Ted Kennedy, advertising executive for the Ganymede Project, is made aware of a plan for genocide, for the murder of all the peaceful natives of Ganymede in furtherance of commerce...and it is his decision as to whether he collaborates with, facilitates this genocide or - by opposing it, by bringing the truth to the public - he risks not mere failure but utter destruction.
Robert Silverberg's comment on his novel: ..."it involves a Madison Avenue hoax involving a nonexistent colony on Ganymede being worked up for political purposes, some sort of cynical disinformation campaign of the kind that was science fiction in l958 but is everyday news these days."
Everyday news and, of course, the premise of the successful and frighteningly premonitory film, Wag the Dog.
Ted Kennedy had a premonition the night before. It came, as so many
premonitions do, in the form of a dream. Guns blazed, innocent people
died, fire spread over the land. Looming thermonuclear mushrooms hung in
the skies. He stirred fitfully, sighed, nearly awoke, and sank back into
sleep. But when morning came he felt pale and weary; he ended the
insistent buzz of the alarm with an impatient wrist-snap and dangled his
legs over the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes. The sound of splashing
water told him that his wife was already awake and in the shower.
He had never awakened easily. Still groggy, he shambled across the
bedroom to the cedar chest, groped for his robe, and headed for the
kitchen. He punched buttons on the autocook, setting up breakfast. One
of these mornings, he thought wryly, he'd be so sleepy he'd order steak
sandwiches on toast instead of the usual bacon.
Marge was out of the shower and drying herself with all her awesome
early-morning vigor when he returned to the bedroom to dress.
"Breakfast up?" she asked.
Kennedy nodded and fumbled in the closet for his best suit, the dark
green one with red lace trim. He would need to look good today; whatever
the conference on Floor Nine was, it was bound to be important, and it
wasn't every day a third-level public relations man got summoned to
Floor Nine.
"You must have had a bad dream last night," Marge said suddenly. "I can
tell. You're still brooding over it."
"I know. Did I wake you up?"
She smiled, the bright sudden smile that so astonished him at 5 A.M.
They had always been different that way -- he the late riser who was
still fresh long past midnight; she buoyant and lively from the earliest
morning hours till the middle of the evening. "You didn't wake me up,
no. But I can see the dream's still with you. Tell me about it -- and
hurry up. You don't want to miss the car pool."
"I dreamed we were at war," he said.
"War? With whom?"
He hesitated. "I don't know. I mean, I don't remember any of the
motivation. But it was a terrible war... and I have the nagging feeling
we started it."
"How could there possibly be a war? Everyone's at peace, darling! It's
been that way for years. There aren't going to be any more wars on
Earth, Ted."
"Maybe not on Earth," he said darkly.
He tried to laugh it off, and by the time he had finished breakfast some
of the irrational fear-tide had begun to recede. They ate quietly.
Kennedy was never much of a breakfast-table conversationalist. It was
nearly 6 A.M. by the time they finished and Marge had dumped the dishes
into the washer; the sun was rising now over the low Connecticut hills.
He finished dressing, tugging at his collar to keep his braided
throat-cord from throttling him, and gave his epaulets a light dusting
of powdered gold. Marge remained in her gown; she worked at home,
designing house furnishings and draperies.
At 6:18 sharp he was on the porch of his home, and at 6:20 the shiny
yellow '44 Chevrolet-Cadillac drew up outside, Alf Haugen at the wheel.
Haugen, a stocky, meatyfaced man with bright sharp eyes, worked at the
desk behind Kennedy's in the Steward and Dinoli office, and this was his
week to drive the car-pool auto. Of the six of them, Haugen had by far
the best car, and he enjoyed flaunting it.
Kennedy half-trotted down the walk to Haugen's car.
Born in Brooklyn in l935, Robert Silverberg attended Erasmus Hall High School and Columbia University (BA, l956) before becoming a full-time freelance writer immediately upon his graduation from college. At the time of that graduation, Silverberg was already making $l0,000 a year, selling science fiction and other genre material to a wide range of markets; his first novel, REVOLT ON ALPHA C had been published in l955. Early collaborative stories and novels with Randall Garrett were published in the leading ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION as were more than 20 stories by Silverberg alone in those years.
Silverberg was from the outset a prolific and highly admired science fiction writer - a Hugo for most promising new writer awarded in l957 at the London World Science Fiction Convention confirmed this - but when the pulp markets suffered near-collapse in l958 he turned from science fiction to non-fiction YA books and consumer magazine articles which made him prominent in those fields. "By the time I was 25," Silverberg has said, "I had sold more than l2 million words and felt that I had worn away my fingerprints." When he returned to science fiction in the mid-l960's he did so with an almost immediate flood of short stories and novels which established him as the finest science fiction writer of his generation and one of the greatest in the history of the field. (In l999, Silverberg finished sixth in the LOCUS MAGAZINE reader poll for the best science fiction writer; he was behind only Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, LeGuin and Phil Dick, third among living writers). Novels such as THE BOOK OF SKULLS, THORNS, THE MAN IN THE MAZE, UP THE LINE, DYING INSIDE, SHADRACH IN THE FURNACE, A TIME OF CHANGES (Nebula Award, l97l), DOWNWARD TO THE EARTH and THE STOCHASTIC MAN were high literary achievements; short stories and novellas like PASSENGERS (Nebula Award, l969), BORN WITH THE DEAD (Nebula Award, l975), THE FEAST OF ST. DIONYSIUS, GOOD NEWS FROM THE VATICAN (Nebula Award, l97l), ISHMAEL IN LOVE, were regarded as comprising the best such body of work in science fiction. Silverberg once again left the field, more briefly than before, in the late l970's but returned with the bestselling fantasy novel, LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE in l980 and with a subsequent series of novels (some of these sequels to LORD VALENTINE in the so-called Majipoor sequence; others such as THE ALIEN YEARS or TOM O'BEDLAM were self-standing) and short stories. These latter included award-winning work: SAILING TO BYZANTIUM won the Nebula for best novella in l985. GILGAMESH IN THE OUTBACK and ENTER A SOLDIER won Hugo Awards for best novelette. Silverberg lives in California with his wife, Karen.
