What do you think?
Rate this book
Seed of Earth
The computer had chosen them - a small cross-section of humanity to serve Mankind's Destiny. Out of seven billion people on Earth mechanical chance had selected them as involuntary colonists on an unknown planet. In seven days they would be on their way, on a sink-or-swim mission to a lonely world beyond the limits of the Solar System. It was a summons each had privately dreaded, yet always been prepared for. But no one had prepared them for the vicious attacks of sinister aliens . . .
Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
2 people are currently reading
132 people want to read
About the author
Robert Silverberg
2,363 books1,607 followersThere are many authors in the database with this name.
Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.
Robert Silverberg is a highly celebrated American science fiction author and editor known for his prolific output and literary range. Over a career spanning decades, he has won multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards and was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2004. Inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1999, Silverberg is recognized for both his immense productivity and his contributions to the genre's evolution.
Born in Brooklyn, he began writing in his teens and won his first Hugo Award in 1956 as the best new writer. Throughout the 1950s, he produced vast amounts of fiction, often under pseudonyms, and was known for writing up to a million words a year. When the market declined, he diversified into other genres, including historical nonfiction and erotica.
Silverberg’s return to science fiction in the 1960s marked a shift toward deeper psychological and literary themes, contributing significantly to the New Wave movement. Acclaimed works from this period include Downward to the Earth, Dying Inside, Nightwings, and The World Inside. In the 1980s, he launched the Majipoor series with Lord Valentine’s Castle, creating one of the most imaginative planetary settings in science fiction.
Though he announced his retirement from writing in the mid-1970s, Silverberg returned with renewed vigor and continued to publish acclaimed fiction into the 1990s. He received further recognition with the Nebula-winning Sailing to Byzantium and the Hugo-winning Gilgamesh in the Outback.
Silverberg has also played a significant role as an editor and anthologist, shaping science fiction literature through both his own work and his influence on others. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, author Karen Haber.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
May 3, 2025
The Seed of Earth is an early novel by Silverberg that's a straight-forward and traditional adventure about mankind setting up interstellar colonies, with a nifty twist from The Lottery thrown in. It's a fast read, with more character exploration and expansion and serious thoughts about society than he had put in his adventure books up to that time. Silverberg wrote a fascinating introduction to the Ace 1977 edition in which he details the history. It started as a novelette for Venture magazine's September 1957 issue with the title The Winds of Siros. He had sold a story called Journey's End to Super Science Fiction magazine, which appeared in their April 1958 issue, and the editor retitled it The Seed of Earth, which he liked and decided to use it for this unrelated project. He discusses his desire to expand it to novel length and sell it to a major, preferably hardback, publisher, and explains that he had no success. Galaxy magazine purchased it, but he had to shorten it a lot, so it was not much longer than the original for their June 1962 issue. He finally sold it to Ace, which was what he'd wanted to avoid all along, and it appeared in 1962 as one of their Doubles with another of his books, Next Stop the Stars, on the flip side. (The Seed of Earth had a nice Ed Emshwiller cover, and Next Stop the Stars had a striking mad-robot Ed Valigursky painting.) The 1977 (twenty years and it finally got the stand-alone edition he wanted) iteration has a Don Punchatz cover that I do not care for, but adds the introduction, in which he says he thinks it's "an okay book", and I'm in agreement!
August 10, 2016
Men of a certain age may recall a particular trepidation that was attendant with the coming of their 18th birthday; i.e., the fear of being drafted into the armed forces. From 1940 until January '73, males here in the U.S. could be drafted, even during peacetime, to fill vacancies in the Army and other services, and well do I remember the sigh of relief that many breathed when the draft disappeared, in favor of an all-volunteer system. But, as Robert Silverberg's 1962 novel "The Seed of Earth" had already demonstrated, conscription could entail far more intimidating prospects than a mere two-year Army hitch.
For the future Grand Master and multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, "The Seed of Earth" came at the tail end of his first phase of writing. Silverberg had already seen 17 novels released before "Seed"'s first appearance in '62, as one-half of one of those cute little "Ace doubles" (F-145, for all you collectors out there), backed with the Silverberg short-story collection "Next Stop the Stars." Remarkably, the author was only 27 the year his 18th novel was released (not to mention the roughly 250 short stories and novellas already under his belt!); he’d ultimately come out with another 60 or so, during one of science fiction's most prolific careers. (During this period of semiretirement, Silverberg's sci-fi output was significantly reduced; "Recalled to Life" was his "only" other sf novel to be released in '62.) In his introduction to the 1982 Ace edition, Silverberg reveals that "Seed" was expanded from a 1957 short story of his called "The Winds of Siros" (chapters 1 – 10 of the novel are completely absent from the short story), and that he'd hoped to place the novel with either Doubleday or Ballantine, the only prestigious sci-fi book publishers at the time. When both houses refused the young author's work, he ultimately settled for it to appear in yet another "Ace double" (as most of his earlier 17 had been), consoling himself with the thought that at least another work of his was on the flip side.
In "The Seed of Earth," the year is 2116, and the governments of the world have recently decided that it is mankind's destiny to settle as many planets in our galaxy as possible. As volunteers had been scarce, a system of conscription has arisen, in which computers select citizens, ages 19 – 40, at random, to serve as planetary pioneers. (As the original Ace cover blurb ran, "If your number is up, you go to the stars.") Sixty ships are soon leaving the Earth every single day, bound for 60 different planets, each ship carrying 50 men and 50 women. Five of those daily ships are sent out from the U.S. During "Seed"'s opening chapters, we meet three citizens who are appalled to get their "draft notices" in the mail: Mike Dawes, a 20-year-old college student from Ohio; Cherry Thomas, a 25-year-old nightclub entertainer from NYC; and Carol Herrick, a mousy, 23-year-old stenographer from the Bay Area. And we also meet Ky Noonan, a big, tough alpha male, a 30-year-old from Baltimore, who is fed up with life on Earth and in the harsh colony domes of Venus and Mars, and who actually has the temerity to volunteer for pioneering service. Thus, we follow these four as they travel to the space field in Bangor, Maine, get their brief orientation, and blast off aboard the cramped starship Gegenschein (an excellent word; look it up!), along with 96 others, for their four-week journey to Osiris, the ninth world of the star known as Vega. Once landed and left to their fate, the 100 settlers face troubles almost from the get-go, when their camp is attacked by apelike aliens and Dawes, Noonan, Thomas and Herrick are kidnapped. They are left in a cave in the middle of a cliff face, an unescapable prison, where their various personalities soon start to grate and abrade on one another, while the aliens observe as the psychosexual conflicts begin....
In that previously mentioned introduction, Silverberg tells us that when he wrote this particular novel, he thought that he was putting "probing details of character revelation" therein, only to realize, years later, that that was actually not the case. To be fair, however, "The Seed of Earth" does seem more concerned with the inner thoughts and motivations of its four lead characters than had many of his other, early novels. This is most apparent in the book's final section, in which the four begin to crack under the strain of their enforced cohabitation. (Tellingly, Dawes at one point ponders a line from a theater piece that he’d once seen: "Hell is other people." The line comes from Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 play "No Exit.") The author makes us deeply feel what it must be like to look at Earth for the final time before leaving it forever ("…never again the glory of autumn-tinted maples, never the sight of football players racing down a field, never again a hot dog or a hamburger or a vanilla sundae…"), and realistically describes the cramped tedium of the journeyers' four-week transit in "nospace."
Silverberg also gives us a detailed look at the inner workings of the Colonization Bureau, during which we learn all about the selection process, and the limited exemptions that are available to all those selected. It is a compulsively readable work, one that most readers should be able to gulp down in a sitting or two. The author, even at this early stage in his career, always evinced an almost uncanny ability to select the just-proper word, and to keep his story both intelligent and fast moving. "Seed" may be a minor Silverberg work, especially as compared to many of those from his classic, middle period (1967 – '76), but it remains a highly entertaining one, and well worth any reader's time. The book was not the first instance of the author positing the notion of a randomized computer selection process shaping a society--his fifth novel, "Master of Life and Death," had given us a computer selecting citizens for euthanasia, as a means of population control--but still finds him in full imaginative flower, even to the point of predicting the use of "synthesizers" in popular music.
"The Seed of Earth," of course, is hardly a perfect work. The book is a tad on the short side, even in this expanded version, and could easily have served as the basis for an entire series, or at least a sequel...say, set on Osiris 20 years later. Despite his occasional facility at prediction, Silverberg still has the offices of the Colonization Bureau issuing mimeographed sheets (the beloved author, apparently, could not foresee something on the order of a Xerox copier for the early 22nd century!). He even makes the mistake of telling us that Vega is 23 light-years from Earth (it is, in actuality, more like 25), and, despite that aforementioned skill in word selection, confuses "umbilical cord" for "umbilicus." But these are minor piffles. The bottom line is that "The Seed of Earth" is a generally pleasing page-turner; an at times exciting and always colorful work from one of science fiction's best. As for me, I just ate it right up. And, H. Rider Haggard enthusiast that I am, how could I possibly resist when Silverberg describes that cliff side cave as "Haggardesque"? I LOVED that....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a perfect destination for all fans of Robert Silverberg....)
For the future Grand Master and multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner, "The Seed of Earth" came at the tail end of his first phase of writing. Silverberg had already seen 17 novels released before "Seed"'s first appearance in '62, as one-half of one of those cute little "Ace doubles" (F-145, for all you collectors out there), backed with the Silverberg short-story collection "Next Stop the Stars." Remarkably, the author was only 27 the year his 18th novel was released (not to mention the roughly 250 short stories and novellas already under his belt!); he’d ultimately come out with another 60 or so, during one of science fiction's most prolific careers. (During this period of semiretirement, Silverberg's sci-fi output was significantly reduced; "Recalled to Life" was his "only" other sf novel to be released in '62.) In his introduction to the 1982 Ace edition, Silverberg reveals that "Seed" was expanded from a 1957 short story of his called "The Winds of Siros" (chapters 1 – 10 of the novel are completely absent from the short story), and that he'd hoped to place the novel with either Doubleday or Ballantine, the only prestigious sci-fi book publishers at the time. When both houses refused the young author's work, he ultimately settled for it to appear in yet another "Ace double" (as most of his earlier 17 had been), consoling himself with the thought that at least another work of his was on the flip side.
In "The Seed of Earth," the year is 2116, and the governments of the world have recently decided that it is mankind's destiny to settle as many planets in our galaxy as possible. As volunteers had been scarce, a system of conscription has arisen, in which computers select citizens, ages 19 – 40, at random, to serve as planetary pioneers. (As the original Ace cover blurb ran, "If your number is up, you go to the stars.") Sixty ships are soon leaving the Earth every single day, bound for 60 different planets, each ship carrying 50 men and 50 women. Five of those daily ships are sent out from the U.S. During "Seed"'s opening chapters, we meet three citizens who are appalled to get their "draft notices" in the mail: Mike Dawes, a 20-year-old college student from Ohio; Cherry Thomas, a 25-year-old nightclub entertainer from NYC; and Carol Herrick, a mousy, 23-year-old stenographer from the Bay Area. And we also meet Ky Noonan, a big, tough alpha male, a 30-year-old from Baltimore, who is fed up with life on Earth and in the harsh colony domes of Venus and Mars, and who actually has the temerity to volunteer for pioneering service. Thus, we follow these four as they travel to the space field in Bangor, Maine, get their brief orientation, and blast off aboard the cramped starship Gegenschein (an excellent word; look it up!), along with 96 others, for their four-week journey to Osiris, the ninth world of the star known as Vega. Once landed and left to their fate, the 100 settlers face troubles almost from the get-go, when their camp is attacked by apelike aliens and Dawes, Noonan, Thomas and Herrick are kidnapped. They are left in a cave in the middle of a cliff face, an unescapable prison, where their various personalities soon start to grate and abrade on one another, while the aliens observe as the psychosexual conflicts begin....
In that previously mentioned introduction, Silverberg tells us that when he wrote this particular novel, he thought that he was putting "probing details of character revelation" therein, only to realize, years later, that that was actually not the case. To be fair, however, "The Seed of Earth" does seem more concerned with the inner thoughts and motivations of its four lead characters than had many of his other, early novels. This is most apparent in the book's final section, in which the four begin to crack under the strain of their enforced cohabitation. (Tellingly, Dawes at one point ponders a line from a theater piece that he’d once seen: "Hell is other people." The line comes from Jean-Paul Sartre's 1944 play "No Exit.") The author makes us deeply feel what it must be like to look at Earth for the final time before leaving it forever ("…never again the glory of autumn-tinted maples, never the sight of football players racing down a field, never again a hot dog or a hamburger or a vanilla sundae…"), and realistically describes the cramped tedium of the journeyers' four-week transit in "nospace."
Silverberg also gives us a detailed look at the inner workings of the Colonization Bureau, during which we learn all about the selection process, and the limited exemptions that are available to all those selected. It is a compulsively readable work, one that most readers should be able to gulp down in a sitting or two. The author, even at this early stage in his career, always evinced an almost uncanny ability to select the just-proper word, and to keep his story both intelligent and fast moving. "Seed" may be a minor Silverberg work, especially as compared to many of those from his classic, middle period (1967 – '76), but it remains a highly entertaining one, and well worth any reader's time. The book was not the first instance of the author positing the notion of a randomized computer selection process shaping a society--his fifth novel, "Master of Life and Death," had given us a computer selecting citizens for euthanasia, as a means of population control--but still finds him in full imaginative flower, even to the point of predicting the use of "synthesizers" in popular music.
"The Seed of Earth," of course, is hardly a perfect work. The book is a tad on the short side, even in this expanded version, and could easily have served as the basis for an entire series, or at least a sequel...say, set on Osiris 20 years later. Despite his occasional facility at prediction, Silverberg still has the offices of the Colonization Bureau issuing mimeographed sheets (the beloved author, apparently, could not foresee something on the order of a Xerox copier for the early 22nd century!). He even makes the mistake of telling us that Vega is 23 light-years from Earth (it is, in actuality, more like 25), and, despite that aforementioned skill in word selection, confuses "umbilical cord" for "umbilicus." But these are minor piffles. The bottom line is that "The Seed of Earth" is a generally pleasing page-turner; an at times exciting and always colorful work from one of science fiction's best. As for me, I just ate it right up. And, H. Rider Haggard enthusiast that I am, how could I possibly resist when Silverberg describes that cliff side cave as "Haggardesque"? I LOVED that....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a perfect destination for all fans of Robert Silverberg....)
December 25, 2021
"A banner on the wall commanded, Do Your Share for Mankind's Destiny. Why? Why this senseless hurling out of bewildered people to the stars?"
Every day across the nation, one hundred people between the ages of nineteen and forty are chosen at random by draft lottery to be uprooted from their lives, packed onto an interstellar hyperspace ship, and commissioned to spend the rest of their lives planting a new colony on an uninhabited world.
Today, the latest colony ark contains Mike Dawes (college student), Cherry Thomas (showgirl), Ky Noonan (police officer), and Carol Herrick (stenographer). For two of them, this is a bitter fate that upends all their dreams and families. For the other two, this is a chance at a new start at a better life.
The new life will be a day-to-day contest for survival against the elements. However, on the desolate planet of Osiris, there is also one unforeseen circumstance: the indigenous animal life is anything but unintelligent, and it has hungers that can be uniquely sated by the new settlers from Earth…
This is another exciting early pulp adventure from the pen of Robert Silverberg. An expansion of the short story "The Winds of Siros", this novel was written in 1958 and published in Galaxy magazine in abridged form in 1961. It was finally published in full by Ace in 1962. It has received at least four additional English-language editions since then, the most recent being the Gollancz e-book in 2011.
Silverberg is clearly beginning to develop the narrative voice and style that would make him famous. His characterizations are simple but effective as he paints a picture of an entire society straining under the constant pressure of an absolute military draft. He is equally as vivid describing the fears of living on a hostile, unknown, and possibly unknowable alien world.
He sprinkles in precognitions of technology that are common today including optical character recognition software and electronic thumbprint sensors.
Some of the world-building has me scratching my head, however. In particular:
Why would the government use purely random selection to choose colonists? Wouldn't a new colony have a better chance of survival if each ship included a cross-section of skills--medicine, botany, zoology, architecture, carpentry, legal knowledge, etc.?
If ships can travel in hyperspace (they can cover four billion light years in four weeks), why abandon the new colonies in their early stages? Why not establish trade networks? Why not bring resupplies of food, building materials, and people? Why not let colonists go home from time to time to visit loved ones?
Also, Silverberg's colony ships appear to be mostly populated by Caucasians, although their ethnicities are never mentioned. It would be interesting to see a more diverse cross-section of characters.
Despite a few shortcomings, I recommend this book for a fast and even thought-provoking sci-fi story.
Every day across the nation, one hundred people between the ages of nineteen and forty are chosen at random by draft lottery to be uprooted from their lives, packed onto an interstellar hyperspace ship, and commissioned to spend the rest of their lives planting a new colony on an uninhabited world.
Today, the latest colony ark contains Mike Dawes (college student), Cherry Thomas (showgirl), Ky Noonan (police officer), and Carol Herrick (stenographer). For two of them, this is a bitter fate that upends all their dreams and families. For the other two, this is a chance at a new start at a better life.
The new life will be a day-to-day contest for survival against the elements. However, on the desolate planet of Osiris, there is also one unforeseen circumstance: the indigenous animal life is anything but unintelligent, and it has hungers that can be uniquely sated by the new settlers from Earth…
This is another exciting early pulp adventure from the pen of Robert Silverberg. An expansion of the short story "The Winds of Siros", this novel was written in 1958 and published in Galaxy magazine in abridged form in 1961. It was finally published in full by Ace in 1962. It has received at least four additional English-language editions since then, the most recent being the Gollancz e-book in 2011.
Silverberg is clearly beginning to develop the narrative voice and style that would make him famous. His characterizations are simple but effective as he paints a picture of an entire society straining under the constant pressure of an absolute military draft. He is equally as vivid describing the fears of living on a hostile, unknown, and possibly unknowable alien world.
He sprinkles in precognitions of technology that are common today including optical character recognition software and electronic thumbprint sensors.
Some of the world-building has me scratching my head, however. In particular:
Why would the government use purely random selection to choose colonists? Wouldn't a new colony have a better chance of survival if each ship included a cross-section of skills--medicine, botany, zoology, architecture, carpentry, legal knowledge, etc.?
If ships can travel in hyperspace (they can cover four billion light years in four weeks), why abandon the new colonies in their early stages? Why not establish trade networks? Why not bring resupplies of food, building materials, and people? Why not let colonists go home from time to time to visit loved ones?
Also, Silverberg's colony ships appear to be mostly populated by Caucasians, although their ethnicities are never mentioned. It would be interesting to see a more diverse cross-section of characters.
Despite a few shortcomings, I recommend this book for a fast and even thought-provoking sci-fi story.
February 13, 2025
I want a film adaptation thank you
July 26, 2016
A generally pleasing work from one of SF's best: http://www.fantasyliterature.com/revi...
May 11, 2015
We start our tale with Dave Mulholland, mid-level bureaucrat who got the cushy job of determining who’s sent off to colonize space. In this world, in order to jump-start Earth’s space colonialism, rockets are sent off in a near-constant chain, each containing fifty men and fifty women; these lucky souls are paired off, married, and dumped off on a habitable solar body of some kind to colonize it. Someone had come up with the brilliant idea that, if mankind didn’t want to colonize the stars on its own, they’d do so by force, with the rather unsavory means justifying the major advantages it’d reap for future generations. Mulholland has a number of qualms about his job, but by keeping the selected colonists as numbers on a card, he manages to stay sane.
So, were you expecting Dave to end up on a rocketship blasting off to a colony world, as upcoming elections could see him out of a job? No, they already wrote that book, and it was called The Space Merchants. Instead, we’re taken to our cast of characters, who are, in order: a collegiate sad-sack (Mike Dawes), a singing tramp (Cherry Thomas), the cockiest swingin’ dick ever to come down the pike (“Ky” Noonan), and a whimpering ditz (Carol Herrick). The process is interesting—we see these characters’ daily lives up until they receive their space conscription letter, and how they take the news of their selection—and then, they’re off!
At their new home planet, things take a dramatic turn, and we enter the third act, or plot, as it were: the one advertised on the cover. Our four characters are dragged off by these crazy aliens, furry tentacled things, who are studying human actions and relationships. The last thirty or forty pages has passable tension and development as these four characters are stuck together and forced to make the best of it. While it’s a bit late in the story, it has some good tension, friction, and developing insights into the characters.
The Seed of Earth feels like two good ideas crammed together to make one novel: the idea of systematic forced colonization, and the idea of aliens capturing space colonists and pitting them against each other. Neither are bad ideas; the shallowness is a problem related to Ace and its size constraints. It’s an average example of early Silverberg, and mediocre early Silverberg at that: it has nothing of the grandeur of his later works, though it’s passable as a hundred-forty-page adventure yarn. Though it’s bipolar, and not as well constructed compared to his better Ace novels. A weak, around-average entry composed of two interesting but insubstantial ideas.
(Full review found here.)
So, were you expecting Dave to end up on a rocketship blasting off to a colony world, as upcoming elections could see him out of a job? No, they already wrote that book, and it was called The Space Merchants. Instead, we’re taken to our cast of characters, who are, in order: a collegiate sad-sack (Mike Dawes), a singing tramp (Cherry Thomas), the cockiest swingin’ dick ever to come down the pike (“Ky” Noonan), and a whimpering ditz (Carol Herrick). The process is interesting—we see these characters’ daily lives up until they receive their space conscription letter, and how they take the news of their selection—and then, they’re off!
At their new home planet, things take a dramatic turn, and we enter the third act, or plot, as it were: the one advertised on the cover. Our four characters are dragged off by these crazy aliens, furry tentacled things, who are studying human actions and relationships. The last thirty or forty pages has passable tension and development as these four characters are stuck together and forced to make the best of it. While it’s a bit late in the story, it has some good tension, friction, and developing insights into the characters.
The Seed of Earth feels like two good ideas crammed together to make one novel: the idea of systematic forced colonization, and the idea of aliens capturing space colonists and pitting them against each other. Neither are bad ideas; the shallowness is a problem related to Ace and its size constraints. It’s an average example of early Silverberg, and mediocre early Silverberg at that: it has nothing of the grandeur of his later works, though it’s passable as a hundred-forty-page adventure yarn. Though it’s bipolar, and not as well constructed compared to his better Ace novels. A weak, around-average entry composed of two interesting but insubstantial ideas.
(Full review found here.)
July 8, 2008
I chose this book to read at random. On a seldom seen bookcase I closed my eyes and this was the "gem" I grabbed. Yeah me. I'll have to reevaluate that selection method.
The edition I read had a new introduction from the author (well, new in 1976 or so) and I would have appreciated the book more if he'd apologized for having the future so incredibly wrong. Instead he came across as pompous and there is nothing I hate more than arrogance without reason. The Seed of Earth certainly isn't a good reason.
In the future, mankind has unified in the idea of colonizing the stars. The only problem with that is nobody, or at least very few, actually want to go. A lottery is created to conscript people to start new colonies. The holes in the plot begin!
If I've told you the basic concept of my story Crepehanger you know I'm interested in the whole space colony theme. This novel was so awful it has inspired me to go back to work on my story!
The edition I read had a new introduction from the author (well, new in 1976 or so) and I would have appreciated the book more if he'd apologized for having the future so incredibly wrong. Instead he came across as pompous and there is nothing I hate more than arrogance without reason. The Seed of Earth certainly isn't a good reason.
In the future, mankind has unified in the idea of colonizing the stars. The only problem with that is nobody, or at least very few, actually want to go. A lottery is created to conscript people to start new colonies. The holes in the plot begin!
If I've told you the basic concept of my story Crepehanger you know I'm interested in the whole space colony theme. This novel was so awful it has inspired me to go back to work on my story!
April 19, 2019
Never would have heard of it, if a college friend's mom wasn't throwing out a ton of her old books years ago. I finally checked this one out and I enjoyed it.
It's got flaws, to be sure. The whole rationale behind this 'lottery' doesn't make sense at all, nor does the way humanity goes about it. I kept finding myself asking questions. Why are they so desperate to send groups of 100 to as many planets as possible? They'll be inbred in no time. Wouldn't larger groups to fewer colonies make more sense, to be sure they are established? Is there any communication with these colonies after the fact? What does humanity on Earth get out of doing all of this? How do they know food will be obtainable, and not poisonous or indigestible to humans? Is this a global effort (seeing as the numbers referenced are talking about Earth's population) or is it just the United States? In either case, the math of the numbers being send out simply don't add up. Earth would be depopulated in a decade.
I couldn't help but be amused at the predictions of technology. There's faster-than-light travel and all that, but they still use faxes, there is no caller ID, fossil fuel cars, and postal mail. A giant computer system runs this lottery, but people can appeal if they meet exceptions. Those exceptions can't be programmed in?
All of this was very forgivable, in this case though. The setup was ominous and claustrophobic. The fear of the unknown pervaded the book, and that's where my enjoyment came from. I'd read more from this author if it were handy, especially since this was apparently just written in his early twenties. For someone so young to have written this in the 60's is very impressive. Taken as more of a fantasy, it's a good quick read.
It's got flaws, to be sure. The whole rationale behind this 'lottery' doesn't make sense at all, nor does the way humanity goes about it. I kept finding myself asking questions. Why are they so desperate to send groups of 100 to as many planets as possible? They'll be inbred in no time. Wouldn't larger groups to fewer colonies make more sense, to be sure they are established? Is there any communication with these colonies after the fact? What does humanity on Earth get out of doing all of this? How do they know food will be obtainable, and not poisonous or indigestible to humans? Is this a global effort (seeing as the numbers referenced are talking about Earth's population) or is it just the United States? In either case, the math of the numbers being send out simply don't add up. Earth would be depopulated in a decade.
I couldn't help but be amused at the predictions of technology. There's faster-than-light travel and all that, but they still use faxes, there is no caller ID, fossil fuel cars, and postal mail. A giant computer system runs this lottery, but people can appeal if they meet exceptions. Those exceptions can't be programmed in?
All of this was very forgivable, in this case though. The setup was ominous and claustrophobic. The fear of the unknown pervaded the book, and that's where my enjoyment came from. I'd read more from this author if it were handy, especially since this was apparently just written in his early twenties. For someone so young to have written this in the 60's is very impressive. Taken as more of a fantasy, it's a good quick read.
December 19, 2023
In the year 2116 AD, people on earth are chosen randomly by a supercomputer to serve as colonist on inhabitable planets in nearby solar systems.
The first part of the book follows several men and women as they get drafted. The second part tells the story of their arrival on an uninhabited planet. Or is it?
One of Silverberg's early works and it shows. It's not a bad book but the prose is a little clumsy and the characters rather shallow. The way the women are portrayed also says more about the 1950's than the future of mankind. Females are basically secretaries or housewives and once the colonization has started, the men get to pick the women they want as a partner. Every female character is rather submissive and totally dependent on the males in the group. It would be offensive if it wasn't so laughable. And of course it's a trope that plenty of vintage scifi books suffer from.
The first half in which we follow the drafting process was the most interesting part for me. Everyone's taking part in a kind of cruel lottery. Some people embrace the adventure while others regard it as a death sentence.
The fact that everybody involved (including the people in the drafting organization) seem to think the whole system is pretty pointless and unfair but also inescapable is pretty intriguing.
The second half about the alien encounter was rather disappointing. It read like an average Star Trek OS episode, and the ending was a bit anticlimactic.
Overall, certainly an enjoyable read but in the end also pretty forgettable.
The first part of the book follows several men and women as they get drafted. The second part tells the story of their arrival on an uninhabited planet. Or is it?
One of Silverberg's early works and it shows. It's not a bad book but the prose is a little clumsy and the characters rather shallow. The way the women are portrayed also says more about the 1950's than the future of mankind. Females are basically secretaries or housewives and once the colonization has started, the men get to pick the women they want as a partner. Every female character is rather submissive and totally dependent on the males in the group. It would be offensive if it wasn't so laughable. And of course it's a trope that plenty of vintage scifi books suffer from.
The first half in which we follow the drafting process was the most interesting part for me. Everyone's taking part in a kind of cruel lottery. Some people embrace the adventure while others regard it as a death sentence.
The fact that everybody involved (including the people in the drafting organization) seem to think the whole system is pretty pointless and unfair but also inescapable is pretty intriguing.
The second half about the alien encounter was rather disappointing. It read like an average Star Trek OS episode, and the ending was a bit anticlimactic.
Overall, certainly an enjoyable read but in the end also pretty forgettable.
December 19, 2024
Very much of its time but not quite as bad as I expected it to be. There are some classic gender stereotypes that really don't hold up anymore, as well as some attitudes to space exploration that feel a bit done to death now. But really, this is quite a passable short novel if you take into account that it was written nearly 70 years ago. The characters aren't great, but they aren't terrible either. My main issue with the book is that many elements of the world and the choices the characters make are quite poorly done. McCaffrey's (later) Freedom's Landing feels like a much better executed novel with very a similar premise and almost identical themes. But as I said, not as bad as I was expecting.
January 28, 2026
Nothing in this book felt like it was planned very well. I appreciated that the Earth Is Overpopulated trope didn't get rolled out until about a third of the way through, but the rationale for forcing people into space colonization never felt particularly well-explored anyways. It's not for science - no one's coming back. It's not for economic gain - no resources are returning to Earth. It's not for war - there's no other galactic power threatening humans. It's... it's just for plot. And, I'm afraid, not a very good plot.
September 13, 2021
Good concept, and not boring. But also not satisfying. The rhythm and structure were all wrong, with far too much exposition and character introduction compared to plot or development. The concept gets hammered home a bit too easily with much more interesting questions left neglected. I have enjoyed other Silverberg much more so it's hard to square the relative immaturity of this book with his otherwise solid work. I enjoyed reading it but can't recommend it.
June 23, 2024
It was a good book, short and a rollicking good read.
If the reader wants a good time with a theme of how self reliance depends totally on context at other times community action is what's needed to complete the task The trick is knowing which is which.
I would recommend this book to people looking to examples of community action is appropriate and how the actor loses nothing by involving others in a task.
If the reader wants a good time with a theme of how self reliance depends totally on context at other times community action is what's needed to complete the task The trick is knowing which is which.
I would recommend this book to people looking to examples of community action is appropriate and how the actor loses nothing by involving others in a task.
January 8, 2026
I enjoyed this early Silverberg even though it is dated and a little naive but it is almost 70 years old. It is an interesting story, I liked the implausible premise surprisingly and even think it could be updated with a heavier climate change element as a driver for the plot.
Its a quick read and much of the novel is based around the characters and how they react to events in the story rather than the events themselves.
Its a quick read and much of the novel is based around the characters and how they react to events in the story rather than the events themselves.
April 22, 2025
The think about reading older SF is seeing how them describe advanced technology. This was an interesting story, but I believe there could have been a bit more imagination but into the technological development. Also, the main process on colonisation is a bit too hard to believe. I've read a few of Silverberg's works and you can tell this is an early one, and he has developed since then.
May 17, 2019
The first half was a pleasant read, but the endgame felt sooooo thin and disappointing - even more so because of the triumphant tone of the last pages.
November 24, 2022
This was a great little find. Love colony stories and Silverberg.
June 20, 2012
Silverberg expanded his short story "The Winds of Siros" to create this 1958 novel. He was, at the time, a self-professed writing machine, turning out short stories before lunch, a novel in less than a week, and writing under contract for most of the popular SF magazines. But the magazine market imploded around 1958, and he wanted The Seeds of Earth to come out in hardback. That didn't happen. It became, like most of his novels from that period, part of an Ace Double. His one consolation was that he was paired by editor Donald Wolheim with a selection of his own short stories rather than the work of a random writer.
In his preface to the 1976 paperback edition I read, Silverberg says, "I realize now that it is not the profound mixture of of adventure and human insight I thought it was at the time, but I still think it's an okay book." Without wanting to damn the book with the author's own faint praise, I couldn't agree more. This is straightforward SF delivered in functional, readable prose and not so much lacking as it is oblivious of literary or stylistic innovations. In the 22nd century, man has broken the speed of light, thanks to Einsteinian Drive technology, and earth feels the need to plant colonies on the thousands of habitable planets newly discovered among the millions of galaxies. The daily export of conscripted settlers is 6000 people, a statistically insignificant number among earth's 7 billion inhabitants. (We are just past 7 billion now, so Silverberg has been conservative in his calculations.) Of course no one wants to go, and why would they. Anyone under the age of 40 who is fertile and does not meet certain other disqualifying criteria can be picked by the random computer process and shipped off a week later, part of a fifty couple contingent that is expected to set up a colony, pair off, and start multiplying. They will neither return to earth nor receive further support from home.
Once I understood the premise here, I assumed that earth had succeeded in nothing more than creating hundreds of corpse-filled outposts light years away. Colonization continues to be a viable SF topic, but writers for decades have been concerned about how such a process might play out and have tried to explore logically consistent scenarios. But writers today are not turning out 40,000 word novels in a week the way Silverberg was fifty years ago. The twenty-three year old author was writing for a market that had only just begun to allow any sexual content into its product, and he seems more interested in the whole "pairing off" scenario than in developing a story about the colony that will extend past its first week or so on its new home.
But still, as Silverberg says, "it's an okay book." The first half of the book introduces four new Selectees, as the conscripts are called, and we get a quick picture of the society they are leaving and the mechanized process that will send them into space. The second half of the book is an expansion of the original short story. The uninhabited planet of Osiris turns out not to be so uninhabited. To say more would be to enter spoiler territory in a book that has only one real plot development.
In his preface to the 1976 paperback edition I read, Silverberg says, "I realize now that it is not the profound mixture of of adventure and human insight I thought it was at the time, but I still think it's an okay book." Without wanting to damn the book with the author's own faint praise, I couldn't agree more. This is straightforward SF delivered in functional, readable prose and not so much lacking as it is oblivious of literary or stylistic innovations. In the 22nd century, man has broken the speed of light, thanks to Einsteinian Drive technology, and earth feels the need to plant colonies on the thousands of habitable planets newly discovered among the millions of galaxies. The daily export of conscripted settlers is 6000 people, a statistically insignificant number among earth's 7 billion inhabitants. (We are just past 7 billion now, so Silverberg has been conservative in his calculations.) Of course no one wants to go, and why would they. Anyone under the age of 40 who is fertile and does not meet certain other disqualifying criteria can be picked by the random computer process and shipped off a week later, part of a fifty couple contingent that is expected to set up a colony, pair off, and start multiplying. They will neither return to earth nor receive further support from home.
Once I understood the premise here, I assumed that earth had succeeded in nothing more than creating hundreds of corpse-filled outposts light years away. Colonization continues to be a viable SF topic, but writers for decades have been concerned about how such a process might play out and have tried to explore logically consistent scenarios. But writers today are not turning out 40,000 word novels in a week the way Silverberg was fifty years ago. The twenty-three year old author was writing for a market that had only just begun to allow any sexual content into its product, and he seems more interested in the whole "pairing off" scenario than in developing a story about the colony that will extend past its first week or so on its new home.
But still, as Silverberg says, "it's an okay book." The first half of the book introduces four new Selectees, as the conscripts are called, and we get a quick picture of the society they are leaving and the mechanized process that will send them into space. The second half of the book is an expansion of the original short story. The uninhabited planet of Osiris turns out not to be so uninhabited. To say more would be to enter spoiler territory in a book that has only one real plot development.
June 30, 2025
Ideal first sf book for teens about leaving earth to colonise new planets. Really solid, fast smooth and simple.
You know Silverberg should be recommend for newcomers well ahead of PKD, Gibson, Asimov etc. I hear work mates who've read only Scanner Darkly and Neuromancer (or Foundation!) and feel a shudder of fear that those heavy, leaden beasties will put them off any more sf adventures. My advice: start with Silverberg.
The fleet, sparkling nature of sburgs writing early on in his career is a joy. It's also tight: 'there's some aliens along the treeline' would be the hint of a shadow, the rustle of a bush, dragged on for 10 pages in a 400 pager. This is 150. It was originally 5.
To be honest this colonisation tale would be chaos in reality - a dozen of the randomly selected 100 colonists would be unbearable idiots, yet everyone appears so communicative, reasonable and cool. Marrying up couples to breed within a few hours of arrival on a new planet? There'd be pandemonium. Before, during and after takeoff. Grown men dragged from their quiet existence on earth would be throwing panic attacks, there'd be ships hijacked mid flight. Everything is so weirdly relaxed (at first). It's like now with the Draft Dodger. Wake up, America!
At a wonderful 150 pages this short blast into space moves fast, leaving the reader to colour inside its bold outlines. Silverberg fluffs up his original short story into perfectly rounded proportions. he's such a smooth, interesting writer.
Expect obvious and hilarious 1970s books-for-boys sexism with 50 hairy weirdo colonists picking wives like some kind of horrific 5-a-side hockey match line-up at school.
Personally, I love to see how attitudes have changed over the years from ridiculous super-white hetero sexism to today's heavy flow of female, LGBT mixed race lead roles. It's our history, however harsh it might've been at the time. It's hugely appealing to me to see how obviously wrong these attitudes were and how we're balancing the books today.
You know Silverberg should be recommend for newcomers well ahead of PKD, Gibson, Asimov etc. I hear work mates who've read only Scanner Darkly and Neuromancer (or Foundation!) and feel a shudder of fear that those heavy, leaden beasties will put them off any more sf adventures. My advice: start with Silverberg.
The fleet, sparkling nature of sburgs writing early on in his career is a joy. It's also tight: 'there's some aliens along the treeline' would be the hint of a shadow, the rustle of a bush, dragged on for 10 pages in a 400 pager. This is 150. It was originally 5.
To be honest this colonisation tale would be chaos in reality - a dozen of the randomly selected 100 colonists would be unbearable idiots, yet everyone appears so communicative, reasonable and cool. Marrying up couples to breed within a few hours of arrival on a new planet? There'd be pandemonium. Before, during and after takeoff. Grown men dragged from their quiet existence on earth would be throwing panic attacks, there'd be ships hijacked mid flight. Everything is so weirdly relaxed (at first). It's like now with the Draft Dodger. Wake up, America!
At a wonderful 150 pages this short blast into space moves fast, leaving the reader to colour inside its bold outlines. Silverberg fluffs up his original short story into perfectly rounded proportions. he's such a smooth, interesting writer.
Expect obvious and hilarious 1970s books-for-boys sexism with 50 hairy weirdo colonists picking wives like some kind of horrific 5-a-side hockey match line-up at school.
Personally, I love to see how attitudes have changed over the years from ridiculous super-white hetero sexism to today's heavy flow of female, LGBT mixed race lead roles. It's our history, however harsh it might've been at the time. It's hugely appealing to me to see how obviously wrong these attitudes were and how we're balancing the books today.
July 30, 2025
6/10
note: my 1978 hamlyn ed has a fascinating intro by RS about how he broke into the sf scene mid '50s, and how the many sf mags suddenly disappeared just as he got started.
Silverberg was one of many SF talents who churned out stories in the '50s and '60s through the popular SF mags of the time. He wrote this in his 20s, which is impressive in itself, and it's a very readable tale of random selection for planet colonization in the mould of The Island and Solar Lottery. Like so many of these stories from this era, it was originally a short padded into a full book yet still feels like a nice, lightish snack in its finished form. I do like 200-page books. You get my special award if you can still make it good at the 150 mark!
As a UK reader I do struggle to enjoy US books now I'm older, as I'm desperate to read about other cultures having had so much of it (by my own choosing) in my life so far in books, mags and film. It's one of the reasons i'll plod through James Herbert's middling prose, because it's light, breezy and usually set in UK locations. My ultimate fantasy is to create a space travel story about a slightly under-funded Indian space project, where the mission gradually goes tits up as bits fall off the low budget ship.
But hey ho, this is a good book, and Silverberg admits he tried to do stronger characters in this one. When you think how fabulous 'Book of Skulls' is, later in his career, he's certainly headed in the right direction, and the tension experienced by the four stuck in an cave while surrounded by extremely unfriendly aliens is well written and enjoyable enough.
I'm avoiding '50s SF having had too much of it, in favour of simple fantasy and YA fiction at present, but i'll come back to some Silverberg some day as he's certainly good enough.
note: my 1978 hamlyn ed has a fascinating intro by RS about how he broke into the sf scene mid '50s, and how the many sf mags suddenly disappeared just as he got started.
Silverberg was one of many SF talents who churned out stories in the '50s and '60s through the popular SF mags of the time. He wrote this in his 20s, which is impressive in itself, and it's a very readable tale of random selection for planet colonization in the mould of The Island and Solar Lottery. Like so many of these stories from this era, it was originally a short padded into a full book yet still feels like a nice, lightish snack in its finished form. I do like 200-page books. You get my special award if you can still make it good at the 150 mark!
As a UK reader I do struggle to enjoy US books now I'm older, as I'm desperate to read about other cultures having had so much of it (by my own choosing) in my life so far in books, mags and film. It's one of the reasons i'll plod through James Herbert's middling prose, because it's light, breezy and usually set in UK locations. My ultimate fantasy is to create a space travel story about a slightly under-funded Indian space project, where the mission gradually goes tits up as bits fall off the low budget ship.
But hey ho, this is a good book, and Silverberg admits he tried to do stronger characters in this one. When you think how fabulous 'Book of Skulls' is, later in his career, he's certainly headed in the right direction, and the tension experienced by the four stuck in an cave while surrounded by extremely unfriendly aliens is well written and enjoyable enough.
I'm avoiding '50s SF having had too much of it, in favour of simple fantasy and YA fiction at present, but i'll come back to some Silverberg some day as he's certainly good enough.
August 8, 2015
There are two distinct halves of this novel. The first half explores a future where everyday citizens are plucked out of their lives at random and sent to colonize the stars. This half explores the process through the mid-level government drone whose job it is to ruin 100 lives a day, and looks at a handful of Americans who have to deal with their lives being brought to an abrupt stop.
I loved this part of the novel. I wish there was a second rotation through the characters, that the climax of the novel was launch. Instead the novel sits down into one head after the initial lap with launch happening around the midway point.
The second half was a disappointment after the initial setup. It sits in the head of the colony's youngest member as he's generally anxious about things. Riding on a spaceship? Generally anxious. Picking his wife? Generally anxious. Kidnapped by aliens? Generally anxious.
Oh well. Three stars as an average of my score for the first half and second half.
I loved this part of the novel. I wish there was a second rotation through the characters, that the climax of the novel was launch. Instead the novel sits down into one head after the initial lap with launch happening around the midway point.
The second half was a disappointment after the initial setup. It sits in the head of the colony's youngest member as he's generally anxious about things. Riding on a spaceship? Generally anxious. Picking his wife? Generally anxious. Kidnapped by aliens? Generally anxious.
Oh well. Three stars as an average of my score for the first half and second half.
August 12, 2013
You have to admire these old time SF writers. They were incredibly prolific. But that said, perhaps I should not have read the author's 1976 introduction which told us that this was originally a short story which, in the book started at chapter 11. The author says in the introduction that he thinks 'its still an OK book'. No it isn't. It is a one trick pony just as many of the sf stories back in the old days used to be, whether short stories or full length novels, and everything up to chapter 11 is what, since I started writing novels myself, I have come to call 'infill'.
I was intrigued by the introduction though, in which the author says that for one publisher he had been required to add some sex scenes. So the question would have to be, were they still in this volume? Not as far as I could tell.
I was intrigued by the introduction though, in which the author says that for one publisher he had been required to add some sex scenes. So the question would have to be, were they still in this volume? Not as far as I could tell.
August 7, 2011
Tons of fun. I really enjoyed the intro to the book about the writing process. Vintage Sci-Fi is so cool; I love how they are traveling at light speed but using a mimeograph for the passenger list. It was apparently written in 1958 when Silverberg was in his early 20's then published in '62. Great work for a young kid. I really enjoyed the characters and thought the pace was spot on. Can't wait to read more from Mr. Silverberg.
January 30, 2016
Good, solid little sci-fi story about a small group of humans pressed into service as space colonists. Where will they be sent? Who are these people? How will they cope with being ripped away from their lives on Earth? And will they be able to stand each other? As usual, the story is much more about humans than alien worlds, but it's OK in this case.
August 12, 2012
50 men and women are blasted off into space to populate a planet. On arrival 4 are kidnapped by the locals, put in a cave and studied. They escape and are left alone.
I presume the aliens felt no threat after studying us.
It was a simple novel but im glad i read it
I presume the aliens felt no threat after studying us.
It was a simple novel but im glad i read it
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 19, 2012
Pulpy second rate silverberg.
November 6, 2012
Good Silverberg, not great Silverberg. Maybe he should have worked with his buddy Asimov on this one, hah!
February 25, 2013
Just fair. Nothing special.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews