Winner of the Hugo Award: This classic is an evocative look at a crumbling Earth of the far future and a human race struggling to survive (George R. R. Martin).
Roum isa city built on seven hills. They say it was a capital of manin one of the earlier cycles. I knew nothing of that, for my guild wasWatching, not Remembering. For a thousand years, mankind has lived under the threat of invasion from an alien race. After the oceans rose and the continents were reshaped, people divided into guilds Musicians, Scribes, Merchants, Clowns, and more. The Watchers wander the earth, scouring...

A collection of six critically acclaimed novellas by science fiction Grand Master Robert Silverberg-including the Nebula Award-winning "Sailing to Byzantium" and "Born with the Dead" Robert Silverberg's novellas open the door to new worlds: In "Born with the Dead," a woman wills her body to be "rekindled" after death, allowing her to walk among the living, while her husband is left in the impossible position of accepting her death when he can still see her. In the Nebula Award-nominated story "Homefaring," the time-traveling narrator finds himself trapped in the consciousness of a lobsterlike...

A thrilling retelling of the Epic of Gilgamesh, by one of the greatest storytellers of his generation Gilgamesh's appetite for wine, women, and warfare is insatiable. As the King of Uruk, he oppresses his people and burdens his city. To temper his excesses, the gods create Enkidu, Gilgamesh's equal, who becomes his greatest friend. Together they wander the kingdom as brothers, conquering demons until a cruel twist changes Gilgamesh's path forever. Two parts god and one part man, Gilgamesh is mortal-a fate he now resolves to overcome, no matter what the price. And so he embarks on another...

The stories here, all of them written between March of 1972 and November of 1973, mark a critical turning point in my career. Those who know the three earlier volumes have traced my evolution from a capable journeyman, very young and as much concerned with paying the rent as he was to advancing the state of the art, into a serious, dedicated craftsman now seeking to leave his mark on science fiction in some significant way. Throughout the decade of the 1960s I had attempted to grow and evolve within the field of writing I loved building on the best that went before me, the work of Theodore...

"By the time this present group of stories was written I had passed through the cultural turbulence that engulfed nearly everyone's life in the wild, stormy period we know as "the Sixties," which for me had actually lasted from 1968 to 1974 or 1975. I had come through my own angry four-year-long retirement from writing in the middle 1970s, and was working again at a steady pace, though not with the frenetic prolificacy of the pre-retirement years. At the beginning of this period my personal life was still pretty chaotic, a carryover from all that Sixties madness, and plenty of new chaos was...

Journeying through space in search of relics from the past, a motley team of explorers happens upon an astonishing discovery
Graduate student Tom Rice is thrilled to embark on his first deep-space archeological expedition. He is part of a team from Earth, venturing out in search of artifacts from a civilization that ruled the universe many millennia ago. Called the High Ones, the members of this long-gone society left tantalizing clues about their history and culture scattered throughout space. One such clue, a message cube containing footage of the ancient ones, is more...

After seven hundred thousand years underground, one tribe emerges to explore the new world
The time of falling death stars ushered in the Long Winter eons of cold that caused plants and animals to vanish from Earth and drove people to take refuge in underground cocoons. Human ingenuity had never faced a greater challenge. For seven hundred thousand years, generation after generation was born and died below the Earth s surface. But now, one small tribe is sensing change. Chieftain Koshmar is sure that the New Springtime is near, so she leads her people above ground to explore the...

Humans have emerged to reclaim the Earth after the Long Winter. But they never anticipated the battle that awaited them . . .
As Earth thaws after the Long Winter, the remaining human tribes journey from beneath the continent to the fertile land above. But the hjjk, an ancient insectlike race that remained on Earth s surface throughout the frozen eons, stand in their way. Keeping a tight grip on their power, the hjjks are the chief barrier to the people s further expansion in the New Springtime. When Kundalimon, a human who has lived with the hjjk for seventeen years, arrives as an...

Two enthralling novels by Robert Silverberg about a future in which the minds of the living can be changed for a price often with dire consequences
In To Live Again, thanks to the Scheffing Institute, death is not the end. For a hefty fee, the soul bank stores the personas of those who have died and inserts them into the brains of willing, living hosts. It s a process that integrates the two minds, imbuing the host with a menu of highly valuable abilities, memories, and traits. The more personas one absorbs, the greater his social status. When banking mogul Paul Kaufmann...