  robert silverberg (born january 15, 1935) 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. ==biography== ===early years=== silverberg was born in brooklyn, new york. a voracious reader since childhood, he began submitting stories to science fiction magazines during his early teenage years. he attended columbia university, receiving a ba in english literature in 1956. during that time he wrote the juvenile novel revolt on alpha c, published by thomas y. crowell in 1955 with the cover notice "a gripping story of outer space". and he won his first hugo in 1956 as the "best new writer". for the next four years, by his own count, he wrote a million words a year, mostly for magazines and ace doubles. he used his own name as well as a range of pseudonyms during this era, and often worked in collaboration with randall garrett. (the silverberg/garrett collaborations also used a variety of pseudonyms, the best-known being robert randall.) from 1956 to 1959, silverberg routinely averaged 5 published stories a month, and had over 80 stories published in 1958 alone. in 1959 the market for science fiction collapsed, and silverberg turned his ability to write copiously to other fields, from carefully researched historical non-fiction to softcore pornography. ===literary growth=== in the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were becoming more literarily ambitious. frederik pohl, then editing three science fiction magazines, offered silverberg carte blanche in writing for them. thus inspired, silverberg returned to the field that gave him his start, paying far more attention to depth of character development and social background than he had in the past and mixing in elements of the modernist literature he had studied at columbia. the novels he wrote in this period are considered far superior to his earlier work. perhaps the first book to indicate the new silverberg was to open the sky, a fixup of stories published by pohl in galaxy magazine, in which a new religion helps 
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