Collected Stories of Robert Silvereberg,

The first in a series of volumes of Silverberg's ( The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party ) Hugo and Nebula Award-winning stories among others, this collection serves as a gallery in which old and new fans may fall under the master's spell. Whether he has set his tale on the cold, unforgiving surface of Pluto or within a Los Angeles enslaved by aliens, Silverberg is unparalleled in dramatizing the human heart. The average marriage pales next to the intense passion achieved by a pair of loving telepaths separated by thousands of miles. A professional con man who sells bum pardons to prisoners in alien work camps finds himself bewitched by the eyes of the judge who must pass sentence on his crimes--a judge who, years earlier, was conned by him. And in the 35th century, when only one person in a million grows old, a devoted android searches the world for his aging, humiliated lover. Such stories resonate; however, when Silverberg becomes preoccupied with merely clever ideas, such as an ancient extraterrestrial computer bent on taking over the world, he's lost in space. But these very few failures are nothing more than fanciful what-ifs from an author whose work continues to expand the boundaries of the science fiction genre. (Oct.)