THE COLLECTED STORIES OF ROBERT SILVERBERG

Inaugural volume of a major Silverberg retrospective, featuring 24 substantial stories, 1981-88, with autobiographical introductions. Be warned, however, that the three longest—and possibly most successful—yarns here, ``Homefaring,'' ``Sailing to Byzantium,'' and ``The Secret Sharer,'' all have appeared independently as illustrated short novels (the latter two reviewed in these pages). Elsewhere, as befits a writer/editor of Silverberg's stature, there's no shortage of intriguing material in various moods and voices: computers, far-future flights of fancy, California, telepathy, aliens, multiple personalities, neo-pulp nasties, Pluto, cyberpunk, pulsars, prehistory, crime, alternate histories, probability, etc. Essential reading, and especially appropriate for collectors who passed up the relatively expensive single-volume novellas.