Robert Silverberg’s The Face of the Waters: Out of Print No More
Robert Silverberg opens his novel THE FACE OF THE WATERS with an epigraph from the book of Genesis:
“And the earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
This is followed by a passage from Joseph Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea:
“The ocean has no compassion, no faith, no law, no memory.
Its fickleness is to be held true two man’s purposes only be an undaunted resolution and by sleepless, armed, jealous vigilance in which, perhaps, there has always been more hate than love.”
Then the novel itself begins on a ship suspended between two immense, inaccessible voids. Perhaps this is a reflection on life itself: our short time of living is a suspension between the void of pre-existence and that absence after death. As with so much of Silverberg’s writing, the adventure, aliens, space travel, and time voyages is accompanied by deep philosophical probing into the essence of humanity and life itself. Literary fiction, with a science-fiction patina.
That deep search is what drew us to publish a new edition of The Face of the Waters, Silverberg’s novel that has been out of print for decades.
We are not alone in our admiration for this classic.
House of the Dragon author George R.R. Martin calls The Face of the Waters, “one of the enduring classics of science fiction.” And Publishers Weekly, reviewing our new release, raves, “This is hard sci-fi done right.”
Three Rooms Press is thrilled to bring Robert Silverberg’s The Face of the Waters back in circulation. Order directly from Three Rooms Press here or wherever fine books are sold.
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