. The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (1972)
90. Valley Beyond Time (1973)
91. Earth's Other Shadow (1973)
92. Unfamiliar Territory (1973) [Unfamiliar]
    1. Caught in the Organ Draft (1972)
    2. {Now + n, Now - n} (1972)
    3. Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch (1973)
    4. In the Group (1973)
    5. Caliban (1972)
    6. Many Mansions (1973)
    7. Good News from the Vatican (1971)
    8. Push No More (1972)
    9. The Mutant Season (1973)
    10. When We Went to See the End of the World (1972)
    11. What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper (1972)
    12. In Entropy's Jaws (1971)
    13. The Wind and the Rain (1973)
    • Unfamiliar Territory. 1973. Coronet Books. London: Hodder & Stoughton Paperbacks, 1981.
93. The Feast of St. Dionysus: Five Science Fiction Stories (1975)
94. Sunrise on Mercury (1975)
95. Capricorn Games (1976)
96. The Best of Robert Silverberg (1976) [Best]
    Barry N. Malzberg: Thinking About Silverberg (1976)
    Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1976)
    1. Road to Nightfall (1958)
    2. Warm Man (1957)
    3. To See the Invisible Man (1963)
    4. The Sixth Palace (1965)
    5. Flies (1967)
    6. Hawksbill Station (1967)
    7. Passengers (1968)
    8. Nightwings (1968)
    9. Sundance (1969)
    10. Good News from the Vatican (1971)
    • The Best of Robert Silverberg. 1976. An Orbit Book. London: Futura Publications, 1978.
97. The Shores of Tomorrow (1976)
98. World of a Thousand Colors (1982)
99. The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1984) [Conglomeroid]
    Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1984)
    1. The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve (1982)
    2. The Pope of the Chimps (1982)
    3. The Changeling (1982)
    4. The Man Who Floated in Time (1982)
    5. The Palace at Midnight (1981)
    6. A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa (1981)
    7. At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1982)
    8. Our Lady of the Sauropods (1980)
    9. Gianni (1982)
    10. The Trouble with Sempoanga (1982)
    11. How They Pass the Time in Pelpel (1981)
    12. Waiting for the Earthquake (1981)
    13. Not Our Brother (1982)
    14. The Regulars (1981)
    15. Jennifer's Lover (1982)
    16. Needle in a Timestack (1983)
    • The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party. 1984. VGSF. London: Victor Gollancz Ltd., 1989.
100. Beyond the Safe Zone (1986)
101. The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. 6 vols (1992-2000):
     1. Pluto in the Morning Light (1992) [1: Pluto]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1992)
        1. Homefaring (1983)
        2. Basileus (1983)
        3. Dancers in the Time-Flux (1983)
        4. Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory (1984)
        5. Amanda and the Alien (1983)
        6. Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake [aka 'The Affair'] (1984)
        7. Tourist Trade (1984)
        8. Multiples (1983)
        9. Against Babylon (1986)
        10. Symbiont (1985)
        11. Sailing to Byzantium (1985)
        12. Sunrise on Pluto (1985)
        13. Hardware (1987)
        14. Hannibal's Elephants (1988)
        15. Blindsight (1986)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 1: Pluto in the Morning Light. Grafton. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1992.
     2. The Secret Sharer (1993) [2: Secret]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1993)
        1. The Pardoner's Tale (1987)
        2. The Iron Star (1987)
        3. The Secret Sharer (1987)
        4. House of Bones (1988)
        5. The Dead Man's Eyes (1988)
        6. Chip Runner (1989)
        7. To the Promised Land (1989)
        8. The Asenion Solution (1989)
        9. A Sleep and a Forgetting (1989)
        10. Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another (1989)
        11. We Are for the Dark (1988)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 2: The Secret Sharer. Grafton. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
     3. Beyond the Safe Zone (1994) [3: Beyond]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1994)
        1. Capricorn Games (1974)
        2. The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV (1974)
        3. Trips (1974)
        4. Schwartz Between the Galaxies (1974)
        5. Many Mansions (1973)
        6. Good News from the Vatican (1971)
        7. In the Group (1973)
        8. The Feast of St. Dionysus (1973)
        9. Caught in the Organ Draft (1972)
        10. {Now + n, Now - n} (1972)
        11. Caliban (1972)
        12. Getting Across (1973)
        13. Breckenridge and the Continuum (1973)
        14. In the House of Double Minds (1974)
        15. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1973)
        16. The Wind and the Rain (1973)
        17. A Sea of Faces (1974)
        18. What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper (1972)
        19. Ship-Sister, Star-Sister (1973)
        20. When We Went to See the End of the World (1972)
        21. Push No More (1972)
        22. Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch (1973)
        23. In Entropy's Jaws (1971)
        24. Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine (1973)
        25. The Mutant Season (1973)
        26. This Is the Road (1973)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 3: Beyond the Safe Zone. Science Fiction & Fantasy. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1994.
     4. The Road to Nightfall (1996) [4: Nightfall]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1996)
        1. Road to Nightfall (1958)
        2. Gorgon Planet (1954)
        3. The Silent Colony (1954)
        4. Absolutely Inflexible (1956)
        5. The Macauley Circuit (1956)
        6. The Songs of Summer (1956)
        7. Alaree (1958)
        8. The Artifact Business (1957)
        9. Collecting Team (1956)
        10. A Man of Talent (1966)
        11. One-Way Journey (1957)
        12. Sunrise on Mercury (1957)
        13. World of a Thousand Colours (1957)
        14. Warm Man (1957)
        15. Blaze of Glory (1957)
        16. Why? (1957)
        17. The Outbreeders (1959)
        18. The Man Who Never Forgot (1958)
        19. There Was an Old Woman (1958)
        20. The Iron Chancellor (1958)
        21. Ozymandias (1958)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 4: The Road to Nightfall. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1996.
     5. Ringing the Changes (1997) [5: Ringing]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (1997)
        1. To See the Invisible Man (1963)
        2. The Pain Peddlers (1963)
        3. Neighbor (1964)
        4. The Sixth Palace (1965)
        5. Flies (1967)
        6. Halfway House (1966)
        7. To the Dark Star (1968)
        8. Passengers (1968)
        9. Bride 91 [aka 'Bride Ninety-One'] (1967)
        10. Going Down Smooth (1968)
        11. Fangs of the Trees (1968)
        12. Ishmael in Love (1970)
        13. Ringing the Changes (1970)
        14. Sundance (1969)
        15. How It Was When the Past Went Away (1969)
        16. After the Myths Went Home (1969)
        17. The Pleasure of Their Company (1970)
        18. We Know Who We Are (1970)
        19. Something Wild Is Loose (1971)
        20. The Reality Trip (1970)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 5: Ringing the Changes. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1997.
     6. Lion Time in Timbuctoo (2000) [6: Lion]
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2000)
        1. Lion Time in Timbuctoo (1990)
        2. A Tip on a Turtle (1991)
        3. In the Clone Zone (1991)
        4. Hunters in the Forest (1991)
        5. A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple (1992)
        6. It Comes and Goes (1992)
        7. Looking for the Fountain (1992)
        8. The Way to Spook City (1992)
        9. The Red Blaze Is the Morning (1995)
        10. Death Do Us Part (1996)
        11. The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James (1996)
        12. Crossing Into the Empire (1996)
        13. The Second Shield (1995)
        • The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg. Volume 6: Lion Time in Timbuctoo. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
102. Phases of the Moon (2004)
103. Tales from the Pulp Era. 2 vols (2006-2016):
     1. In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (2006)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2006)
        1. Yokel with Portfolio (1955)
        2. Long Live the Kejwa (1956)
        3. Guardian of the Crystal Gate (1956)
        4. Choke Chain (1956)
        5. Citadel of Darkness (1957)
        6. Cosmic Kill (1957)
        7. New Year's Eve — 2000 A.D.? (1957)
        8. The Android Kill (1957)
        9. The Hunters of Cutwold (1957)
        10. Come Into My Brain! (1958)
        11. Castaways of Space (1958)
        12. Exiled From Earth (1958)
        13. Second Start (1959)
        14. Mournful Monster (1959)
        15. Vampires from Outer Space (1959)
        16. The Insidious Invaders (1959)
     2. Early Days: More Tales from the Pulp Era (2016)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2016)
        1. The Inquisitor (1956)
        2. The Ultimate Weapon (1957)
        3. Harwood's Vortex (1957)
        4. Quick Freeze (1957)
        5. Six Frightened Men (1957)
        6. Puppets Without Strings [aka 'Call Me Zombie!'] (1957)
        7. A Time for Revenge (1957)
        8. Housemaid No. 103 (1957)
        9. Rescue Mission (1957)
        10. Planet of Parasites (1958)
        11. Slaves of the Tree (1958)
        12. Frontier Planet (1958)
        13. The Aliens Were Haters (1958)
        14. The Traders [aka 'The Unique and Terrible Compulsion'] (1958)
        15. Waters of Forgetfulness (1959)
        16. You Do Something to Me (1959)
        17. There's No Place Like Space! (1959)
104. The Collected Stories. 9 vols (2006-2014):
     1. To Be Continued: 1954-59. The Collected Stories, 1 (2006)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2006)
        1. Gorgon Planet (1954) [4: Nightfall]
        2. The Road to Nightfall (1958) [Best] [4: Nightfall]
        3. The Silent Colony (1954) [4: Nightfall]
        4. Absolutely Inflexible (1956) [4: Nightfall]
        5. The Macauley Circuit (1956) [4: Nightfall]
        6. The Songs of Summer (1956) [4: Nightfall]
        7. To Be Continued (1956)
        8. Alaree (1958) [4: Nightfall]
        9. The Artifact Business (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        10. Collecting Team (1956) [4: Nightfall]
        11. A Man of Talent (1956/66) [4: Nightfall]
        12. One-Way Journey (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        13. Sunrise on Mercury (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        14. World of a Thousand Colors (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        15. Warm Man (1957) [Best] [4: Nightfall]
        16. Blaze of Glory (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        17. Why? (1957) [4: Nightfall]
        18. The Outbreeders (1959) [4: Nightfall]
        19. The Man Who Never Forgot (1958) [4: Nightfall]
        20. There Was an Old Woman (1958) [4: Nightfall]
        21. The Iron Chancellor (1958) [4: Nightfall]
        22. Ozymandias (1958) [4: Nightfall]
        23. Counterpart (1959)
        24. Delivery Guaranteed (1959)
     2. To the Dark Star: 1962-69. The Collected Stories, 2 (2007)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2007)
        1. To See the Invisible Man (1963) [Best] [5: Ringing]
        2. The Pain Peddlers (1963) [5: Ringing]
        3. Neighbor (1964) [5: Ringing]
        4. The Sixth Palace (1965) [Best] [5: Ringing]
        5. Flies (1967) [Best] [5: Ringing]
        6. Halfway House (1966) [5: Ringing]
        7. To the Dark Star (1968) [5: Ringing]
        8. Hawksbill Station (1967) [Best]
        9. Passengers (1968) [Best] [5: Ringing]
        10. Bride 91 (1967) [5: Ringing]
        11. Going Down Smooth (1968) [5: Ringing]
        12. The Fangs of the Trees (1968) [5: Ringing]
        13. Ishmael in Love (1970) [5: Ringing]
        14. Ringing the Changes (1970) [5: Ringing]
        15. Sundance (1969) [Best] [5: Ringing]
        16. How It Was When the Past Went Away (1969) [5: Ringing]
        17. A Happy Day in 2381 (1970)
        18. (Now + n, Now - n) (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        19. After the Myths Went Home (1969) [5: Ringing]
        20. The Pleasure of Their Company (1970) [5: Ringing]
        21. We Know Who We Are (1970) [5: Ringing]
     3. Something Wild Is Loose: 1969-72. The Collected Stories, 3 (2008)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2008)
        1. Something Wild Is Loose (1971) [5: Ringing]
        2. In Entropy's Jaws (1971) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        3. The Reality Trip (1970) [5: Ringing]
        4. Going (1971)
        5. Caliban (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        6. Good News from the Vatican (1971) [Unfamiliar] [Best] [3: Beyond]
        7. Thomas the Proclaimer (1972)
        8. When We Went to See the End of the World (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        9. Push No More (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        10. The Wind and the Rain (1973) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        11. Some Notes on the Pre-Dynastic Epoch (1973) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        12. The Feast of St. Dionysus (1973) [3: Beyond]
        13. What We Learned from This Morning's Newspaper (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        14. The Mutant Season (1973) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        15. Caught in the Organ Draft (1972) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        16. Many Mansions (1973) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
     4. Trips: 1972-73. The Collected Stories, 4 (2009)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2009)
        1. In the Group (1973) [Unfamiliar] [3: Beyond]
        2. Getting Across (1973) [3: Beyond]
        3. Ms. Found in an Abandoned Time Machine (1973) [3: Beyond]
        4. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (1973) [3: Beyond]
        5. A Sea of Faces (1974) [3: Beyond]
        6. The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV (1974) [3: Beyond]
        7. Breckenridge and the Continuum (1973) [3: Beyond]
        8. Capricorn Games (1974) [3: Beyond]
        9. Ship-Sister, Star-Sister (1973) [3: Beyond]
        10. This Is the Road (1973) [3: Beyond]
        11. Trips (1974) [3: Beyond]
        12. Born with the Dead (1974)
        13. Schwartz Between the Galaxies (1974) [3: Beyond]
        14. In the House of Double Minds (1974) [3: Beyond]
     5. The Palace at Midnight: 1980-82. The Collected Stories, 5 (2010)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2010)
        1. Our Lady of the Sauropods (1980) [Conglomeroid]
        2. Waiting for the Earthquake (1981) [Conglomeroid]
        3. The Regulars (1981) [Conglomeroid]
        4. The Far Side of the Bell-Shaped Curve (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        5. A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa (1981) [Conglomeroid]
        6. How They Pass the Time in Pelpel (1981) [Conglomeroid]
        7. The Palace at Midnight (1981) [Conglomeroid]
        8. The Man Who Floated in Time (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        9. Gianni (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        10. The Pope of the Chimps (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        11. Thesme and the Ghayrog (1982) [Majipoor]
        12. At the Conglomeroid Cocktail Party (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        13. The Trouble with Sempoanga (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        14. Jennifer's Lover (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        15. Not Our Brother (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        16. Gate of Horn, Gate of Ivory (1984) [1: Pluto]
        17. Dancers in the Time-Flux (1983) [1: Pluto]
        18. Needle in a Timestack (1983) [Conglomeroid]
        19. Amanda and the Alien (1983) [1: Pluto]
        20. Snake and Ocean, Ocean and Snake (1984) [1: Pluto]
        21. The Changeling (1982) [Conglomeroid]
        22. Basileus (1983) [1: Pluto]
        23. Homefaring (1983) [1: Pluto]
     6. Multiples: 1983-87. The Collected Stories, 6 (2011)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2011)
        1. Tourist Trade (1984) [1: Pluto]
        2. Multiples (1983) [1: Pluto]
        3. Against Babylon (1986) [1: Pluto]
        4. Symbiont (1985) [1: Pluto]
        5. Sailing to Byzantium (1985) [1: Pluto]
        6. Sunrise on Pluto (1985) [1: Pluto]
        7. Hardware (1987) [1: Pluto]
        8. Hannibal's Elephants (1988) [1: Pluto]
        9. Blindsight (1986) [1: Pluto]
        10. Gilgamesh in the Outback (1986) [Living]
        11. The Pardoner's Tale (1987) [2: Secret]
        12. The Iron Star (1987) [2: Secret]
        13. The Secret Sharer (1987) [2: Secret]
        14. House of Bones (1988) [2: Secret]
     7. We Are for the Dark: 1987-90. The Collected Stories, 7 (2012)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2012)
        1. The Dead Man's Eyes (1988) [2: Secret]
        2. Enter a Soldier. Later: Enter Another (1989) [2: Secret]
        3. To the Promised Land (1989) [2: Secret]
        4. Chip Runner (1989) [2: Secret]
        5. A Sleep and a Forgetting (1989) [2: Secret]
        6. In Another Country (1989)
        7. The Asenion Solution (1989) [2: Secret]
        8. We Are for the Dark (1988) [2: Secret]
        9. Lion Time in Timbuctoo (1990) [6: Lion]
        10. A Tip on a Turtle (1991) [6: Lion]
     8. Hot Times in Magma City: 1990-95. The Collected Stories, 8 (2013)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2013)
        1. In the Clone Zone (1991) [6: Lion]
        2. Hunters in the Forest (1991) [6: Lion]
        3. A Long Night's Vigil at the Temple (1992) [6: Lion]
        4. Thebes of the Hundred Gates (1992) [Thebes]
        5. It Comes and Goes (1992) [6: Lion]
        6. Looking for the Fountain (1992) [6: Lion]
        7. The Way to Spook City (1992) [6: Lion]
        8. The Red Blaze Is the Morning (1995) [6: Lion]
        9. Death Do Us Part (1996) [6: Lion]
        10. The Martian Invasion Journals of Henry James (1996) [6: Lion]
        11. Crossing Into the Empire (1996) [6: Lion]
        12. The Second Shield (1995) [6: Lion]
        13. Hot Times in Magma City (1995)
     9. The Millennium Express: 1995-2009. The Collected Stories, 9 (2014)
        Robert Silverberg: Introduction (2014)
        1. Diana of the Hundred Breasts (1996)
        2. Beauty in the Night (1997)
        3. Call Me Titan (1997)
        4. The Tree That Grew from the Sky (1996)
        5. The Church at Monte Saturno (1997)
        6. Hanosz Prime Goes to Old Earth (2006)
        7. The Millennium Express (2000)
        8. Travelers (1999)
        9. The Colonel Returns to the Stars (2004)
        10. The Eater of Dreams (2007)
        11. A Piece of the Great World (2005)
        12. Against the Current (2007)
        13. The True Vintage of Erzuine Thale (2009)
        14. Defenders of the Frontier (2010)
        15. The Prisoner (2010)
        16. Smithers and the Ghosts of the Thar (2011)
        • The Millennium Express: 1995-2009. The Collected Stories, 9. 2014. Burton, MI: Subterranean Press, 2015.
     10. [with Randall Garrett] A Little Intelligence (2009)

Non-fiction:


105. Treasures Beneath the Sea. Illustrated by Norman Kenyon (1960)
106. [as Edgar Black] Sir Winston Churchill: The Compelling Life Story of one of the Towering Figures of the 20th Century (1961)
107. First American into Space (1961)
108. Lost Cities and Vanished Civilizations (1962)
109. [as Walter Drummond] Philosopher of Evil (1962)
110. The Fabulous Rockefellers (1963)
111. Sunken History: The Story of Underwater Archaeology (1963)
112. [as Walter Drummond] How to Spend Money (1963)
113. Fifteen Battles that Changed the World (1963)
114. Empires in the Dust: Ancient Civilizations Brought to Light (1963)
115. Home of the Red Man: Indian North America before Columbus (1963)
116. [as L. T. Woodward] The History of Surgery (1963)
117. The Great Doctors (1964)
118. Man Before Adam: The Story of Man in Search of His Origins (1964)
119. Akhnaten: The Rebel Pharaoh (1964)
120. [as Franklin Hamilton] 1066 (1964)
121. [as Walker Chapman] The Loneliest Continent: The Story of Antarctic Discovery (1964)
122. The Man Who Found Nineveh: The Story of Austen Henry Layard (1964)
123. Great Adventures in Archaeology: From Belzoni to Woolley. 1964. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.
124. Socrates (1965)
125. Scientists And Scoundrels: A Book of Hoaxes (1965)
126. Men Who Mastered the Atom (1965)
127. Niels Bohr: The Man Who Mapped the Atom (1965)
128. The Old Ones: Indians of the American Southwest (1965)
129. The Great Wall of China (1965)
130. The World of Coral (1965)
131. [as Franklin Hamilton] The Crusades (1965, )
132. [as Walker Chapman] Antarctic Conquest: The Great Explorers in Their Own Words (1966)
133. The Long Rampart: The Story of the Great Wall of China (1966)
134. [as Lee Sebastian] Rivers: A Book to Begin On (1966)
135. Forgotten by Time: A Book of Living Fossils (1966)
136. Frontiers in Archeology (1966)
137. [as Walker Chapman] Kublai Khan: Lord of Xanadu (1966)
138. [as Roy Cook] Leaders Of Labor (1966)
139. Bridges (1966)
140. To the Rock of Darius: The Story of Henry Rawlinson (1966)
141. [as Lloyd Robinson] The Hopefuls: Ten Presidential Campaigns (1966)
142. The Morning of Mankind: Prehistoric Man in Europe (1967)
143. [as Walker Chapman] The Golden Dream: Seekers of El Dorado (1967)
144. The Auk, the Dodo and the Oryx (1967)
145. The World of the Rain Forests (1967)
146. The Dawn of Medicine (1967)
147. The Adventures of Nat Palmer (1967)
148. [as Franklin Hamilton] Challenge for a Throne: The Wars of the Roses (1967)
149. Men Against Time: Salvage Archeology in the United States (1967)
150. Light for the World: Edison and the Power Industry (1967)
151. [as Walker Chapman] The Search for Eldorado (1967)
152. [as L. T. Woodward] Sophisticated Sex Techniques in Marriage (1967)
153. Mound Builders of Ancient America: The Archeology of a Myth (1968)
154. The World of the Ocean Depths (1968)
155. [as Lloyd Robinson] The Stolen Election: Hayes vs. Tilden, 1876 (1968)
156. Four Men Who Changed the Universe (1968)
157. [as Paul Hollander] Sam Houston (1968)
158. [as Lee Sebastian] The South Pole: A Book to Begin On (1968)
159. Stormy Voyager (1968)
160. Ghost Towns of the American West (1968)
161. Vanishing Giants: The Story of the Sequoias (1969)
162. Wonders of Ancient Chinese Science (1969)
163. The Challenge of Climate: Man and His Environment (1969)
164. Bruce of the Blue Nile (1969)
165. The World of Space (1969)
166. If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem (1970)
167. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World (1970)
168. Mammoths, Mastodons and Man (1970)
169. The Mound Builders (1970)
170. The Pueblo Revolt (1970)
171. Clocks for the Ages: How Scientists Date the Past (1971)
172. To The Western Shore: Growth of the United States 1776-1853 (1971)
173. Before The Sphinx: Early Egypt (1971)
174. [with Arthur C. Clarke] Into Space: A Young Person's Guide to Space (1971)
175. The Realm of Prester John (1972)
176. The Longest Voyage: Circumnavigation in the Age Of Discovery (1972)
177. John Muir, Prophet Among the Glaciers (1972)
178. The World Within the Ocean Wave (1972)
179. The World Within the Tide Pool (1972)
180. Drug Themes in Science Fiction (1974)
181. Reflections and Refractions: Thoughts on Science Fiction, Science and Other Matters (1997) [Rev. ed. 2016]
182. Musings and Meditations (2011)

Edited:


183. Earthmen & Strangers (1966)
184. Voyagers in Time (1967)
185. Alpha
     1. Alpha 1 (1970)
     2. Alpha 2 (1971)
     3. Alpha 3 (1972)
     4. Alpha 4 (1973)
     5. Alpha 5 (1974)
     6. Alpha 6 (1976)
     7. Alpha 7 (1977)
     8. Alpha 8 (1977)
     9. Alpha 9 (1978)
186. The Science Fiction Hall of Fame
     1. Volume One, 1929–1964 (1970)
     2. Volume Two (1973)
187. [with Roger Zelazny & James Blish] Three For Tomorrow. Foreword by Arthur C. Clarke (1970)
188. New Dimensions
     1. New Dimensions 1 (1971)
     2. New Dimensions II (1972)
     3. New Dimensions 3 (1973)
     4. New Dimensions IV (1974)
     5. New Dimensions Science Fiction 5 (1975)
     6. New Dimensions Science Fiction 6 (1976)
     7. New Dimensions Science Fiction 7 (1977)
     8. New Dimensions Science Fiction 8 (1978)
     9. New Dimensions Science Fiction 9 (1979)
     10. New Dimensions Science Fiction 10 (1980)
     11. [with Marta Randall] New Dimensions 11 (1980)
     12. [with Marta Randall] New Dimensions 12 (1981)
189. Deep Space: Eight Stories of Science Fiction (1973)
190. Infinite Jests: The Lighter Side of Science Fiction (1974)
191. Mutants (1974)
192. [with Roger Elwood] Epoch (1975)
193. Strange Gifts (1975)
194. [with Martin H. Greenberg & Joseph Olander] Dawn of Time (1979)
195. The Edge of Space (1979)
196. The Best of Randall Garrett (1982)
197. The Fantasy Hall of Fame
     1. [with Martin H. Greenberg] The Fantasy Hall of Fame (1983)
     2. The Fantasy Hall of Fame (1998)
198. Nebula Award anthologies
     1. The Nebula Awards #18 (1983)
     2. Nebula Awards Showcase 2001 (2001)
199. [with Karen Haber] Universe Anthologies
     1. Universe 1 (1990)
     2. Universe 2 (1992)
     3. Universe 3 (1994)
200. Murasaki: A Novel in Six Parts. By Poul Anderson, Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, David Brin, Nancy Kress, & Frederick Pohl. 1992. Grafton. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993.
201. Legends
     1. Legends. Voyager. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
     2. Legends II: New Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy. A Del Rey Book. New York: Ballantine Books, 2004.
202. Far Horizons: All New Tales from the Greatest Worlds of Science Fiction. An Orbit Book. London: Little, Brown & Company (UK), 1999.
203. [with Martin H. Greenberg] Robert Silverberg Presents the Great SF Stories: 1964 (2001)
204. Tales from Super-Science Fiction (2011)
205. Times Three (2011)

•

Robert Silverberg: The Last Song of Orpheus (2010)

•

The Material Interests: Reading Joseph Conrad

Pedro González Bermúdez, dir.: David Lean's Nostromo: The Impossible Dream (2017)

The other night Bronwyn and I watched a documentary on TVNZ-on-Demand about David Lean's abortive attempts to make a feature film of Joseph Conrad's 1904 novel Nostromo. I already knew something about this project, both from Kevin Brownlow's exhaustive biography of the director, and also from the Faber edition of Christopher Hampton's draft filmscript.

Christopher Hampton: The Secret Agent and Nostromo (Faber Filmscripts, 1996)

Don't get me started on Christopher Hampton. I think he's one of the great unsung heroes of our time in both theatre and film. His filmscripts are brilliantly imaginative (Atonement, The Honorary Consul, The Father - those are all his); he won an Oscar for Dangerous Liaisons (a screenplay based on his own successful stage adaptation of Laclos's 1782 novel); and he directed his own screenplay for Carrington, one of my and Bronwyn's all-time favourite movies.

Christopher Hampton, dir. & writ.: Carrington (1995)

Hampton's credentials as an imaginative interpreter of South America are also pretty impressive. He adapted Graham Greene's 1973 novel The Honorary Consul, set in Argentina, for the screen (as I mentioned above), but it's his own play Savages, about the genocide of the Amazonian Indians, which really shows his ability to transport himself imaginatively into that uneasy space where politics meets creativity.

Christopher Hampton: Savages (1974)

In short, what a dream team! David Lean, the 'poet of the far horizon', the epic filmmaker par excellence; the sharpwitted theatrical chameleon Christopher Hampton; and the longest, most complex novel Joseph Conrad - one of the greatest writers of all time - ever wrote. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, lots of things, obviously. I'll leave it to you to watch the whole dreary saga in Pedro González Bermúdez's documentary if such things interest you. Suffice it to say that the irresistible force of money ran into the various immovable egos involved in the project, and the whole thing ended in tears and acrimony. All we're left with is a tantalising might-have-been, like Stanley Kubrick's Napoleon or Orson Welles' Heart of Darkness ...

Joseph Conrad: Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard (1904)

I guess what struck me about the tiny fragments of Nostromo included in the documentary, though, was how little most of the speakers seemed to know about the book. I realise it has a rather fearsome reputation. One of the Academics interviewed remarked with a chuckle that he had to tell his students that they shouldn't worry if nothing in it made sense for the first seventy pages or so - after that it would all come into focus. Others opined that 100 or even 200 pages of exposition were required before the action really started to kick in. Clearly an ideal choice for a feature film.

The main problem, of course, is that Conrad's novel isn't really about the character 'Nostromo' [short for nostro uomo, Italian for "Our Man" - a little like Graham Greene's Our Man in Havana]. Nostromo is certainly an important part of the plot. As the 'Capataz de Cargadores' [Captain of the Stevedores], he controls the workers at the port which is the lifeblood of the tiny town of Sulaco. But he remains a somewhat shadowy, enigmatic figure till the end - more like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness than Lord Jim in the novel of that name.

So why should I bother to read it, then? I hear you saying. Quite. Why struggle through an immensely long and detailed account of a revolution in a far-off (imaginary) Latin American country, written by a Polish novelist for whom English was not even a second but a third or fourth language, who had one brief day's sojourn ashore as his sole experience of the entire continent of South America?

When it comes to South-East Asia, Continental Europe, Great Britain - even Africa - Conrad had a rich stock of local knowledge to draw on. He knew the Congo river and how to navigate it (Heart of Darkness); he'd lived as a poor émigré in London (The Secret Agent); he was born and grew up in Central and Eastern Europe (Under Western Eyes); he'd sailed around the intricate islands and bays of the Malay archipelago (Almayer's Folly). But he certainly couldn't claim to know South America first-hand.

It didn't really shock me, then, when I heard of David Lean's attempts to find locations for his own cinematic version of Nostromo in Cuba, Baja California, Spain, and finally the South of France - anywhere, it seems, except the Northern coast of Colombia (or Venezuela) where Conrad's imaginary country must clearly, according to internal evidence (and the subject has been extensively canvassed, I assure you) be situated.

After all, if Spain could stand in for Russia in Doctor Zhivago, why not for the Spanish-speaking republic of Costaguana?

Hollywood in España (2012)

•

Joseph Conrad: Nostromo (First edition: 2004)

To explain why even so eccentric-sounding and difficult a novel seems to me, at least, so eminently worth reading, I have to go back to the beginnings of my own Conrad adventure.

A long time ago, in a country far, far away - my ancestral homeland: Scotland - I was searching for a project. For some reason which seemed very cogent to me at the time, I'd decided that I wanted to be an Academic, and I knew that for that I needed to do a PhD. Even then I was as addicted to Fantasy and Sci-fi as I was to 'serious' literature, so I came up with the idea of writing an examination of imaginary countries in fiction.

Colin Manlove (1942-2020)

Thanks to a UK Commonwealth scholarship, I'd ended up studying at Edinburgh University, where my supervisor - a well-known historian of fantasy literature, Mr. Colin Manlove - decided that the scope of the project was too broad, and that, since I'd started off with an essay about imaginary countries in South America, I should continue along those lines, using a select set of texts to interrogate the different ways in which that region had been 'recreated' by European observers - some of them with minimal or non-existent knowledge of the actual places they were writing about.

E. M. W. Tillyard: The Epic Strain in the English Novel (1958)

Clearly Conrad was an ideal choice. His imaginary country of Costaguana is lovingly described, in immense detail, in the pages of Nostromo - the celebrated critic E. M. W. Tillyard in fact devoted an entire appendix in his book The Epic Strain in the English Novel solely to the geography of the novel - and yet it's based on little except armchair research and that one vital day ashore on the shores of the Caribbean.

C. S. Lewis & E. M. W. Tillyard: The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (1939)

Conrad is a much written-about author. He's been at the centre of the Eng. Lit. canon for quite a long time, and the books, monographs and theses are piled high on virtually every aspect of his work. Almost at once I was faced with the dilemma of how much of all this I could possibly read, and what good it would do me if I did.

Joseph Conrad: Collected Works (New edition: 1947-57)

Instead, I decided I would just read Conrad. And so I did. I started off on p.1 of Almayer's Folly (1896), and worked my way to the final pages of the unfinished, posthumous Suspense: A Napoleonic Novel (1925). Along the way I read all of his short stories, essays, and other materials such as journals and letters. You'll find a reasonably comprehensive listing of all that material below.

It took me quite a while. Mind you, I'd encountered some of them before, but reading them like that, in chronological sequence, taught me a lot of interesting things about Conrad I hadn't really understood before. And it also gave me a good vantage point to judge the various bits of secondary literature about him I really had to read.

I've often felt that that was a turning point for me. When it comes to a choice between knowing an author's work well, and having an intimate knowledge of the secondary literature about them, I'll always plump for the former.

This is not - to put it mildly - standard academic process. Bleating on about the conflicting views of various nobodies on some canonical work is definitely the way to get ahead in literary studies. But making any reference to other works by that writer besides the one under immediate discussion is often meant with blank looks.

I recall once, when I worked at Auckland University, attending a talk by a visiting British professor on the nature of literary biography. Since he was primarily a James Joyce scholar, he'd decided to contrast Richard Ellmann's biography of Joyce with (I think) Deirdre Bair's biography of Samuel Beckett. It all went swimmingly until, in the q-&-a after his talk, I asked quite innocently how well he thought his conclusions applied to other classic literary biographies: Leon Edel's life of Henry James, for instance, or even Ellmann's own biographies of Yeats and Wilde?

Richard Ellmann: Oscar Wilde (1987)

He glared at me angrily, as if I were deliberately conspiring to show him up. "I haven't read them," he grunted. I guess I was more surprised than shocked. How could one set out to pontificate about literary biography without reading at least a few of the major ones? It seems that the two he'd chosen constituted his whole knowledge of the subject ("Good enough for a tour of the provinces," he'd no doubt been reassured by his colleagues if he had felt any apprehension).

I'm afraid that that's a phenomenon I've encountered many times since then: huge generalisations based on insufficient reading, either of the author one's studying or the field as a whole.

Mind you, even way back in Biblical times the author of Ecclesiastes could lament that "of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh." (Eccl, 12: 12). Nor has the situation improved much since then. It's literally impossible to keep up with all the work in one's own field nowadays, however restricted it may be, and the publications continue to pile up inexorably.

But reading Conrad! That was a joy. If you leave out the two collaborations with Ford Madox Ford, and long novellas such as "Heart of Darkness" and "Typhoon," there are only really 14 novels to cover, and even the weaker, later ones always have something unexpected to offer. If you've only ever read Nostromo, how can you possibly understand how it builds on and intensified the techniques he'd already tried out in his earlier work? How can you appreciate the incredibly swift advance in his art from the comparative crudeness of his first couple of novels to the certainty and mastery of his work in the early 1900s? It took him seven years to go from Almayer's Folly to Nostromo - an almost incredible conceptual leap.

Mind you, just sticking to the primary texts is no panacea. If you read all of Conrad, does that mean you have to read all of Arnold Bennett, Stephen Crane, Ford Madox Ford, John Galsworthy, Henry James, and H. G. Wells as well? And if you want to understand Conrad's larger literary milieu, do you have to read Flaubert, Turgenev, and Henryk Sienkiewicz? I suppose that the real answer is yes, but who has the time? You have to trust someone else's judgement at some stage, and there is a limit.

Nevertheless, I'd rather know Conrad well than the secondary literature on Conrad. It may not apply to every novelist, but it's certainly important for him. It can be difficult to pick up a work such as Nostromo and start to figure it out if you don't know Lord Jim or (especially) such terrifyingly deadpan early stories as "An Outpost of Progress" or "Heart of Darkness."

Conrad has a point to make. That's the vital thing to remember. Like all jobbing authors, he had to make a buck, which meant appealing to the public to some degree, but for the most part he wanted to talk about how the world actually works to an audience who'd been conditioned to demand romantic legends and fairy-tales. His work can be harsh at times, but that's one of the main reasons it's lasted - that, and his extraordinary gift for language, which still seems miraculous all these years later.

Joseph Conrad (1923)

•

Joseph Conrad: Collected Works (1925-26)

"So, after all that song and dance, what exactly do you think Nostromo is about?" I can hear you saying. "Put up or shut up!"

Well, I'm glad you asked me that. If you want to know how Nostromo fitted into the larger scheme of my thesis: the motivations (and mechanics) behind the creation of imaginary worlds, you can consult my original conclusions here. If you want to read the tidied-up version I published in Landfall a couple of years later, you can find it here.

If you want to cut straight to the chase, though, here it is: the material interests. Just that. That phrase. The material interests.

I realise that it needs some unpacking. Let me just start off by saying that where most authors treat the subject of buried treasure as an excuse for romantic derring-do and exotic locations, Conrad turns the idea on its head. What interests him about treasure is the things that financiers and the governments they control will do to maintain a steady supply of it. All the more adventurous aspects, though present, are really secondary to this sober-sided view of the realities of global supply and demand.

To explain what that means, I'll have to tell you a story. It's not a particularly glamorous tale, and not one to be proud of exactly, but it's one of the main things that was in Conrad's mind as he set out to write his great novel.

Canal Crazy

Not so very long ago, ships still had to navigate all the way around Cape Horn to get from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Ever since the French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps had opened the Suez Canal in 1869, at least part of the problem of how to get goods from East to West (and vice versa) had been solved, but there still remained a great bottleneck to world trade in the form of the immense double continent of the Americas.

De Lesseps tried to follow up his success with a French-backed Panama Canal project in 1879, but it ended in debt and acrimony a decade later. Which left the problem exactly where it was.

Panama Canal cartoon (1903)

At which point the Americans entered, stage left. It was a perfect project for the tub-thumping, sabre-waving US President Theodore Roosevelt, so - with his connivance - in 1902 the Senate voted in favour of trying to acquire suitable territory for a canal in the isthmus of Panama, then part of the Republic of Colombia.

Colombia wasn't quite so keen on this idea, so the Americans fomented a revolution in the north of their country with the sole object of creating a smaller, more malleable government with which they could deal. Sure enough, in 1903 the Republic of Panama was born, and promptly signed a deal with the US government offering them virtual sovereignty over the so-called 'canal zone'.

And so the great Panama Canal came into being, as a direct result of one of the dirtiest and most cynical bits of chicanery in contemporary history. Not that one would have to delve far into the annals of European colonialism to find even worse pieces of landgrabbing - in the Congo itself, for instance.

Conrad took careful note of all this (as he reveals through certain comments about 'Yankee conquistadors' in his correspondence with the veteran South American traveller R. B. Cunninghame Graham), and it had a part in inspiring him to put something similar at the heart of his novel - instead of the canal itself, though, we have the silver of the mine.

R. B. Cunninghame Grahame (1852-1936)

It might help, at this point, to know a little more about Conrad's own background. I wrote some notes about that for my Stage Three Travel Writing course, where we contrasted his 'Congo Diary' with the written-up, fictionalised version in 'Heart of Darkness.' Here are a few of the points I made there:

Joseph Conrad (or Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, if you prefer) ... grew up speaking Polish, in Poland. And yet he didn't - because there was no such country. Prussia, Russia and Austria had divided up Poland between them in the late eighteenth century, and it didn't achieve independence again until 1918, after the First World War.

Conrad's father Apollo was a writer and a patriot, and was accordingly arrested by the Tsarist authorities in 1861, when Joseph was four, and sent into exile in Siberia. Both his mother and father died as a result of the harsh conditions they were subjected to there, so Joseph was an orphan by the age of 11.

In an autobiographical essay Conrad records that he was fascinated by maps as a young boy, and particularly by the blank spot in the centre of Africa. "When I grow up I will go there," he said to himself - and, amazingly, many years later, after leaving Poland for France, and then for the British Merchant Marine, he did precisely that. He went there - to the heart of the King Leopold's private colony on the Congo river - and what he saw and brought back from that experience eventually became the story Heart of Darkness.

For me, the essential thing to remember when trying to understand this story is that Conrad was not British. His narrator and alter-ego Marlow is British - and is accordingly rather scornful of "foreigners", especially their attempts to run viable colonies. Conrad, though, as a loyal Pole, was scornful of Imperialism in all its forms - British, Russian and American - and his feelings about inhabiting a "blank spot" on the map can hardly be said to have been unambiguous either.

His is certainly an art of contrast and comparison. The fascinating thing is that it was by enlarging his terms of reference, by making his very real experience of the horror of the Belgian Congo into a fictionalised story, that he managed to create a work which has sparked so many analogues and echoes since - notably Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 Vietnam war film Apocalypse Now.

Let's just say, then, that colonialism and realpolitik are never a neutral matter for Conrad. His immense suspicion of Russia's imperial ambitions, and consequent disdain for their culture, was regarded as a strange blindspot by his more complacent contemporaries in literary London, as they exclaimed over the beauties of Chekhov and Tolstoy.

In the age of Putin, it's perhaps a little easier to understand how Conrad felt, and it's one of the many reasons that his works have such resonance today - for those who can be bothered to read them, that is. Virginia Woolf once famously remarked that George Eliot's Middlemarch was "one of the few English novels written for grownup people." One can see her point. The motivations described in that book are not really fully comprehensible to childish or even adolescent readers.

Conrad, too, almost alone among his contemporaries, was writing for grownups. The glamorous seascapes and long tropical descriptions he's most celebrated for certainly exist - and they continue to exert a strange attraction over those of us who love the world he created. But the deep wounds inflicted by his own upbringing and the brutal suppression of his native land made it impossible for him to share the smug self-satisfaction of the rest of the English-speaking world.

The First World War hit European culture like a bomb. But even then the writers of the time could valorise it into a unique and world-shaking event: the 'war to end all wars.' Conrad knew better. Small wars kill and devastate in just the same way as global cataclysms. Greed - the material interests - and the casual cruelty it gives rise to, are something which needs to be analysed in depth if one is even to begin to understand it.

That's the main reason why Nostromo is a novel which can be spoken of in the same breath as Tolstoy's War and Peace. It attempts great things in a deliberately and carefully limited space. Nostromo the man is just one of the victims of this terrible process. Attempting to put him at the centre of this story of cynical greed and opportunism is to miss the stark contrast Conrad is suggesting between the idealism and pure intentions of so many of his nobler characters and the brutal ends to which they come.

Alec Guinness and David Lean (1984)

Did David Lean understand all that? Maybe. Though some of the more inflammatory statements about the glories of the British Raj he made while filming A Passage to India do give one pause. Certainly, as one might expect from the author of Savages, Christopher Hampton got it straight away, and held it in the centre of his vision of the story. Perhaps that's why he was fired.

I do miss Lean's movie. The 1997 TV series did its best to embody Nostromo as a whole, but ended up as a bit of an incoherent mess. Once again, they seem to have thought that because that's what it's called, that's what the novel is about. The careful way in which Conrad establishes the financier Charles Gould at the centre of the revolutionary action of the novel is largely ignored. And it would take a master film-maker to suggest it - perhaps one with a more Brechtian bent: Martin Scorsese, for instance.

Much has been made of the fact that Conrad was a man of action, a professional sea captain, as well as a writer - and it's all true - but more needs to be said about the hardheaded realism with which he confronted the vagaries of history. Despite his love of romance and mystery, he could never ignore the boot in the face, and the pitiless economic forces which guided it.

Alastair Reid, dir.: Nostromo (1997)

•

Alvin Langdon Coburn: Joseph Conrad (1916)

Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski
['Joseph Conrad']
(1857-1924)

[books owned by me are marked in bold:]

Novels:


1. Almayer's Folly (1895)
   • Included in: The First and Last of Conrad: Almayer's Folly; An Outcast of the Islands; The Arrow of Gold; & The Rover. 1895, 1896, 1919, & 1923. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
2. An Outcast of the Islands (1896)
   • An Outcast of the Islands. 1896. Ed. J. H. Stape & Hans van Marle. The World's Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.
   • Included in: The First and Last of Conrad: Almayer's Folly; An Outcast of the Islands; The Arrow of Gold; & The Rover. 1895, 1896, 1919, & 1923. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
3. The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' (1897)
   • Included in: The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' / Typhoon; Amy Foster; Falk; Tomorrow. 1897 & 1903. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
4. Heart of Darkness (1899)
   • Included in: Two Tales of the Congo: Heart of Darkness & An Outpost of Progress. Copper-Engravings by Dolf Rieser. London: The Folio Society. 1952.
   • Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text; Backgrounds and Sources; Essays in Criticism. 1899. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1963.
   • Heart of Darkness: An Authoritative Text; Backgrounds and Sources; Essays in Criticism. 1899. Ed. Robert Kimbrough. 1963. Second Edition. 1971. Third Edition. A Norton Critical Edition. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988.
5. Lord Jim (1900)
   • Lord Jim: A Tale. 1900. Joseph Conrad’s Works: Collected Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1946.
   • Lord Jim: Authoritative Text; Backgrounds; Sources; Criticism. 1900. Ed. Thomas C. Moser. A Norton Critical Edition. 1968. 2nd ed. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996.
6. [with Ford Madox Ford] The Inheritors (1901)
   • Included in: [with Ford Madox Ford] The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story / Laughing Anne: A Play / One Day More: A Play. 1901 & 1924. Illustrated by Jutta Ash. Joseph Conrad: Complete Works. Geneva: Heron Books, 1969.
7. [with Ford Madox Ford] Romance (1903)
   • [with Ford Madox Ford] Romance. 1903. Joseph Conrad’s Works: Collected Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1949.
8. Nostromo (1904)
   • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. 1904. The Works of Joseph Conrad: Uniform Edition. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd. / Paris: J. M. Dent et Fils, 1923.
   • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. 1904. Ed. Martin Seymour-Smith. 1983. Penguin Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
   • Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. 1904. Introduction by Richard Holmes. Lithographs by Paul Hogarth. London: The Folio Society, 1984.
9. The Secret Agent (1907)
   • The Secret Agent: A Simple Tale. 1907. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974.
10. Under Western Eyes (1911)
    • Under Western Eyes. 1911. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966.
11. Chance (1913)
    • Chance: A Tale in Two Parts. 1913. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984.
12. Victory (1915)
    • Victory: An Island Tale. 1915. Introduction by V. S. Pritchett. London: The Book Society, 1952.
13. The Shadow Line (1917)
    • The Shadow Line: A Confession. 1917. Ed. Jacques Berthoud. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986.
14. The Arrow of Gold (1919)
    • Included in: The First and Last of Conrad: Almayer's Folly; An Outcast of the Islands; The Arrow of Gold; & The Rover. 1895, 1896, 1919, & 1923. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
15. The Rescue (1920)
    • The Rescue: A Romance of the Shallows. 1920. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1950.
16. The Rover (1923)
    • Included in: The First and Last of Conrad: Almayer's Folly; An Outcast of the Islands; The Arrow of Gold; & The Rover. 1895, 1896, 1919, & 1923. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929.
17. Suspense (1925)
    • Suspense. Introduction by Richard Curle. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1925.

Short Story Collections:


18. Tales of Unrest (1898) [TU]
    • Tales of Unrest [The Idiots; The Lagoon; An Outpost of Progress; The Return; Karain: A Memory]. 1898. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977.
19. Youth and Two Other Stories (1902) [Y]
    • Youth; Heart of Darkness; The End of the Tether: Three Stories. 1902. Joseph Conrad’s Works: Collected Edition. 1946. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1961.
20. Typhoon and Other Stories (1903) [T]
    • Included in: The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' / Typhoon; Amy Foster; Falk; Tomorrow. 1897 & 1903. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970.
21. A Set of Six (1908) [S6]
    • A Set of Six [Gaspar Ruiz; The Informer; The Brute; An Anarchist; The Duel; Il Conde]. 1908. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1927.
22. 'Twixt Land and Sea (1912) [TLS]
    • ’Twixt Land and Sea: Three Tales [A Smile of Fortune; The Secret Sharer; Freya of the Seven Isles]. 1912. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
23. Within the Tides (1915) [WT]
    • Within the Tides [The Planter of Malata; The Partner; The Inn of the Two Witches; Because of the Dollars]. 1915. Penguin Modern Classics. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978.
24. Tales of Hearsay (1925) [TH]
    • Included in: Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays [The Warrior's Soul; Prince Roman; The Tale; The Black Mate]. 1925 & 1926. Joseph Conrad’s Works: Collected Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1955.
25. The Complete Short Stories (1933)
    • The Complete Short Stories [To-morrow (1902); Amy Foster (1901); Karain: A Memory (1897); The Idiots (1896); An Outpost of Progress (1896); The Return (1897); The Lagoon (1896); Youth: A Narrative (1898); Heart of Darkness (1898-99); The End of the Tether (1902); Gaspar Ruiz (1904-5); The Informer (1906); The Brute (1906); An Anarchist (1905); The Duel (1908); Il Conde (1908); A Smile of Fortune (1910); The Secret Sharer (1909); Freya of the Seven Isles (1910-11); The Planter of Malata (1914); The Partner (1911); The Inn of the Two Witches (1913); Because of the Dollars (1914); The Warrior's Soul (1915-16); Prince Roman (1910); The Tale (1916); The Black Mate (1886)]. London: Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers), Ltd., [1933].
26. The Complete Short Fiction of Joseph Conrad. Ed. Samuel Hynes. 4 vols (1991-92)
    • The Stories, Volume I [The Idiots (1896); The Lagoon (1896); An Outpost of Progress (1896); Karain: A Memory (1897); The Return (1897); Youth: A Narrative (1898); Amy Foster (1901); To-morrow (1902); Gaspar Ruiz: A Romantic Tale (1904-5)]. New York: The Ecco Press, 1991.
    • The Stories, Volume II [An Anarchist: A Desperate Tale (1905); The Informer: An Ironic Tale (1906); The Brute: An Indignant Tale (1906); The Black Mate (1886); Il Conde: A Pathetic Tale (1908); The Secret Sharer: An Episode from the Coast (1909); Prince Roman (1910); The Partner (1911); The Inn of the Two Witches: A Find (1913); Because of the Dollars (1914); The Warrior's Soul (1915-16); The Tale (1916); Appendix: The Sisters (1895)]. New York: The Ecco Press, 1992.
    • The Tales, Volume III [Heart of Darkness (1898-99); Typhoon (1899-1901]; The End of the Tether (1902)]. New York: The Ecco Press, 1992.
    • The Tales, Volume IV [Falk: A Reminiscence (1901); The Duel (1908); A Smile of Fortune (1910); Freya of the Seven Isles: A Story of Shallow Waters (1910-11); The Planter of Malata (1914)]. New York: The Ecco Press, 1992.

Stories:


1. The Black Mate (1886) [TH]
2. The Sisters (1895)
3. The Idiots (1896) [TU]
4. The Lagoon (1896) [TU]
5. An Outpost of Progress (1896) [TU]
6. Karain: A Memory (1897) [TU]
7. The Return (1897) [TU]
8. Youth: A Narrative (1898) [Y]
9. Heart of Darkness (1898-99) [Y]
10. Typhoon (1899-1901] [T]
11. Amy Foster (1901) [T]
12. Falk: A Reminiscence (1901) [T]
13. To-morrow (1902) [T]
14. The End of the Tether (1902) [Y]
15. Gaspar Ruiz (1904-5) [S6]
16. An Anarchist (1905) [S6]
17. The Informer (1906) [S6]
18. The Brute (1906) [S6]
19. The Duel (1908) [S6]
20. Il Conde (1908) [S6]
21. [with Ford Madox Ford] The Nature of a Crime (1909) [CD]
22. A Smile of Fortune (1910) [TLS]
23. The Secret Sharer (1909) [TLS]
24. Prince Roman (1910) [TH]
25. Freya of the Seven Isles (1910-11) [TLS]
26. The Partner (1911) [WT]
27. The Inn of the Two Witches (1913) [WT]
28. The Planter of Malata (1914) [WT]
29. Because of the Dollars (1914) [WT]
30. The Warrior's Soul (1915-16) [TH]
31. The Tale (1916) [TH]

Non-fiction:


27. The Mirror of the Sea (1906)
    • Included in: The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions / A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences. 1906 & 1912. Everyman’s Library, 1189. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1972.
28. A Personal Record (1912)
    • Included in: The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions / A Personal Record: Some Reminiscences. 1906 & 1912. Everyman’s Library, 1189. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1972.
29. Notes on Life and Letters (1921)
    • Notes on Life and Letters. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1921.
30. Last Essays (1926)
    • Included in: Tales of Hearsay and Last Essays [The Warrior's Soul; Prince Roman; The Tale; The Black Mate]. 1925 & 1926. Joseph Conrad’s Works: Collected Edition. London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1955.
31. The Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces (1978) [CD]
    • Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces. Ed. Zdzislaw Najder. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1978.
32. Conrad's Congo (2013)
    • Conrad’s Congo. Ed. J. H. Stape. Preface by Adam Hochschild. London: The Folio Society, 2013.

Plays:


33. One Day More (1917)
34. Laughing Anne (1923)
    • Laughing Anne & One Day More: Two Plays. Introduction by John Galsworthy. London: John Castle, 1924.
    • Included in: [with Ford Madox Ford] The Inheritors: An Extravagant Story / Laughing Anne: A Play / One Day More: A Play. 1901 & 1924. Illustrated by Jutta Ash. Joseph Conrad: Complete Works. Geneva: Heron Books, 1969.

Letters:


35. Conrad’s Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends. Ed. Zdzislaw Najder. Trans. Halina Carroll. London: Oxford University Press, 1964.
36. Joseph Conrad’s Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Ed. C. T. Watts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969.

Secondary:


37. Baines, Jocelyn. Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography. 1960. Pelican Biographies. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1971.
38. Brownlow, Kevin. David Lean: A Biography. Research Associate: Cy Young. 1996. A Wyatt Book. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
39. Conrad, Borys. My Father: Joseph Conrad. London: Calder & Boyars, 1970.
40. Curle, Richard. Joseph Conrad: A Study. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1914.
41. Eames, Andrew. Crossing the Shadow Line: Travels in South-East Asia. Sceptre. London: Hodder and Stoughton Paperbacks, 1986.
42. Ford, Ford Madox. Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance. 1924. New York: The Ecco Press, 1989.
43. Hampton, Christopher. The Secret Agent and Nostromo: Based on the Novels by Joseph Conrad. Faber Filmscripts. London: Faber, 1996.
44. Karl, Frederick R. Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives. A Biography. London: Faber, 1979.
45. Sherry, Norman. Conrad's Eastern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.