Fri 15 Mar 2024
SF Diary Review: ROBERT SILVERBERG “Hawksbill Station.”
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[9] Comments
ROBERT SILVERBERG “Hawksbill Station”. Novella. First appeared in Galaxy SF, August 1967. Reprinted in World’s Best Science Fiction: 1968, edited by Terry Carr & Donald A. Wollheim (Ace, paperback, 1967). First collected in The Reality Trip and Other Implausibilities (Ballantine, paperback, 1973). Expanded to the novel of the same title (Doubleday, hardcover, 1968). Nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1968 for Best Novella of 1967.
Governments of the 21st Century have found Hawksbill Station, located two billions years in Earth’s past, an excellent spot for deported political agitators. Jim Barrett, with greatest seniority, is the acknowledged king whose kingdom is going completely insane. A crisis seems to form with the new arrival of Lew Hahn, who is strangely different.
The ending is a letdown from what goes before, is perhaps too simple in comparison with the masterful construction that precedes. It could be the background for a much longer story.
Rating: ****
March 16th, 2024 at 7:15 am
Maybe Silverberg got tired of it, or got rushed, or just got hacky.
March 16th, 2024 at 8:15 pm
What I’ve read online, the book was an expansion of the novella, but could it be that the novella (in magazine form) was a condensed version of the novel? Inquiring minds want to know.
March 16th, 2024 at 8:48 am
By this time Silverberg had un-retired from science fiction and was beginning to show the world his true talent. I consider this story a middle-stage Silverberg. Much greater things lay before him.
March 16th, 2024 at 8:21 pm
Some authors, and I’m thinking Roger Zelazny now, arrive on the scene fully blown, while others, such as Silverberg start with several years’ worth of readable but still mostly mediocre work. Then all of a sudden, things change. Woosh!
Doesn’t happen to everyone, mind you.
March 16th, 2024 at 10:11 pm
Steve, I agree with your assessment. Writers like John Varley started winning SF awards right away. John Brunner wrote a lot of mediocre SF and suddenly wrote classics like STAND ON ZANZIBAR, JAGGED ORBIT, and THE SHEEP LOOK UP.
March 17th, 2024 at 12:27 am
Quite right on both, George. Great examples. Another who started winning awards right away was Samuel R. Delany.
March 17th, 2024 at 12:34 am
Middling Silverberg just before he made the literary turn that marked his best work.
March 17th, 2024 at 2:27 pm
Am I the only one who’s noticed that the founding premise of HAWKSBILL STATION (political enemies facing exile in time) resembles a STAR TREK episode that aired nearly two years after Silverberg’s story first appeared?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Our_Yesterdays_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)
March 31st, 2024 at 4:45 pm
I’m pretty sure the novel was an expansion.
I agree the ending (though better-handled in the novel) is not quite brilliant, but good enough.
Silverberg was back to trying to write his best work each time out, as opposed to the pro hack he was mostly doing after his earliest career.