Free The Iron Chancellor by Robert Silverberg Page A

Matter of Form” (1938) was a long novelette, and he brought practical as well as theoretical lessons to his writers, who he unleashed to develop these ideas. (John Campbell of course, had also done this in the 40s and continued in the 50s to be a directive editor.) It is not inconceivable that many or even most of the contents of the 1950’s
Galaxy
were based on ideas originated by Gold: golden technology becomes brass and jails its human victims when it runs amok—is certainly one of his most characteristic.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
    Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first story to
Nebula
in 1954 and two years later won the Most Promising New Author Hugo Award. He published more than a dozen novels and several hundred short stories in the genre before 1960, and then embarked upon an early retreat, returning at an entirely new level of literary accomplishment in 1962 with the famous short story “To See The Invisible Man” (published in
Galaxy
’s sister magazine
Worlds of Tomorrow
). Over the next fourteen years, Silverberg produced in science fiction an unparalleled body of work at the height of literary achievement and conceptual rigor. Forty novels and three times as many short stories plumbed every aspect of science fiction and significantly advanced it:
Born with the Dead, Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Thorns, The Stochastic Man, Up The Line
, and finally
Shadrach in the Furnace
in 1976. He won every award in the field multiple times. After
Shadrach
, Silverberg went silent for two years, then returned with the long fantasy novel
Lord Valentine’s Castle
and went on to a major career in fantasy, while continuing to publish science fiction novels, three of them in collaboration with Isaac Asimov. He continued to win Hugo and Nebula Awards at the shorter lengths and published a dozen stories in
Playboy
. He has also edited notable anthologies such as
The Science Fiction Hall Of Fame, Legends
, and two Nebula Award annuals. A resident of California since the early seventies, Silverberg continues to write and edit prolifically. A novelette titled “The Way They Wove the Spells in Sippulgar” appeared in 2009 in the 60th anniversary issue of
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
. Subterranean Press is publishing his science fiction short stories in several volumes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR OF THE eFOREWORD
    David Drake, a veteran of the Vietnam Tank Corps, is the author of the Hammers Slammers series which over the last quarter century has become the most successful military science fiction series in the history of the genre. He has also published many bestselling fantasy novels and short stories in
Omni, Analog
, and elsewhere.

ABOUT THE JACKET
    COVER IMAGE: “Relics of an Ancient Race” by Ed Emshwiller
        Ed Emshwiller (1925–1990) was
Galaxy
’s dominant artist through the 1950s. His quirky images, perspective, and off-center humor provide perhaps the best realization of the magazine’s iconoclastic, satirical vision. Emshwiller was—matched with Kelly Freas—science fiction’s signature artist through the decade and a half initiated by this color illustration. He and Carol Emshwiller, the celebrated science fiction writer, lived in Long Island during the period of his prominence in science fiction. (Nonstop Press published
Emshwiller: Infinity X Two: The Art & Life of Ed and Carol Emshwiller
, a joint biography and collection of their work in visual and literary medium, in 2007.) In the early 70s, Emshwiller became passionately interested in avant-garde filmmaking, and that passion led him to California, where he spent his last decades deeply involved in the medium of independent film and its community. He abandoned illustration: in Carol’s words “When Ed was through with something he was really through with it.” He died of cancer in 1990. His son, Peter Emshwiller, published a fair amount of science fiction in the 80s and 90s.

THE IRON CHANCELLOR: Professionalism at the Level of