Robert Silverberg Books in Order

In Jack Vance's six linked stories, magicians and travelers pursue knowledge, desire and survival on an Earth nearing its end. Strange creatures, dangerous spells and the remains of forgotten civilizations complicate their journeys beneath a fading sun.

Space Patrol cadet Larry Stark arrives at Alpha Centauri as its colonists prepare to seek independence from Earth. Forced to question the authority he has always trusted, he faces choices that could cost him his career.

Roy Walton enforces population controls on an overcrowded Earth, deciding who may live and where people must settle. Growing public anger forces him to confront whether saving humanity can justify the power and cruelty his work demands.

Farmer Dale Kesley cannot explain his missing memories or his sense that he belongs elsewhere. A stranger directs him toward Antarctica, beginning a search for identity in a world controlled by twelve immortal rulers.

Cloud-covered Nidor has preserved its traditions for generations, until visitors from Earth establish a school promising progress. As new knowledge changes the lives of a Nidorian family, the planet's religious and social order begins to unravel.

Stranded on an alien world after his vehicle fails, Laird Hammill faces danger with little hope of escape. His struggle leads toward an extraordinary discovery involving intelligent beings within stars and a weapon that could change the conflict around him.

Psychosociologist Jeffrey Brewster joins an international delegation negotiating with aliens who offer Earth protection and technology. Conflicting claims from a second alien civilization leave him trying to determine whose promises humanity can trust and what an alliance might cost.

Earth's expanding empire encounters an alien civilization after a successful faster-than-light voyage. A diplomatic mission sets out to prevent conflict, but assumptions about dividing the galaxy and disagreements within the human team make negotiation increasingly difficult.

Kennedy is paid to persuade Earth's population that a peaceful alien race must be destroyed. His propaganda assignment exposes the gap between doing a job and accepting responsibility for the genocide that job is meant to justify.

Television producer John Amory works in an isolationist America that suppresses unwelcome ideas. When aliens reveal plans to invade Earth, he must challenge the prejudices dividing humanity before they prevent any hope of a united defense.

Earth survives only as a legend among its scattered descendants. Ordered to find a supposedly mythical treasure or die, Hallam Navarre turns his dangerous interstellar assignment into a search for the truth about humanity's lost home.

Falsely accused of murder, former engineer Johnny Mantell flees to Starhaven, an outlaw refuge beyond galactic law. He wants to disappear, but the world's dictator draws him into a struggle with consequences far beyond his own survival.

Baird Ewing returns to Earth seeking help for a colony threatened by aliens, only to find the home world powerless and facing its own takeover. The possible existence of time travel offers a dangerous alternative.

Two rival alien civilizations secretly send agents disguised as humans to win Earth's support in their war. Operative Abner Harris discovers unexpected behavior among his enemies, forcing him to question the loyalties behind his mission.

Eighteen-year-old Lora Menotti joins a new street gang after her family moves to Manhattan. She uses rivalries to gain influence, but her ambition and manipulation create enemies among the people whose lives she tries to control.

Engineer Jim Holman, struggling through a divorce, falls for jazz singer Helene Raymond. Her heroin addiction and possessive former boyfriend complicate their relationship, leaving Jim caught between his devotion and the dangers she warned him about.

Danny Flaherty wants acceptance in the Golden Dragons street gang and is willing to endure its initiation. His efforts to prove himself draw him deeper into violence and crime, making belonging an increasingly destructive ambition.

Seventeen-year-old Alan Donnell leaves his family's starship to search for his twin on Earth. Time dilation has separated their lives, and an unfamiliar society makes his search for both family and a better space drive dangerous.

A computer predicts that Lurion will destroy Earth in sixty-seven years, and Roy Gardner is sent to eliminate the threat. Faced with billions of lives, he must decide whether absolute trust in the machine can justify mass destruction.

Investigator Lloyd Catton joins an interworld commission tracking mind-destroying hypnojewels. What begins as a trafficking case reveals a wider conspiracy aimed at isolating Earth and stripping humanity of its hard-won place among the civilized planets.

Sally and Jim visit a Mars colony where their scientist father searches for evidence of surviving Martians. With his life's work at stake and the colonists unwelcoming, the children try to uncover what lies beyond the apparent ruins.

A young woman leaves Kansas for New York hoping to succeed in show business. After a theatrical agent exploits her ambition, she finds shelter with another woman and faces painful decisions about the cost of pursuing stardom.

Framed for murder, Roy Crawford escapes aboard an exploration ship by posing as a scientist. Its destination proves deadly even before he realizes that the person who framed him may be traveling with the same expedition.

Recently discharged soldier Fred Bryan takes a driving instructor's job and discovers that wealthy clients expect more than lessons. His profitable new role clashes with his romance with Nina, bringing his private life and work into conflict.

With his wife away for the summer, David Hughes begins an affair with Janice. Attraction leads him to risk his marriage, setting his desires against the commitments and ordinary life he had previously taken for granted.

Jack Lennart and Marga are involved in selling sex when a furious man accuses them of drawing Lily into their business. His armed confrontation brings violence into a world where desire and money already shape dangerous relationships.

Former Los Angeles bandleader Bob McKay is condemned for a murder he didn't commit. A starlet and a newspaper columnist investigate the killing, racing to uncover the truth before his scheduled execution closes off any chance of rescue.

This nonfiction account follows America's first human spaceflight, the astronauts' training and the development of rocketry behind it. Silverberg connects the mission's achievements and failures with contemporary hopes for space stations and a journey to the Moon.

Silverberg explores six ancient cities, including Pompeii, Troy, Babylon and Knossos, describing their earlier lives and the work that uncovered them. The account connects vanished societies with the archaeologists and discoveries that brought them back into view.

Six early stories bring together space adventures and speculative situations in a single collection. Absolutely Inflexible, Blaze of Glory and Hopper appear alongside Slaves of the Star Giants, The Songs of Summer and Warm Man.

James Harker agrees to help announce a scientific process that can revive the recently dead. Betrayal among the researchers and mounting public fear turn that assignment into a struggle over the discovery's future and his own safety.

A government lottery selects unwilling colonists for a distant planet, giving them only days to leave Earth. Their new beginning becomes a struggle for survival when hostile inhabitants force strangers with different backgrounds to work together.

This nonfiction history examines Indigenous North America, emphasizing the societies that existed before Columbus. Archaeological evidence, material remains and regional comparisons help explain how different peoples lived and how later colonization disrupted their communities.

Delivery boy Johnny Price dreams of escaping small-town life for the big city. After a poolhall fight attracts the local mob's attention, his opportunity to rise draws him into a criminal world where ambition carries its own dangers.

Jimmy Robinson abandons his early writing ambitions for a more profitable life supported by wealthy women. His attraction to cruelty shapes those relationships, making money, dependence and the exercise of power central to his progress into adulthood.

After Edward the Confessor dies without a clear heir, three rulers compete for England's crown. This historical account follows Harold of England, Harald Hardrada and William of Normandy through the invasions and battles that transform the country.

The changes introduced by Earthmen have fractured Nidor's traditional society. A bank robbery and competing political movements deepen the crisis, while Norvis tries to understand what the visitors intended and whether his people can reclaim their future.

Miner John Storm discovers an asteroid rich in valuable minerals, only to lose both his claim and the records proving his identity. His hoped-for fortune becomes a fight to expose the theft and stay alive.

A man washes ashore on an island inhabited by women whose lives revolve around rituals honoring vampire bats. His arrival disrupts their isolation, drawing him into relationships that put the women at risk of discovery and punishment.

Lonnie Garth's father arranges a marriage intended to connect their family to a wealthy Tennessee household. Left in its mansion when her husband returns to college, she faces abuse from the family whose prosperity was meant to secure her future.

Promoter Claude Regan is charged with organizing a World's Fair to revive American confidence in 1992. Convinced Earth cannot contain the event he imagines, he undertakes an audacious plan to build an entirely new world.

Three centuries after an ice age drove humanity underground, explorers leave their North American refuge after making radio contact with London. Their journey across a frozen world brings them into contact with people who survived outside.

On an Earth covered by ocean, Dovirr Stargan dreams of leaving his floating community to join the powerful Sea Lords. His chance comes with a returning alien threat, but the freedom he seeks carries a price.

Scientific deception takes many forms, from the Piltdown fossils to claims of perpetual motion. These accounts examine thirteen hoaxes, the people behind them, and the evidence that eventually exposed schemes presented as discoveries about the world.

Howard Gorman hires professional killer Lee Floyd to murder his wife so he can marry his young mistress, Marie. But Marie has ambitions of her own, and the arrangement opens the way to dangerous betrayals.

Stories of humanity’s descendants among the stars explore encounters with intelligent aliens and unfamiliar societies. Questions of invention, power and captivity run through the collection, challenging the assumption that humans will always control the terms of interstellar discovery.

Earth wants Ganymede's mineral wealth, but its peaceful inhabitants refuse to cooperate. Public relations man Ted Kennedy must help portray them as dangerous enemies, turning a campaign of conquest into something the public will support.

Stranded on the far shore of the dying world, Cugel sets out to return to Almery and confront the wizard responsible. His journey depends on cunning, deception, and surviving encounters with equally opportunistic strangers along the way.

After offending a powerful wizard, Cugel is sent on a dangerous quest for magical lenses that reveal the Overworld. An unwelcome creature lodged inside him helps enforce the bargain as he navigates strange communities and hostile territory.

Eleven stories follow people caught between desire, work, and exploitation. Among them are young women using their bodies to pursue artistic ambitions and a stripper who spends her days writing a novel, confronting the costs of survival.

Extinct and endangered animals reveal how hunting, introduced predators, and vulnerable breeding patterns can destroy a species. Accounts of the great auk, dodo, and other animals trace these losses and examine efforts to prevent further disappearances.

In a world where plague weakened Europe and the Ottoman Empire became dominant, England offers Dan Beauchamp few prospects. He travels to the Americas seeking opportunity among independent native civilizations, discovering how differently history might have unfolded.

The legend of El Dorado draws explorers into South America in pursuit of extraordinary wealth. Their expeditions, including those of Pizarro, Orellana, and Raleigh, reveal how hope and greed turned a golden dream into dangerous obsession.

Archaeological discoveries gradually reveal the lives of prehistoric Europeans, from cave painters to the builders of Stonehenge. This history follows changing knowledge of early cultures through the Iron Age, including bodies preserved in Danish peat bogs.

In an overcrowded future, people disappear by traveling illegally into the past. Bureaucrat Joseph Quellen investigates the departures while protecting his own secrets, as his unemployed brother-in-law considers escaping a society that offers him little hope.

Media magnate Duncan Chalk brings together an explorer physically altered by aliens and a young woman exploited by reproductive experiments. His promise to help them conceals a plan to turn their suffering into public entertainment.

Three alien observers disguised as humans become injured and separated when their spacecraft is destroyed. Dependent on people who shelter them, they discover emotional connections that complicate their mission and their assumptions about the species they study.

On an overcrowded, damaged Earth, competing religious movements promise humanity different paths toward transformation. Scientific immortality, genetic change, and psychic abilities become instruments of faith and power as their followers struggle to shape the future.

Mining booms built Western towns almost overnight, then left many abandoned when their wealth disappeared. This history follows communities from California's gold rush to later Nevada settlements, tracing the people and fortunes behind their rise and decline.

A future American dictatorship exiles political prisoners to a camp in the Cambrian past. Jim Barrett helps hold its isolated inhabitants together, but a secretive young arrival threatens the fragile routine they have built to survive.

Nineteenth-century explorer Austen Henry Layard searches for evidence of ancient Assyria and uncovers the ruins of Nineveh. This account follows the archaeological discoveries that brought a buried civilization back into view and changed understanding of its history.

As millennium fears spread, a stranger appears in Rome claiming to come from the year 2999. Physicist Leo Garfield investigates Vornan-19, whose presence challenges public expectations of the future and raises questions about an elaborate deception.

The great earthen mounds of North America inspired competing explanations about their builders. This account examines the ancient societies behind them and the archaeological evidence that challenged myths about the origins and purposes of these structures.

Young archaeologist Tom Rice joins an expedition investigating artifacts left by the mysterious High Ones a billion years earlier. A discovery suggests their civilization may not be entirely gone, launching a search across the galaxy.

Hollywood film editor Kevin Lyle's affairs become entangled with his wife's suspicions and the threat of surveillance. An encounter with an aspiring actress turns fatal, leaving him caught in a dangerous web of desire, fear, and deception.

In a distant future, humanity's guilds divide responsibility for a diminished Earth. An aging Watcher travels with a winged companion while monitoring the skies for invasion, struggling to fulfill his duty as the anticipated danger approaches.

Nine stories bring outer space and the unknown into focus through unusual speculative situations. The collection includes The Calibrated Alligator, The Artifact Business and Delivery Guaranteed, presenting a range of encounters beyond the boundaries of ordinary experience.

An alien encounter leaves Richard Muller unable to approach other people without overwhelming them with psychic revulsion. He retreats into a deadly abandoned labyrinth, using its traps to enforce the isolation that his condition has created.

Humanity's attempts to travel into space provide the focus of this nonfiction survey. Alongside the story of exploration, it describes conditions on the Moon and the environments of the planets, placing spaceflight within its scientific setting.

When a spaceship explodes, three survivors find themselves stranded on a hostile planet. Their only hope is to reach a rescue beacon, making the journey across unfamiliar territory a struggle against the threat of certain death.

Stored personalities allow the dead to live again inside paying hosts, making additional minds a source of prestige and influence. But sharing a body introduces dangerous struggles for control, threatening the identity and survival of its original occupant.

Time courier Jud Elliott guides tourists through ancient and medieval Byzantium after leaving an unsatisfying career. Personal temptations and his colleagues' disregard for regulations pull him into a tangle of paradoxes that attracts the Time Patrol.

California's giant sequoias and redwoods become the center of a struggle between exploitation and preservation. This account traces their discovery, their destruction by lumber operations, and the efforts to protect the surviving trees from further loss.

Former colonial administrator Edmund Gundersen returns to an alien world after its independence. Burdened by his treatment of its inhabitants, he seeks understanding and redemption through their mysterious rebirth ritual, confronting beliefs his earlier authority dismissed.

American Jewish responses to Zionism and Israel form the focus of this history. Presidential records, political pressure campaigns, and election results help trace the relationship between a community's aspirations and the struggle over a Jewish state.

The remains of mammoths and mastodons offer clues to vanished animals and humanity's distant past. This account follows discoveries in Europe and America, examining their place in evolution and the questions surrounding their disappearance from the world.

Ancient descriptions help reconstruct the seven wonders, from the Great Pyramid to monuments that no longer survive. This account explores what their builders achieved and how records preserve knowledge of structures whose physical remains have largely disappeared.

Industrialist Simeon Krug uses android labor to build a vast Arctic tower meant to communicate with distant aliens. His creations worship him as their maker, while their hopes for recognition collide with his refusal to grant them freedom.

Life in the ocean's depths emerges through the history of scientific exploration beneath the surface. This account follows earlier investigations and later research, showing how discoveries expanded knowledge of undersea environments and the creatures inhabiting them.

Xenobiology student Bill Hastings wins a year at a World's Fair held on an enormous orbiting satellite. Surrounded by attractions fifty thousand miles above Earth, he discovers that the experience offers lessons beyond the adventure he imagined.

On Borthan, expressing private feelings is a crime and even the word 'I' is forbidden. Prince Kinnall Darival encounters an Earth visitor whose influence leads him to challenge the Covenant and risk exile for sharing his inner life.

This nonfiction history examines Egypt's earliest dynasties before the great pyramid-building era. It explores the first pharaohs, everyday life and the beginnings of Egyptian civilization, alongside the myths and later investigations that shaped understanding of this period.

This nonfiction account traces the development of scientific methods for determining the age of Earth and its past. Moving from biblical chronologies to geology and radioactivity, it explains discoveries that enabled researchers to assign dates to ancient events.

Eleven stories explore futures involving alien possession, changed societies and encounters across time. Passengers and Nightwings appear alongside The Songs of Summer, bringing intimate human experiences into contact with forces that disrupt ordinary relationships and expectations.

A twentieth-century man named Clay is swept into a remote future where humanity has evolved into radically different forms. Traveling among these strange descendants on a transformed Earth forces him to reconsider what being human means.

On an overcrowded future Earth, immense towers house tightly regulated communities that celebrate unlimited reproduction. Within Urban Monad 116, several residents struggle with dissatisfaction and forbidden desires despite a society that insists its arrangements have eliminated conflict.

David Selig has spent his life relying on the ability to read other people's thoughts. As middle age approaches and his telepathy begins to fade, he confronts the relationships, missed opportunities and identity built around that extraordinary gift.

Four college students travel to the Arizona desert after discovering an ancient manuscript promising immortality. Seeking a monastery whose monks supposedly possess the secret, they face an initiation that tests their friendship and the lengths they will go to survive.

This nonfiction history recounts the first voyages around the world during the Age of Discovery. Political ambition and the search for new routes frame accounts of ocean explorers confronting mutiny, hunger, unfamiliar lands and the dangers of navigation.

Paul Macy begins a new life after authorities erase a criminal's personality and replace it with his own. When memories of violent artist Nat Hamlin resurface, Paul struggles against the previous identity threatening to reclaim their shared body.

Electronics executive Lloyd Burks entertains powerful clients with call girls and extravagant parties while considering himself a devoted family man. When his wife discovers the arrangements, his promise to reform collides with the demands and temptations of his job.

Thirteen stories explore strange social demands, altered identities and journeys through time, including a robot’s election as pope and tourists visiting different ends of the world. Familiar ambitions become uneasy questions about what people accept as normal.

Four stories venture into futures where human lives depend on unfamiliar powers and social rules. Unknown gods, impossible weapons, dangerous codes of honor and the threat of encroaching youth turn extraordinary settings into tests of survival.

Stranded far from home after a miscast spell, Cugel seeks revenge against Iucounu the Laughing Magician. Joining an exiled ruler's quest for the legendary Simbilis, he crosses a dying world filled with sorcery, demons and dangerous bargains.

Sixteen original works bring together different science fiction voices under Silverberg’s editorship. Stories and a poem range across imagined discoveries and unfamiliar worlds, including contributions from Michael Bishop, Marta Randall, Gregory Benford, Jack Dann, and George Alec Effinger.