’ve been a professional science fiction writer for something like fifty-five years now, have had so many books and stories published that I long ago lost count of how many there are, and never have any trouble finding publishers to pay me for what I write. To a modern-day would-be writer, all that sounds pretty enviable, right? How splendid to be Robert Silverberg, you must think! All he has to do is move his fingers over the keyboard and salable fiction comes tumbling out!

Well, let me tell you: I was once a would-be writer just like you, who looked at famous professional writers like Theodore Sturgeon and Robert Sheckley and L. Sprague de Camp with the same sort of envy, thinking that they had somehow been born with an innate ability to write stories that any editor would want to publish, and merely had to sit down and start typing in order to produce something splendid. I was wrong about that, as I discovered when I got to know those writers later on. Nothing had been magically easy for them. They had struggled to break in, and then, having made the grade, they had struggled to stay there. So had all the other writers I idolized, the one exception being Robert A. Heinlein, who seems to have begun his career at full velocity and kept right on going for the next forty years. And I struggled plenty too. I know I did, because the other week, while looking for something else, I came upon a file folder full of ancient rejection slips, and I was reminded yet again of that anguished period in my middle and late teens when I wanted desperately to sell a story to a science fiction magazine, any magazine, and had everything I wrote sent back to me with a nasty little “sorry, can’t use it” note clipped to it.

Of course, I was only in my teens then. Not only hadn’t I mastered the skills that a professional storyteller needs to know, I didn’t know a whole lot about the world, either, and so the best I could hope to do was to recycle ideas that older writers had turned into stories, and do it not nearly as well as they had. If I had been thirty-two years old and worldly-wise, as Heinlein had been in 1939 when he wrote and sold his first SF story, I might have begun my career as effortlessly as Heinlein had. But I wasn’t thirty-two, and I wasn’t Heinlein. (And even Heinlein got a story rejected once in a while, though such events were few and far between.) Instead I was fourteen or thereabouts, and pretty wet behind the ears, when I began mailing stories to the science fiction editors of the day.

They came back with amazing rapidity. I don’t seem to have kept the earliest rejection slips I got, which dated from early in 1949 and came from the premiere editor of the era, John W. Campbell, Jr., of what was then called Astounding Science Fiction and is now Analog. I remember them as crisp post-card-sized printed forms explaining that the story that had been submitted did not meet the magazine’s present needs, and perhaps they were signed with the distinctive bold scrawl that was Campbell’s signature, and why I didn’t keep them I have no idea. What looks like the oldest survivor in the file comes from Amazing Stories, the first SF magazine that I read regularly, and it must date from 1949, because it bears a Chicago address and at the end of that year Amazing moved to New York. It simply says, “Sorry overstocked,” written by hand and signed, “H. Browne, editor.” Overstocked, all right: what I didn’t know was that Amazing was completely staff-written and that Howard Browne, the editor, never read any unsolicited story. (Six years later I would become a member of Howard Browne’s New York staff and sell dozens of stories to Amazing, but not even in my dreams could I have expected that in 1949!)

Here’s another early one, from Fiction House, Inc., which published the grand old pulpy mag Planet Stories. It dates from April 1950, and was earned by my story “Where Alph, the Sacred River, ran . . .” which I wrote that month and sold for five dollars, a year later, to a semi-pro magazine called The Avalonian. “Dear Contributor,” it begins. “We regret that your manuscript does not meet our editorial requirements. In general, we want well-plotted stories with emphasis on swift, colorful action. To get a clear idea of our specific needs we suggest that you read and analyze recent copies of the magazine.” Sure. But I had been reading and analyzing recent copies of the magazine, staring intently at every word. The problem was that I wasn’t capable of moving from analysis to creation, any more than the baseball fan who carefully analyzes the home-run swing of his favorite slugger is able to hit one out of the park himself.

But that Planet Stories rejection slip came with something special attached: a personal note from the magazine’s young editor, Jerome Bixby, to whom I had been writing letters about the stories in his magazine: “Right back at you with a bilious Fiction House rejection slip for your collection.” (And a bilious green it was, very unappealing.) “ ‘Where Alph, the Sacred River Ran . . .’ is one of the best fan jobs I’ve seen in a long time. Keep it up . . . you’re bound to connect sooner or later. Probably later, though, when your collection has grown some.”

I was thrilled. Before long, I sent Bixby another story, certain that he would accept it. But he had moved along to another magazine by then, and from his successor at Planet came a cruel postcard, not even a rejection slip, dated January 2, 1951: “We are holding your manuscript, ‘Introduction,’ for pickup or $.06 return postage.” Not even “does not fit our needs”!

Another from 1950, from the low-and-slow-paying Weird Tales, thanks me “for the privilege of reading your manuscript. Its return does not necessarily imply lack of merit, but means that it does not fit in with our needs.” Another from Amazing in Chicago— “Sorry overstocked,” again. It refers to a story called “Homeward Retreat,” of which I have not the slightest recollection. From Future Science Fiction’s Robert W. Lowndes, to whom I would sell a host of stories years later: “We are sorry that your manuscript is not for us, and that we could not return it with an individual letter. We realize that a cold, printed rejection slip does not tell you whether your submission approached our requirements—but we receive such a large volume of manuscripts every day that. . . .”

I didn’t give up hope. Not completely, anyway. Certainly I was downcast by these rejections—I have cited here only these few out of more than a dozen from 1949 and 1950—but I was driven by that peculiar madness that afflicts young would-be writers, and I sent my stories out again and again. Bea Majaffey of Other Worlds Science Stories sent me a form that included about thirty reasons for turning a story down (“Logic is faulty” . . . “Science is inaccurate” . . . “Too dull and factual . . .”) The two items that were checked for my story were “Not convincingly written” and “Poorly plotted.” Well, I was only fifteen. But I urged myself to write more convincingly next time.

One of the pivotal rejection slips of my young life arrived in February, 1951 from Morton Klass—the younger brother of Phil Klass, better known as the SF writer “William Tenn”—of Super Science Stories. (I’m not making that one up!) Addressing me as “Mr. Silverberg,” he said, “Sorry we have to return ‘Vanguard of Tomorrow,’ but it doesn’t quite make our grade. Most of the trouble lies with the plot, which—as you probably know yourself—is one of the oldest in science-fiction. Well, you say, why can’t somebody give an old plot a new twist? Heinlein took this plot and did it. Trouble is, we’re not all Heinleins—at least not every day.

“You’re young, but that can sometimes be an asset. SF is always looking for a fresh viewpoint. Let’s say you go to high school. What would high school be like on Mars? Procyon? Another time-stream? Hit ’em with the stories no one is writing, and see what happens. Us, too. We’d be happy to see more of your work.”

I was, of course, disappointed to see “Vanguard of Tomorrow” come bouncing back—I had written it one sweltering week in September 1950, using a punchy, high-powered short-paragraph style that I borrowed from Clifford D. Simak, and I thought it was great stuff. (I still have the manuscript. It isn’t great stuff.) But Mort Klass’s encouraging letter sank in deeply, and just two years later I began a book for young readers on just the theme he suggested that became my first published novel, Revolt on Alpha C.

Published novels seemed infinitely far in my future back there in 1951, and 1952, too. From William Hamling’s Imagination came three printed rejection slips, and then a fourth with a scrawled note from Hamling in the margin: “Sorry, Bob, this doesn’t quite make it. But keep plugging!” I kept plugging. Eventually I would sell him dozens of stories. From H.L. Gold of Galaxy came a typed note dated May 8, 1953: “Sorry we can’t use ‘The Cure.’ However, we like your style and hope you’ll try us again.” He likes my style? Really, or was that just boilerplate? Apparently he did. Further stories brought longer notes from Gold, some of them encouraging, some of them vitriolic, but all of them useful. (“Aside from a tendency to be over-explicit in spots and repeat in dialogue something already stated in narrative, you’ve told your story well. Trouble is that you don’t have an ending. . . !”) Gold beat me about the head and shoulders with many such notes, but eventually he beat me into shape and bought a goodly number of stories from me for his prestigious magazine, starting in 1956. As soon as I got “The Cure” back from Gold I sent it to Sam Moskowitz of Hugo Gernsback’s Science Fiction Plus, who turned it down in June as “well-written, smooth & clever. Good dialogue. The ending is very weak, but some of the background is interesting. Too long for the extent of the ideas.” I have no idea today what that story was about.

I’ve got a sheaf of others from the early 1950s: a two-inch file of them. The most significant of them came from the now-forgotten Peter Ham-ilton, editor of the now-forgotten Nebula Science Fiction, published in Scotland. I had sent him “Vanguard of Tomorrow,” and he returned it in April 1953 with a lengthy note telling me he was turning it down because “it is very complicated for nonfans (who make up the vast majority of my readers) and . . . it seems to pack no punch or realism.” But, he added, he was anxious to help young authors on the way up, and advised me “to do a spaceship-alien planet theme, keeping the plot simple and the writing taught [sic!] and send it to me again. I’ll do all I can to show you where you go wrong and suggest how to put it right, and I believe, with a little perseverance, you will make quite a promising writer.”

I took the advice to heart and wrote a three-thousand-worder called “Gorgon Planet,” which Hamilton accepted in January 1954, paying me $12.60. It was my first sale of fiction to any professional SF magazine, and I was on my way. Before long I had sold stories to Bob Lowndes and Bill Hamling, and then, in 1955, to Howard Browne of Amazing and the formidable John W. Campbell of Astounding, and after that I would be able to sell just about any story I wrote. But not always to the first editor I showed it to. Even after my career was launched, occasional rejection slips still showed up. (John Campbell, 1963: “Glad to hear from you again . . . but I’m afraid this one really isn’t a story.” Larry T. Shaw, same year: “I’m sure someone will buy it, but what we need is something more intellectually slanted and strongly plotted.” Damon Knight, 1969: “This one is ingenious, but I could not persuade myself that I cared what happened to either of the characters.” And so on, every now and then, especially after I began writing stories for the very hard to please Alice K. Turner of Playboy in 1981. She bought a lot from me, but she turned plenty down, too.)

Yes, I did get to have a long and rewarding career despite all those early rejections, and no, it wasn’t easy to get started, however it might look in hindsight. Many a time back in 1952 and 1953 I was just about ready to give up trying to sell my stories altogether, even as you sometimes are. For me that would have been a mistake. Perhaps it would be for you also. Some people, however keen their ambitions might be, simply will never learn the knack of writing stories people will want to read. If you have what it takes, though, you’ll keep right on jogging down that bumpy road until you get where you want to go.