Order [book in series=yearoffirstbook.book# (eg 2014.01), stand-alone or one-author collection=3333.pubyear, multi-author anthology=5555.pubyear, SFM/MM=5000, interview=1111]: 1968

Hawksbill Station by Robert Silverberg

Although it had been over 45 years since I initially read Robert Silverberg’s novella “Hawksbill Station,” several scenes were as fresh in my memory as if I had read them just yesterday; such is the power and the vividness of this oft-anthologized classic. Originally appearing in the August ’67 issue of Galaxy magazine, the novella did not come to my teenaged attention till the following year, when it was reprinted in a collection entitled World’s Best Science Fiction 1968. Silverberg later expanded his 20,000-word story to novel form,

The Masks of Time by Robert Silverberg

I had long thought that Philip K. Dick‘s 1964-’66 period was the most intensely productive and prolific streak that any sci-fi author of note has ever enjoyed, with nine major novels produced during those three years. But as it turns out, Robert Silverberg, seven years P.K.’s junior, has got him beat by a mile. During the three-year period 1967-’69, Silverberg somehow managed the superhuman feat of releasing no less than 15 novels — six in ’67, three in ’68 and six again in ’69 — and all of them,