In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era [Hardcover]

Robert Silverberg (Author), Bob Eggleton (Illustrator)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. SFWA Grand Master Silverberg (Phases of the Moon) delivers 16 deliciously slam-bang short stories from early in his career, along with engaging commentary including autobiographical insights, glimpses into his creative process and a mini-history of SF's flaming pulp youth. Beginning at 18, Silverberg wrote furiously, churning out tales like the gently wry "Yokel with Portfolio" (1955) for small SF magazines he had in his high-minded mid-teens denounced as formulaic and drably degenerate. As a member of Howard Browne's Fantastic Worlds stable, Silverberg perceptively explored now traditional SF themes—the poignancy of android existence in "Choke Chain" (1956), the world-saving hero in "Citadel of Darkness" (1957), the "amusing artifact" in the brief "New Year's Eve—2000 A.D." A predatory-alien story, "The Insidious Invaders" (1959), ended Silverberg's apprenticeship, the foundation of such later achievements as the mature novels Downward to the Earth and Hot Sky at Midnight. These are stories that he and his readers can justifiably look back on with affection, if not total admiration.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Silverberg delivers exactly as promised in this collection of high-speed romps from the beginning of his career that he suggests affords a kind of archaeological experience. This is the work of a young man writing at a furious pace for what were simple adventure magazines, and it often lacks such literary niceties as developed characters and lyrical prose. But the stories do the job they were expected to do: entertain. They include such gems as "Vampires from Outer Space" (a title chosen by an editor, says Silverberg, and the only time the redundant cliche outer space appears in his fiction), in which aliens resembling nothing so much as the classic batlike vampire stand accused of murdering humans in search of blood, and "New Year's Eve--2000 AD," an early (1957) look at the argument over the date on which the new millennium begins. The classic tropes of pulp sf are all on view and just as rewarding as they were meant to be when Silverberg first exploited them. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 337 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean Press; Sgd Ltd edition (February 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1596060433
• ISBN-13: 978-1596060432
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,330,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Insight into 1950s SF and one of SF's most prolific masters, February 14, 2007

By 

Mitchell Glodek (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (Hardcover)

Fans of Silverberg and anybody interested in the 1950s SF scene should definitely check this out. For the most part the stories are fun and move along briskly, and each is preceded by an epigraph or short essay in which Silverberg talks about his early career and sheds light on his writing techniques and his relationships with SF magazines, their editors, and other SF writers in the 1950s.

4.0 out of 5 stars Tales from the heroic age of SF, May 9, 2011

By 

Ventura Angelo (Brescia, Lombardia Italy) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (Hardcover)

Feel the spirit of Fifties' Science Fiction, when men were brave, women in distress were saved from horrible monsters from outer space, scientific plausibility was loose, action was plenty and fast, and socio-philosophical theories were left to sociologists and philosophers! When Silverberg was overworked, over-prolific and didn't know he was to become a Science-Fiction legend.
My favourite is "Long live the Kejwa", where you can feel anticipated the wry humour of later stories like "Amanda and the Alien".

4.0 out of 5 stars Not Free SF Reader, June 4, 2008

By 

Blue Tyson "- Research Finished" (Legion clubhouse) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In the Beginning: Tales from the Pulp Era (Hardcover)

I was able to get this thanks to Subterranean selling through webscriptions. Sometimes even more interesting than the 'formula adventure stories' that the author calls them at times is his recounting of how they came to be.

Reasonably lengthy introductions to each piece detail his relationship with various editors of lower tier Science Fiction magazines at the time, and how they often used a stable of house writers, and multiple different pseudonyms.

Sometimes Silverberg would have several stories in the same issue, all under different names, of course. A man blessed with the ability to be able to writer incredibly fast, knocking out novelettes in a day or two when he had to.

It also includes him talking about his relationship with Randall Garrett.

The stories themselves are ok in general (3.25), supposed to be a bit of fun, in the main. You do of course have to realise that they were all written in the 1950s.

In the Beginning : Yokel with Portfolio - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Long Live the Kejwa - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Guardian of the Crystal Gate - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Choke Chain - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Citadel of Darkness - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Cosmic Kill - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : New Year's Eve'2000 A.D. - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : The Android Kill - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : The Hunters of Cutwold - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Come into My Brain - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Castaways of Space - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Exiled from Earth - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Second Start - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Mournful Monster - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : Vampires from Outer Space - Robert Silverberg
In the Beginning : The Insidious Invaders - Robert Silverberg


Handling the alien monster like that is a load of bull.

3 out of 5


Landing getaway leaves him worshipfully in over his head.

3.5 out of 5


Manjacked giant diamond bitchfight freedom.

3.5 out of 5


Breathing tax.

3.5 out of 5


"'and when one came, it was a female. She was over six feet tall, with a magnificent body only nominally covered by her brief clothing, and strapped to her hip was a gem-studded blaster. I stepped out behind her as she went past. "I hate to do this to a lady," I said apologetically, as I clubbed down on the back of her neck and grabbed the blaster from its holster in the same motion. She started to crumple before I had the gun out."
...

"A sudden burst of thought illuminated my mind. "If that's true, I think I know how I can carry this thing off. Let's go someplace where I can get out of all these spacesuits and into a slave's loincloth!"

3.5 out of 5


Mercurian lust, loyalty and zam-gums. On speed.

3 out of 5


Space Age celebration.

3 out of 5


Don't shoot me, I ain't no tin man.

3 out of 5


Sentient shooting.

3.5 out of 5


"Get out of my mind, Earthman!"

3.5 out of 5


Piss off Space Patrol boy, queen is just fine thanks.

3 out of 5


Alien theatre.

2.5 out of 5


"Look," I said. "I'm a Rehab. That means I've been through the Center, analyzed, monkeyed-with, headshrunk, rearranged. There isn't a criminal molecule left in me. I can't do it even if I wanted to. And I don't want to."

3.5 out of 5


Put me out of my misery.

3.5 out of 5


If those aliens aren't the bloodsuckers, must be the non-vegetarian ones.

3.5 out of 5


Not my brother anymore.

3 out of 5




3.5 out of 5