W - Novels

• PB: Signet, 1972, 174 pages
• PB: Bantam, 1983, 167 pages, ISBN 0-553-23279-7

From the cover blurb (Bantam):

Urban Monad 116: A lofty spire a thousand stories high where 880,000 souls live out their perfectly regulated lives in peace and plenty. But inside this glorious world are a few who dare to doubt and dream:

Aurea Holston, beautiful young bride, who fears leaving the only world she's ever known;

Dillon Chrimes, cosmos group popstar, who becoes one with the urbmon in an orgiastic, mind-shattering trip;

Jason Quevedo, historian, who gets his kicks from the perverse savagery of an earlier age;

Siegmund Kluver, virile young man-on-the-way-up, who sees the nightmare behind the urbmon's shining facade;

and Michael Statler, who dares to escape...

Nominated for a Hugo in 1972 for best novel, but withdrawn by Silverberg in favor of A Time of Changes, which was also nominated that year. As it turned out, neither won.

For a more detailed commentary (with spoilers), click here.

• HB: Follett, 1969
• PB: Ace, 1982, 240 pages (with a new introduction), ISBN 0-441-90923-X

From the cover blurb:

Bill Hastings was one in a million. He was the winner of a planet-wide contest, and the prize was a chance to spend a year working at the 1992 World's Fair. For the young xenology student, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

Fifty thousand miles above the Earth, a gigantic satellite moved in its elegant orbit. It would be Bill's home for a year, and host to hundreds of thousands of visitors. The 1992 World's Fair was to be an orbital extravaganza, and Bill Hastings thought that his dreams had come true. He had a lot to learn.