There is no question that science-fiction writers have become more ambitious, stylistically and thematically, in recent years. (46) But this may have less to do with the luring call of academic surroundings than with changing market conditions—a factor that academic critics rarely take into account.Robert Silverberg, a former president of The Science Fiction Writers of America, is one of the most prolific professionals in a field dominated by people who actually write for a living. (Unlike mystery or Western writers, most science-fiction writers cannot expect to cash in on fat movie sales or TV tie-ins.) (47) Still in his late thirties, Silverberg has published more than a hundred books, and he is disarmingly frank about the relationship between the quality of genuine prose and the quality of available outlet. By his own account, he was “an annoyingly verbal young man” from Brooklyn who picked up his first science-fiction book at the age of ten, started writing seriously at the age of thirteen, and at seventeen nearly gave up in despair over his inability to break into the pulp magazines. (48) At his parents’ urging, he enrolled in Columbia University, so that, if worst came to worst, he could always go to the School of Journalism and “get a nice steady job somewhere”. During his sophomore year, he sold his first science-fiction story to a Scottish magazine named Nebula. By the end of his junior year, he had sold a novel and twenty more stories. (49) By the end of his senior year, he was earning two hundred dollars a week writing science fiction, and his parents were reconciled to his pursuit of the literary life. “I became very cynical very quickly,” he says. First I couldn’t sell anything, then I could sell everything. The market played to my worst characteristics. An editor of a schlock magazine would call up to tell me he had a ten-thousand-word hole to fill in his next issue. I’d fill it overnight for a hundred and fifty dollars. I found that rewriting made no difference. (50) I knew I could not possibly write the kinds of things I admired as a reader—Joyce, Kafka, Mann—so I detached myself from my work. I was a phenomenon among my friends in college, a published, selling author. But they always asked, “When are you going to do something serious?” —meaning something that wasn’t science fiction—and I kept telling them, “ When I’m financially secure.”

答案

46.但是这一点与其说是与学术环境具有诱惑力的召唤有关，还不如说是与变化的市场状况有关——一这是一个学术评论家很少考虑的因素。

47.还不到四十多岁，西尔弗伯格就已出版了一百多本书籍，而他对真正散文的质量与应时之作的质量之间的关系十分坦诚，毫无掩饰。

48.在他双亲的敦促下，他报考了哥伦比亚大学，所以即便最糟他也能进入新闻学校，“将来总可以有一份稳定的好工作。”

49.到大四结束的时候，他每星期写科幻小说已经可以赚两百美元了，而他的双亲也接受了他对于文学生涯的追求。

50.我知道我写不出作为读者的我所喜欢的东西，就像乔伊斯、卡夫卡、曼恩的作品，所以我不再那么关注我所写的东西。

总体分析

本文介绍了科幻小说家罗伯特·西尔弗伯格。文章先指出科幻小说的繁荣与市场需求关系紧密，接着通过介绍多产的科幻小说家西尔弗伯格的创作经历予以说明。

本文考查的知识点：后置定语、插入语、比较结构、同位语、上下文中词义的选择等。