When I was younger, Robert Silverberg was among my favorite science fiction authors. While an extraordinarily prolific author of novels, I appreciated him most for his short stories, which remain some of my all-time favorite reads. Every summer when the latest edition of the Year’s Best Science Fiction came out, his would be the first name I would look for in the table of contents, and if one of his stories were included it would invariably prove to be among the best in the collection.

This was why, when I saw a copy of this collection of his short stories in a used bookstore I eagerly snapped them up. The dozen stories inside are all from the first decade and a half of his writing career, and represent some of the best from his output during the era. Some of them I had read before, while others were new to me. The stories are:

“Passengers” – This was one of the stories I had read before. In it, a man living in a world where noncorporeal beings possess humans tries to connect with the woman he had spent the night with during his last possession. It’s one of Silverberg’s most famous stories, and it still holds up pretty well so long as you don’t think too hard about the premise

“Double Dare” – Two engineers participating in a contest with an alien species find out that there is a price to winning. This was the oldest story in the collection and one of Silverberg’s earliest works; while a fun tale it felt insubstantial compared to some of its weightier counterparts.

“The Sixth Palace” – Two men submit to the tests of a mysterious robot guarding an incalculable treasure. One of the stories that was new to me, I enjoyed it enormously for both its premise and its resolution.

“Translation Error” – An alien agent sent to hold back humanity’s development finds himself in his worst nightmare. It was only when I was part-way through this that I realized that I had read this story before, which gave me a rare opportunity to appreciate something anew which I had enjoyed before.

“The Shadow of Wings” – A xenolinguist is forced to overcome his fears when confronted with a unique opportunity. This was another story which I had read before that proved an enjoyable revisit for me, even if it doesn’t rank among Silverberg’s finest.

“Absolutely Inflexible” – Tasked with dealing with the threat posed by time travelers, a government bureaucrat finds himself caught in a unique trap. One of those paradox tales that seem to have been a staple of the short stories about time travel during that era, it was fun if perhaps a little predictable.

“The Iron Chancellor” – The robot chef programmed to help a family lose weight takes his task to extremes. This is perhaps the most famous of the stories in the collection, and it’s one of my all-time favorites of his.

“Mugwump Four” – A wrong number leads an ordinary man on an extraordinary adventure. I had read this story ages ago and did so again when I reread it. It’s impressive how much Silverberg can compact into a single tale.

“To the Dark Star” – Three very different scientists – a human, a modified human, and an alien – cope with interpersonal tensions while observing an astronomical phenomenon. Tense and disturbing, this was one of the stories from later in Silverberg’s career, and its differences make for a contrast with the older stories in this collection.

“Neighbor” – A powerful landowner receives an unusual request from his despised neighbor. There is something in this story that I just find so incredibly true about human nature, even if it isn’t something about which we should be proud.

“Halfway House” – Suffering from cancer, an industrialist seeks a cure from a unique place. Though the premise in this story is interesting, it doesn’t prove as effective as the other tales in this collection.

“Sundance” – A member of a team of humans on an alien world questions his mission to eradicate a native species. This was the story I liked the least, both because of Silverberg’s often abrupt shifts within it and for the cultural expropriation in which he engages with his central character.

While the book offers a set of stories as mixed in quality as other collection of its type, in this one the average quality is much higher than the norm. Together they offer a great representative sampling of Silverberg’s earlier work, and make for highly enjoyable reading for any fan of the genre.

We're in the middle of our third week of homeschooling, and it hasn't gone as well as I would have hoped. I don't know how well I'm doing with reinforcing skills; Spanish is especially challenging, as I can't provide him with the conversational opportunities that he requires. His teachers have been trying to provide support, but they've inundated us with so many emails that I just don't have the energy to wade through them.

All that being said, the experience hasn't been without its fun parts. Today I decided to build my son's reading/ELA activity around Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder," which was part of the Tales in Time collection that I had (finally!) finished reading. He was a little uncertain, but agreed to go along with it, and given the choice between reading it on his own or having it read to him he chose the latter, so I spent about a half hour reading the story to him.

And I had an absolute blast doing so. Though for a couple of minutes I worried that he was drifting off, he was engaged throughout the story, and at one point asked a question that anticipated a plot development a few paragraphs later. His review of the story was less than glowing (it earned a solid "meh" from him) and we had a little difficulty with the writing activity afterward, he seemed to enjoy the experience. Best of all, as I was tucking him in tonight he asked if we could read another story for tomorrow. I couldn't have asked for a better confirmation of what was the highlight of my day.

Recently while shopping at a used bookstore I found a battered collection of Ace Double science fiction novels from the 1950s in their giveaway bin. While they were published before my time, seeing them brought back fond memories of the cheap mass-market paperback novels I enjoyed as a youth, some of which were reprints of these Ace Doubles split into in single-book format. The combination of availability and nostalgia proved too irresistible to pass up, so I decided to pick them up and indulge in a trip down into the past's future.

I started with this pair of novels. The first one I read was Across Time, which was written by Donald A. Wollheim using his pen name "David Grinnell." It was an appropriate place start for reasons I didn't appreciate until afterward, as Wollheim is the editor who invented the Ace Doubles series. He is regarded as one of the most important, perhaps even the most important, figure in the history of science fiction publishing, and has been recognized for all he did in that area (his daughter credits him as well with kick-starting the modern fantasy field by publishing the first edition of the Lord of the Rings trilogy in paperback, so there's that, too). Wollheim was modest about his skills as an author, though, and (to borrow from Churchill) he has much to be modest about, as his novel is a rather pedestrian tale involving flying saucers and a love triangle between two brothers and a woman. While there are some nifty elements in the book — including a sentient warship that is probably the first of its type in science fiction — overall the outcome was so predictable as to rob the book of narrative tension.

After finishing Wollheim's novel I flipped the book over and started Robert Silverberg's Invaders from Earth. And once I began it, I found myself drawn into a fantastic story in which a 21st century expedition to Ganymede finds both an inhabited world and one with valuable minerals, and an advertising firm is hired to pave the way for exploitation. The plot revolved around one of the men spearheading the campaign, whom the firm sends to Ganymede to give his ideas added verisimilitude, only for him to have a crisis of conscience when he realizes just what he's done. There's a nice Mad Men vibe to the tale (unsurprising for a novel written in 1957 that's set in an ad firm), as well as an anti-imperialist commentary that is unusual for science fiction novels of the time. It was definitely the highlight of the pair, and it left me eager to see what other gems I might find in my newly-acquired trove.

I'm really liking the second novel. So far Silverberg's story is focused on the development of an ad campaign by the protagonist's agency designed to justify the subjugation of the Ganymedeans, involving their dehumanization and the creation of fictional atrocities. This alone makes the book interesting reading, but in spite of its 2044 setting there's also a enjoyable Mad Men vibe to the setting, which makes sense for a book published in 1957.

I started the second novel, which is Invaders from Earth, and though I'm only 21 pages in it has a far more interesting opening: a 21st century expedition to Ganymede finds both an inhabited world and one with valuable minerals, and an advertising firm is hired to pave the way for exploittaion. For a premise like that it seems to be developing in a far more anti-imperialist direction than I've come to expect from novels from the period; usually they're only anti-imperialist when Americanized humans are the ones being subjugated.