I still thought it was a pretty good book - but obviously the big-league publishing companies were simply so preoccupied with the outputs of their big-league writers that I wasn't going to break into that charmed circle.
Okay, I resigned myself to seeing THE SEED OF EARTH appear as one more Ace Double Novel.
But just then one of the outstanding s-f magazines, Galaxy, inaugurated a companion line of paperback novels that was designed to follow the old Venture policy: strong s-f adventure with a generous component of sex. THE SEED OF EARTH fit their needs exactly, and so my agent let them have the book. The advance was the same as Ace would have paid - $1000 - but the big difference, to me, was that Galaxy's edition wouldn't be a double novel. I'd have a whole paperback all to myself. I had never had that privilege.
I collected a down payment of $500 in February, 1960, and waited for the other half, which was due on publication. And waited and waited, and never got it, because the Galaxy paperback series sputtered to a halt and terminated without ever publishing my book. Eventually Galaxy, with my permission, recouped its $500 investment by running THE SEED OF EARTH in the issue for June, 1962.
There are a lot of oddities about that. For one thing, stories in Galaxy are supposed to be previously unpublished, but a good chunk of THE SEED OF EARTH had been used in Venture only five years before. For another, there had already been one 'Seed of Earth' by Robert Silverberg in a science-fiction magazine, the unrelated story in Super-Science; this one confused all the indexers. And, too, when Galaxy had bought the novel for its paperback series I had been asked to add a few graphic sex scenes to the original manuscript. This I did; but when the magazine ran the story, it had to be cut for reasons of space from 50,000 words to 35,000. The 15,000 words that went out did not include the inserts I had been asked to supply, which meant that Galaxy had first asked me to expand and then drastically to cut the same story, and had ended up publishing an abridged but unexpurgated version!
Amid such confusions did my novel finally see print - some of it, anyway. With Galaxy's ownership of the book discharged through the magazine release, I was again free to seek a book publisher, and shortly my agent found one: Ace. Don Wollheim, who probably would have bought the book willingly enough in 1958, gathered it in finally, after all these adventures, late in 1961, and in the summer of 1962 it reached the newsstands. Yes, as part of an Ace Double Book, but there was one consolation for me: the flip side of the volume was also a Silverberg title, a story collection called NEXT STOP THE STARS. At least I didn't have to complain that some other guy's book was riding with mine.
And here, fifteen years later, is THE SEED OF EARTH again, at last published in solitary splendor. I realize now that it's not the profound mixture of adventure and human insight that I thought it was in 1958, but I still think it's an okay book. And it's interesting to see how many of my later literary themes and obsessions turn up in it - notably the aliens who place human beings in a condition of stress for hidden purposes of their own, which shows up again in Thorns, Man in the Maze, and a good many other works of mine. I enjoyed reading it again and I'm not overly embarrassed at loosing this very early novel of mine on the newsstands. I hope you'll find pleasure in it not merely as an historical artifact.
Robert Silverberg Oakland, California April, 1976
CHAPTER ONE
The day was warm, bright, sky blue, thermometer in the high sixties - a completely perfect October day in New York - needing no modification by the Weather Control Bureau. At the weather station in Scarsdale, glum-faced weather-adjustment men were piling into their planes and taking off for Wisconsin, where a cold front was barrelling in from Canada, and where their expert services would be needed. Twenty thousand miles above Fond du Lac, the orbiting weather control satellite beamed messages down. In Australia, technicians were completing the countdown on a starship about to blast off for a distant world with a cargo of one hundred reluctant colonists. In Chicago, where the morning mail had just arrived, a wealthy playboy stared at a blue slip of paper with wide-eyed horror. In London, where the mail had arrived several hours before, a shopgirl's face was pale with fear. She, too, had received her notice from the Colonization Bureau.
Around the world, it was an ordinary day, the ninth of October, 2116 a.d. Nothing unusual was happening; nothing but the usual round of birth, death and, occasionally, Selection.
And in New York, on that perfect October day, District Chairman David Mulholland of the Colonization Bureau reached his office at 0900 sharp, ready if not precisely eager to perform his routine functions.
Before he left his office at 1400 hours, he knew, he would have authorized the uprooting of one hundred lives. He tried not to think of it that way. He focused his mind on the slogan emblazoned on blue-and-yellow bunting wherever you looked, the slogan of the Colonization Bureau: Do Your Share for Mankind's Destiny.
But the trouble was, as Mulholland could never forget, that mankind's destiny was of only trifling interest to the vast mass of men.
He entered his office, drawing warm smiles from the clerks and typists and secretaries as he passed their cubicles. In the office, everyone treated Chairman Mulholland with exaggerated affection. Most of the bureau employees were sufficiently naive to believe that Chairman Mulholland, if he felt so inclined, could arrange their exemption from the world-wide lottery.
They were wrong, of course. No one who met the qualifications was exempt. If you were between the ages of nineteen and forty, had health rating of plus five or better, could pass a Feldman fertility test, and were not disqualified by one of the various social regulations, you went when you were called, in the name of Mankind's Destiny. There was no way to wriggle off the hook once you were caught - unless, of course, you could prove that you were disqualified by some technicality that the computer had overlooked. The remaining child in a family which had lost four or more children to selection was exempt. Mothers of children under two years of age were exempt. Even mothers of children under ten years of age were exempt, if their husbands had been selected and if they had not remarried. A man whose wife was pregnant was entitled to a single ten-month delay in departure. There were half a dozen more such technicalities.
But, whatever the situation, sixty ships, six thousand people, left Earth every day in the week. Someone had to be aboard those ships. Somewhat more than two million Earthmen headed starward each year.
Two million out of seven billion. The chance that the dark finger would fall upon your shoulder was inconceivably remote. Even with the figure winnowed down to the mere three and a half billion eligibles, the percentage taken each year was slight - one out of every eighteen hundred persons.
Do Your Share for Mankind's Destiny, said the blue-and-yellow sign that hung behind Chairman Mulholland's desk. He looked at it unseeingly and sat down.
Papers had already begun to accumulate. Another day was under way.
HQs so-efficient secretary had already adjusted his calendar, dusted his desk, titled his papers. Mulholland was not fooled. Miss Thorne was trying to make herself indispensable to the chairman, as a hedge against the always-to-be-dreaded day when the computer's beam lingered over her number. In moments of cruelty he thought idly of telling her that no mortal, not even a district chairman, had enough pull with fate to assure an exemption.
It was entirely in the hands of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.
Clotho put your number in the computer. Lachesis riffled the cards. Atropos selected, and selected inflexibly.
The Fates could not be swayed.
Mulholland lifted the top sheet from the stack on his desk. It was the daily requisition form. Five of the sixty starships that left Earth each day were manned by Americans, and one of the five American ships each day was stocked with selectees drawn by Mulholland's office. He read the requisition form with care.