From multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg, Roma Eterna takes an in-depth look at an alternative history in which the Roman Empire survives into the twenty-first century and beyond. What would happen if Imperial Rome never fell? Roma Eterna, spanning fifteen hundred years of global history, follows the reign of the Roman Empire from its inception to the present day. Empire continues to expand, creeping across the globe and through the annals of history from the conquest of the Mayans to the first circumnavigational voyage, and finally the attempt of the Hebrews to flee Rome's tyranny by escaping to another planet. Originally published as a series of short stories, Roma Eterna presents a powerful new world written by an endlessly imaginative writer.

CONTENTS: ~ ~ SERIAL: Time Killer (Part 2 of 4) [Robert Sheckley]; NOVELETTES: Birds of a Feather [Robert Silverberg]; The Civilization Game [Clifford D. Simak]; SHORT STORIES: No Substitutions ]Jim Harmon]; People Soup [Alan Arkin]; ARTICLES: The First Spaceship [Willy Ley]; The Tin Age [H. L. Gold]

The years since first be gained the Starburst Crown have been difficult ones for Coronal Lord Prestimion and the vast, unfathoniable realm he rules. But finally peace has been restored to Majipoor. And now it is time for Prestimion to name the able Prince Dekkeret his succeeding Coronal and to descend to the Labyrinth as Pontifex. But a power from a dark past that both men believed was dead is stirring once again -- an evil more potent and devastating than either leader dares to remember. Once, decades past, a then knight-initiate Dekkeret had his dreams stolen from him. His quest for recovery led him to a remarkable helmetthat could invade the psyches of sleeping foes, a device the newly anointed Coronal Prestimion later utilized to defeat his enemy Dantirya Sambail, tyrant of the continent Zimroel. In the fires of civil war, the terrible weapon was destroyed forever -- or so it was believed. The noxious weed of rebellion was torn out at its roots but its seeds have borne frightening fruit. Dantirya Sambail is dead, and the hungry jackals who ran at his heels now scheme to recover his lost lands and power. At their head is the tyrant's former henchman Mandralisca -- a villain of great wiles and icy heart, who somehow has unleashed a devastating plague of the mind upon Prestimion's subjects, Dark visions are invading the sleep of those loyal to the Lords and the Lady of Majipoor -- soul-shattering scenes of madness and monstrosity, driving those inflicted to commit horrible, destructive acts. And the dark wave is flowing ever-closer to the throne, seeping beneath the doors of the 30,000 rooms of the towering edifice atop Castle Mount ... and into sacrosanct depths of the imperial Labyrinth itself. A new campaign for the soul of Majipoor has been declared -- and its catastrophic opening salvos have been fired in silence and in mystery. Once again Prestimion and Dekkeret have been called onto the battlefield of nightmare. But this time it will be a war to the death against a foe greater than all who came before: the master of murderous shadows who aspires to be King of all.

Up the Line is a ribald, Byzantine tale of time-tourism from multiple Nebula and Hugo Award-winning author Robert Silverberg. It's 2059 and Jud Elliott--former law clerk and failed Harvard history student--is at loose ends. Having left his previous job out of boredom, he finally takes a position as a Time Courier showing tourists around medieval and ancient Byzantium. Maybe that unfinished master's degree will come in handy after all ... Jud is careful and he (mostly) plays by the rules, not wanting to get on the wrong side of the Time Patrol. But, on one trip up the line, he meets and falls in love with his great-great-multi-great grandmother and suddenly the rules don't seem as important anymore ...

FIRST EDITION The world's most distinguished author of the literature of the fantastic presents his most extraordinary stories of worlds lost and dreams fulfilled... In his illustrious forty-five year career as a novelist and author of short fiction, Robert Silverberg has belonged in the company of the best writers of the 20th century. His writing has been compared to Conrad, Huxley, and Orwell. In this definitive collection Silverberg presents the novellas that have won him multiple Hugo and Nebula Award nominations, including his Nebula Award winning achievement, "Sailing To Byzantium." Here are the virtuoso performances of the third phase of Silverberg's astounding the Nebula Award nominee "Homefaring"; the Hugo Award nominee "The Secret Sharer"; "Thomas The Proclaimer" and "We Are For The Dark." If you are a lover of Silverberg's work or are simply looking for a place to begin a relationship with the literature of science fiction and fantasy, this is the place to start.

For young Prince Harpirias, the journey into the frozen tundra of remote Majipoor might well have been a death sentence. His mission? To rescue a party of scientists kidnapped by an uncivilized race who dwell beyond Majipoor's borders. He faces blizzards, ice storms, strange beasts, and barbarism, not knowing whether he'll return a hero--or not return at all.

The national bestselling saga of Robert Silverberg's stunning imagination continues in the first new hardcover Majipoor novel in nearly a decade. As a prequel to Silverberg's earlier Majipoor novels. Sorcerers of Majipoor provides a deep, dark vision for the background of the conflict inLord Valentine's Castle and Valentine Pontifex. Treachery and wizardry run rampant under the reign of the mighty Pontifex, as both the rightful and the unworthy heirs to the throne anxiously await his demise. Korsibar, son of the current Coronal, plots with his twin sister and ambitious companions to seize the power of the Coronal when his father ascends to the throne of the Pontifex. But the burdens of the crown and scepter exact more of a price than Korsibar is prepared to pay. His rival fights to take his appointed place as keeper of his beloved Majipoor...and to resbackse order to the utter chaos that has befallen their world.

Caught in the midst of a rebellion while visiting a friend thousands of miles from home, Joseph, the young heir to the great House Keilloran, one of the Masters who colonized the planet long ago, finds himself fighting for survival in enemy territory, through which he must travel while facing terrible dangers.Robert Silverberg is a SFWA Grandmaster and winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards.

"I am Orpheus, the maker of songs. Great Apollo came to me often and instructed me in the art of melody so that what came from my lyre could touch the heart even of a stone, and when I went to my mother Calliope in her cave she taught me the secrets of making verses that would hold people entranced the way a magical spell might hold them. And so music has flowed from me all my life as though from an inextinguishable fountain, which is to say that there has been music in the world since the beginning of time and that music will endure to time's end, and beyond it to the moment of beginning again; and so it was that a shaggy-haired Thracian princeling entered into his role in the universe." Gifted with the golden lyre, Orpheus--rumored son of the god Apollo, and yet recognized as the heir of Oeagros, King of Thrace--tells us of the tale of his life as he writes songs throughout the known world. From his role as teacher and spiritual adviser to the Ciconian people, to the profound love and loss of his beloved Eurydice, to his quest with Jason and the Argonauts to claim the Golden Fleece, Orpheus' songs of his life experiences help him sculpt a world that, without his music, would be devoid of the passion and purpose only a muse of his power could provide. Aware of his own fate before he sets out, Orpheus nevertheless continues on the path pre-ordained for him, to discover if knowing your future prevents you from experiencing your present with a sense of wonder and immediacy that can allow Orpheus to connect with the lives around him in order to fulfill his destiny.

With a mighty twist, the Space Ship Garden lunges into overdrive and shoots out into space. Ahead lies Alpha C IV, eerie world of three suns. But the Garden arrives on Alpha C right in the thick of a revolution against Earth. Treason! Then young cadet Larry Stark finds himself caught up in the revolution...on both sides!

This is an omnibus of four novels by Robert Silverberg, issued by the Science Fiction Book Club (not to be confused with the 1973 anthology of stories by the same title, edited by Silverberg). With an introduction by the author, and these novels: The Man in the Maze (1969); Nightwings (1969); Up the Line (1969); Dying Inside (1972).

Robert Silverberg is a prolific American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, a Grand Master of SF.

Book by Silverberg, Robert

Book

The stories collected here, written between August of 1987 and May of 1990, demonstrate that I still believe in the classical unities. Of course, what seems to us a unity now might not have appeared that way when H.G. Wells was writing his wonderful stories in the nineteenth century. Wells might have argued that my 'To the Promised Land' is built around two speculative fantastic assumptions, one that the Biblical Exodus from Egypt never happened, the other that it is possible to send rocketships to other worlds. But in fact we've sent plenty of rocketships to other worlds by now, so only my story's alternative-world speculation remains fantasy today. Technically speaking the space-travel element of the plot has become part of the given; it's the other big assumption that forms the central matter of the story. --Robert Silverberg, from his Introduction