This image is the cover for the book Hot Sky at Midnight

Hot Sky at Midnight

“Intelligent and engaging science fiction” set against the backdrop of an environmental apocalypse from the SF Grand Master (The Washington Post).

Not so very far in the future, the icecaps have melted and many coastal communities have been flooded out. The ozone layer is destroyed. Some areas are livable with breathing masks and injections that protect the skin from the now-deadly rays of the sun, but the only real refuge—for those who can afford it—has become the near-space orbital colonies built and run by private companies.

Valparaiso Nuevo is one of these colonies—a haven and a center of action for hustlers, conspirators, and people looking for an edge. It is also the target of a disillusioned group of humans who become embroiled in a scheme to overthrow it. Their goals are individually motivated but the deadly combination of ambition, distrust, greed, stupidity, and lust leads to a dramatic conclusion that replicates in miniature the history of man’s destruction of his own living space on the planet. A bleak picture of future Earth and a complex plot peopled with dark, rich characters, comes together as one of Silverberg’s finer novels.

“Silverberg focuses on his characters and their ruined world, providing a convincing portrayal of life in a greenhouse effect-cursed future. . . . [He] delivers powerful images of a world blighted by ecological abuse, and a satisfying novel as well.” —Publishers Weekly

“It’s definitely major Silverberg and as such deserves all the readers it will undoubtedly get.” —Booklist

Robert Silverberg

Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) sold his first science fiction stories to the lower-grade pulps in the mid-fifties, moved swiftly to the three prestigious magazines (Astounding, Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) and as his style deepened and themes expanded in through the next reached the first rank of science fiction writers. He is regarded as the greatest living writer of science fiction, an SFWA Grandmaster, ex-President (in the 1960’s) of that organization, winner of five Nebulas, four Hugos and many other domestic and foreign awards. Among his famous novels are Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, Downward to the Earth, A Time of Changes; his novella Born with the Dead (1974) is perhaps the finest work of that length published within the genre. Shifting to a predominating fantasy in the late 1970’s (Lord Valentine’s Castle and the attendant Majipoor Series), Silverberg continued to write science fiction and won a Nebula in 1986 for the novella Sailing to Byzantium, and Hugos for the novelettes Gilgamesh in the Outback and Enter a Soldier: Later, Enter Another. He was editor of the long-running original anthology series New Dimensions and of important reprint anthologies such as The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Alpha, and The Arbor House Treasury of Modern Science Fiction. 

Open Road Media