Robert Silverberg

4/5

Brilliantly clear, concise, and strong in voice, this is a stunning biopic of a man that has one-way telepathic power. David Selig spends his life receiving the thoughts and feelings of other, but nobody can either do the same for him, at least this way true during the early part of his life. The novel starts during his middle-aged years when his power is mysteriously on the decline, limiting his ability to connect with other people in the way that is most familiar to him.

It's a show more testament to Silverberg's strength as a storyteller that the central SF conceit of this novel is so rooted in reality that I hardly feels unreal at all. His prose is, as always, seemingly effortless. Witty and beautiful, the novel flies past your eyes with a sense of purpose unmatched by many authors. Silverberg's characterization of Selig is one of the best I've read in quite a while, and the heart of the novel. What we see is a flawed, unsympathetic, judgemental, and narcissistic person whose pain is relatable on so many levels. His inability to communicate with others alienates and isolates him, and when he uses his powers he feels like a peeping tom, a snake that pries into peoples brain without consent. There are many situations in which Selig is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. It's a moldering, squandered life that he leads, and we feel that in every sense of the word. Of course, this is all through his perspective, how he feels about himself. Dying Inside is the story of one mans self-hatred as the only thing that separates him from his peers slowly slips through his fingers. All of this is a critique on the 'modern' life of single men, but I can't help but wonder how much of these experiences were personal to Silverberg himself.

There are unfortunately some downright dated characterizations too, specifically when it comes to the one black character, and the parade of female characters that David dates and subsequently has sex with. It's clear the year in which it was written played a heavy roll in these generalizations, and a contributing factor into why I don't give it higher score. I haven't read Portnoy's Complaint, so I really can't say how much inspiration Silverberg took from it, but I gather that it's quite a lot. show less

Thought provoking and disquieting. I’m not sure if this is a four star book with three star execution, or a three star book with four star relevance - probably the latter.

The book has a pervasive, cloying patriarchal smugness and male randiness that made me want to take a shower whenever I spent time in this world. It is in many respects very dated, but at the same time it raises important questions about human nature and ways it organizes life. There’s a lot of misogyny here; women show more reduced to caregivers, breasts, buttocks, “slots.”

Still, reading this book along with Mockingbird by Tevis will offer a point of departure for your thoughts about what the past thought about the future and what we might think about it. In Mockingbird humanity’s descent into distracted solipsism and incompetence leads toward its own extinction under the guidance of not so benign AI intelligences; in this book, humanity decides the ultimate value is reproduction and proliferation, and a soulless reordering of everything to that one sole goal as god’s desire. In both worlds there are many drop outs, cast offs, rejects. Some kill themselves. Some are treated as pathogens and eliminated as such. The reader, as visitor, is invited to consider where she stands or would stand.

These worlds are closer than we might wish, and the now is at least as terrifying as these futures.

I think both these books are a worthwhile read and I commend them to you. Don’t forget to take a shower afterwards. show less

Really enjoyed this one, my first Robert Silverberg book. A wildly different response to The Population Bomb, which also inspired Make Room! Make Room! and Stand on Zanzibar and many others I'm forgetting, I'm sure. I thought it was a novel, but really it's a collection of seven short stories he wrote in the same setting: Urbmon 116, one of several thousand-story towers in the Chipitts sector of future earth.

Rather than strictly limiting population, the Urbmon's take 'be fruitful and show more multiply' seriously. Couples marry at very early ages and are encouraged to have many, many children. When the building is full, they build another.

I think Silverberg did a good job of remaining neutral on the world he was describing. So many of the other overpopulation sci-fi novels present a dystopian hellhole. It's logical and easy to do. But Silverberg shows life in the tower as quite pleasurable. The ugly side of life there (no privacy, rebellious people are unceremoniously dumped down the chute to be recycled, people are expected to provide sex on demand to anyone who asks) are shown, but not belabored. The reader is left to draw their own conclusions.

I want to point out: I had no idea my fellow sci-fi fans are so prudish. Reading other reviews of this book, you'd think it's going to be one of those old pornographic Greenleaf Classics. That is not at all the case. Sex is a big part of Urbmon life. They practice something called Nightwalking where men roam from floor-to-floor, apartment to apartment to sleep with others (men or women). This is a part of the world presented, but if you are expecting pages and pages of explicitly described intercourse, you are going to be disappointed. I didn't feel it detracted from the story.

Though Silverberg shows some latent sexism as it's the men who wander and the women who stay home. And though homo and hetero sex are equally accepted, only hetero is ever shown. It's a product of its' time.

There isn't really a plot. As mentioned, each chapter was originally a stand alone story, though all together they present a richly detailed future world. Characters mentioned in one story may star in another story, giving some continuity.

So a very good book. I'm glad I read it. My only real complaint is that I wish when compiling these, they had kept the original story titles attached. show less

3.5/5

Lew Nichols is a talented statistician, so talented in fact that he can use otherwise stochastic data combined with an uncanny knack for foresight to accurately predict future trends. He parlays this success into a job working for an upstart politician, eventually helping to elect him mayor of New York City. It is here that Lew meets Martin Carvajal, an old man with an ability that surpass Lew's. Caravjal can accurately predict specific future events down to the date and time. This show more ability scares Lew, but it also tempts him down a path that jeopardizes his entire life. The Stochastic Man is short, sweet, and questions our free will to change the events of our own lives as well as the course of history.

The story is set in the backdrop of New York City at the turn of the new millennium of 2000. Silverberg's pessimistic vision of a city wracked by extreme class/racial tension, assassinations, political vacuums, and barely sublimated violence is deftly drawn and prophetic. Silverberg spends just enough time on world building to give you the sense of things without bogging down the plot. A particularly memorable example is the casual mention of the "stump" of the Statue of Liberty after some bombing, and a refusal of the social elite to acknowledge it at a party. He also gives enough space for proper character development, so that by the end of the novel I felt that I actually knew the people involved. There were some moments of cringy descriptions of women which is something that I've come to expect from Silverberg, though I will say that here they are few and far between.

Another example of Silverberg's writing skill is the ease with which he writes. The reading experience is buttery smooth. I could've finished the entire book in one sitting. I was hooked immediately in the first few chapters. Silverberg strings the mystery of the story along with just the right amount of suspense and payoff to keep me turning the pages. The prose is so damn competent it hurts. There are some distinct passages of more adorned description, but most of the time he stays within a more practical and consumable style.

Both the plot and themes of The Stochastic Man would not be out of place in the oeuvre of Phillip K Dick. I can see in my mind's eye how that story plays out, and it's so different than this one. This could be a mind-bending, LSD infused trip, but Silverberg chooses to bound the scope of the work to it's own benefit. It's a work critical of the alienation and difference of experience that exists between the levels of social and economic class. There's a particularly powerful scene when Lew recognizes that distance and the privilege he has as he stares out of his penthouse window with his wife. The entire book is spent with people who belong to the highest tiers of class, and yet the desperation of the masses is felt everywhere. It's also a work that looks at the space in between determinism and complete free will., as Lew is torn in two by his mentor and the religion of his wife. It's the inner torment of Lew as he grapples with these themes that is the focus of the book.

The Stochastic Man didn't blow my socks off. There's no specific moment that I can point to that stands above and beyond. The ideas that it plays with have been explored before, and will be explored again. Yet in spite of that it's a rock solid piece of craftsmanship that I ripped through like kindling. Silverberg shows his years of experience writing, making for a well rounded and engaging novel that doesn't have any major issues. I'm still waiting to read a masterpiece from Silverberg, but I know that it must exist. show less