The Fredösphere

Last week, a streak of sub-optimal health left me with extra time for light reading.  Robert Silverberg's Roma Eterna filled the time.  Although no one had particularly recommended it to me, I hoped I would enjoy its scenario, an alternate history wherein the Roman Empire endures to the present day.

Silverberg is quite the phenomenon in sci-fi publishing, although I didn't recognize his name.  Turns out he's authored a long list of books and won the Hugo and Nebula awards multiple times.  He must be great, no?

This book is a stinkeroony.  It's a bucket of sludge.  As I read each page, a perverse admiration for the man grew within me.  So little talent, so little effort, yet somehow he has built this fabulous writing career.  What an achievement!

Silverberg can't design interesting characters or plots.  His speculative ideas show evidence of very little thought.  What is the appeal of this guy?  I decided to find something from his earlier days, one of his more admired works.  I took home Nightwings, which won a Hugo award.  I read the first two paragraphs, and suddenly, I recalled a long drive to Florida years ago, when we filled the time by listening to books on tape.  Nightwings was one of those books.  I remember the same feelings, only stronger; the same disgust combined with a kind of admiration:  how did this pile of crap ever get published?

Here a particularly memorable passage from Roma Eterna:

I understood now what was meant when women said that Greek men make love like poets and Romans like engineers.  What I had never realized until that moment was that engineers have skills that many poets never have, and that an engineer could be capable of writing fine poetry, but would you not think twice about riding across a bridge that had been designed or built by a poet?

Ooooooookay.