Robert Silverberg's many trapdoors : critical essays on his science fiction
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Robert Silverberg's many trapdoors : critical essays on his science fiction
（Contributions to the study of science fiction and fantasy, no. 53）
Greenwood Press, 1992
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Note
Bibliography: p. [141]-150
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
One of the most popular, prolific, and important science fiction writers, Robert Silverberg is given penetrating analyses by major scholars and critics of the genre. Extending beyond the conventions of popular culture and pulp science fiction, the seven essayists assess Silverberg's body of work as being manifest of the modernist literary tradition, exploring techniques, such as irony, and themes, such as the fragility of identity, utopia and dystopia, and spirituality and transcendence.
Noted Silverberg scholar Thomas Clareson contributes an overview of Silverberg's literary career from his first story published in 1954 to the present, and the editors provide a bibliography of his fiction and selected secondary studies, referring to Clareson's definitive bibliography. The trapdoor metaphor used in the title relates to an observation by critic Russell Letson on the complexity of reading Silverberg, which he compares to an experience of one of Silverberg's characters: What seems to be a firm foundation for reality may in fact turn out to be a trapdoor.
Table of Contents
Preface Introduction by Thomas D. Clareson Robert Silverberg: An Overview by Russell Letson An Ironic Deflation of the Superman Myth: Literary Influence and Science Fiction Tradition in Dying Inside by Edgar L. Chapman Repetition and Reversal: Robert Silverberg's Ironic Twist Endings by Joseph Francavilla Personal Identity in the Majipoor Trilogy, To Live Again, and Downward to the Earth by John H. Flodstrom Robert Silverberg's The World Inside as Ambiguous Dystopia by Frank Dietz Silverberg's Ambiguous Transcendence by Robert Reilly On Silverberg's Tom O'Bedlam by Colin Manlove Bibliography Index
by "Nielsen BookData"