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Enchantment seizes us, all of us somehow. J. I. Packer calls it "that tang of the transcendent in the everyday." C. S. Lewis called it sehnsucht, the sweet haunting heart's desire, satisfied in the divine alone. It comes suddenly, unbidden—to Lewis, kindled by cobwebs in morning light and the smell of bonfires; to Packer, by locomotives and jazz.
For me it was Ray Bradbury, drilling me between the eyes when that spot was tenderest with Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury wrote of small-town Illinois in summer, of tree-lined avenues and lemonade stands. I hailed from such a place, same state even. He wrote of diabolical carnivals rolling in at midnight, bringing sheer hell. Me, I once got yelled at by a nasty-looking carnie when I was five, for no reason. Bradbury wrote of white things nestled in crawl spaces and attics. Well, my uncle had in his basement a huge, black multiarmed boiler that hadn't engulfed anything in its cold belly for decades. Except for sleepless little boys, I thought, lying wide awake upstairs just above it. Oh no oh no oh no …
He was my voice when I was too bashful or dim to speak for myself. It was Bradbury who assured me that those cornfields surrounding us weren't just cornfields; they were wonderland, midwestern magic. Just look closely, kid, just look closely. I did. He was right.
Later I would traverse those very cornfields, not to the college of magicians but to Moody Bible Institute in the spired city of Chicago, and it was there of all places that I discovered a whole new complement of fever dreams to pile atop the older ones.
Theological study was well and good, but some days it seemed much better instead to slip out and purchase a paperback. One, a science fantasy quest chosen primarily for its cover, was Lord Valentine's Castle, by Robert Silverberg. Here was young Valentine, exiled prince, battling vicious monsters. I too did that; mine were New Testament Greek and a smelly Canadian up the hall who showered intermittently at best. Valentine sought to re-establish his throne. Me too, every morning, dashing for the stall without the broken seat, trying to beat the other guys. Valentine voyaged through glistening cities and imposing castles. I peered out my twelfth-floor window and daily beheld marvels of reflective glass and steel. Valentine was constantly assaulted. I got dirty looks for reading Robert Silverberg.
Again I was seized, elevated to something beyond entertainment. I read more Silverberg, an uneasy friend, but somehow he never showed himself as Bradbury had. Like the Wizard of Oz, Silverberg stayed hidden behind a curtain, appropriately and tantalizingly mysterious.
There are many Silverbergs to discover, many planets and dimensions, from all the disparate epochs and developments of the field. "The cunning old confectioner," science fiction historian Brian Aldiss calls him, "a quiet, kindly, yet sinister presence."
In Reflections and Refractions: Thoughts on Science-Fiction, Science, and Other Matters (1997), a collection of ruminative, chatty essays, the veil is pulled, but not all the way. Here Silverberg offers "as close to a formal autobiography as I'll ever write, I suspect."
A bit from his 1985 novella Sailing to Byzantium serves as an apt placard to fasten above his career. A man named Phillips from our day has seemingly been abducted to the thirtieth century by enigmatic "citizens," aristocratic gadflies who idle their days touring fabricated cities reconstructed from Earth's past, populated by synthetic "temporaries."
Phillips is casually asked what he thinks of their Alexandria, and realizes
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