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The Pain Peddlers (Introduction)

Robert Silverberg

First published June 2021
Type Essay
Series Silverberg's Essays: Own Work


Untitled, unsigned introduction to the short story.

Essay starts: "This was a story I wrote for Frederik Pohl's magazine Galaxy in November, 1962. He had inveigled me back into writing science fiction after I had dropped out for a couple of years, by offering to buy anything I wrote for him so long as I didn't hand in an absolute stinker."

Essay finishes: "How soon it would come about, and with what degree of intensity, were nothing I was actually predicting back there in 1962, but the way things turned out made me seem endowed with the gift of prophecy and the story has gathered quite a bit of fame over the years as an example of the way science fiction foretells things to come." [Source: PR# 834559]

Date Publication Publisher Type Page
June 2021 Cover Needle in a Timestack Gollancz / Orion Collection 39|39.1
June 2021 Cover Needle in a Timestack Gollancz / Orion Collection |38