Description

Robert Silverberg’s Monsters and Things edited by Stephen Jones and illustrated by Randy Broecker

Trade Paperback – Drugstore Indian Press – May 2023 – 512 pages

When you think of Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Robert Silverberg, you most probably think, “Master of Science Fiction”. Or, perhaps, considering his 1980 novel Lord Valentine’s Castle and the other books and stories in the author’s “Majipoor” series, you may consider him a “Master of Fantasy”. However, it is probably highly unlikely that most people would ever consider Bob to be a “Master of Horror”.

And yet, there was a time—in the late 1950s—when Robert Silverberg was churning out all kinds of fiction at a prolific rate: science fiction, crime fiction, men’s adventure fiction, softcore porn and, yes, even horror fiction!  In those days he was turning out an estimated million words a year, necessitating the use of multiple pseudonyms. Many of the stories published in this volume have never been reprinted before—they are drawn from a wide variety of magazines, from Fantastic and Super-Science Fiction to such rarities as Monster Parade and Monsters and Things.

In the following pages you will find vampires, werewolves, ghouls, mad scientists and, yes, monsters and things—both alien and terrestrial. I have selected these twenty-seven stories because I not only thought they were entertaining, but perhaps more importantly, that they deserved to be rescued from obscurity.