title: To Be Continued: The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg
author: Robert Silverberg
description: Beginning with his very first sale, "Gorgon Planet," Hugo and Nebula award&ndash;winner Silverberg (<I>A Time of Changes) </I>collects 24 stories from the prolific first five years of his career (1953&ndash;1958), each piece with a lively headnote about its genesis, magazine venue and editor. While learning his craft and churning out copy to pay the rent, Silverberg imitated the styles of well-known writers, with such stories as "The Songs of Summer," which borrows the technique of multiple viewpoints from William Faulkner to tell a first contact tale, and "The Silent Colony," which seeks to replicate Robert Sheckley's clarity. Silverberg also wrote stories to match cover art, a literary exercise that resulted in "Why?" and in the often-anthologized "Sunrise on Mercury." Though none of his best-known or award-winning stories are included, these selections, which Silverberg deems the best of his early era, illustrate his apprenticeship and presage the Grand Master he has become. <I>(Nov.)</I> <BR>Copyright &copy; Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: **HAWKSBILL STATION**
  
   **Robert Silverberg**
  
  _Silverberg is a professional writer to his fingertips who, at the ripe old_
  _age of thirty-three, already has a lifetime of work behind him. I_
  _commissioned an article from him for a science fiction magazine in 1953,_
  _his first professional sale, and I feel somewhat like the man who tapped_
  _the bomb with the hammer to see if it was live. In 1956 Bob was_ _awarded a
  Hugo as the Most Promising New Writer of the Year, and he_ _grabbed it without
  even slowing down. He has written at least thirty SF_
  
  _novels, and over five hundred stories. But for the past few years he has_
  _worked away from science fiction, doing both fiction and nonfiction. It is_
  _a pleasure now to welcome him home. They were right in 1956._
  
  _"Hawksbill Station" is a major story by a major writer. The promise_ _they
  awarded has certainly been fulfilled._
  
  I
  
  Barrett was the uncrowned king of Hawksbill Station. He had been there the
  longest; he had suffered the most; he