Meet Robert Silverberg, 1960s Porn Novelist

No Pictures, Just Words

Words are great and great writers can use words to take us places, connect with us on many levels, and in some cases, get us off. While some might find it hard to believe that people still get off by reading, back in the 1960s, the market for sleazy sex paperbacks was huge. Robert Silverberg, a now successful science-fiction writer, talked with Vice about his early career writing smut.

Being a young writer trying to make your way in the world is really tough, and when Robert Silverberg was offered $600 bucks for 50,000 smutty words, he jumped at the chance:  

It was then the beginning of July. I didn't hesitate. $600 a month was big money in those days, especially when you were a young writer at your wits' end because all your regular markets had crashed and burned. One book would pay four months' rent. They were going to publish two paperbacks a month, and I was being offered a chance to write half the list myself. "You bet," I said.  

Silverberg’s formula was simple: sympathetic lead (male or female), healthy, but frustrated sex life, a chance encounter of sorts, releasing of inhibitions, passion, troubles from said passion, more passion and more troubles until the lead finds a resolution. It may not sound like much, but the story needed to be simple so the real focus could be on the acts of desire. Of course, the real challenge was finding words that weren’t considered “vulgar,” as it was the 60s after all.  

The list of what was a "vulgarism," though, kept changing in line with various court actions and rulings affecting Nightstand's competitors in the rapidly expanding erotic-book business. All across the nation, bluenosed civic authorities were trying to stamp out this new plague of smut. Whenever a liberal-minded judge threw out a censor's case, the word came down to us that we could take a few more risks in what we wrote, although our prose remained exceedingly pure by later publishing standards. And whenever some unfortunate publisher was hit by a fine, the word was passed to the little crew of Nightstand regulars that we had to try to be more proper.  

Budrys phoned me to say that I must restrict my use of "it" from now on. I took a look at a recently published book of mine and saw that they had indeed changed all my its to "that"s, creating stuff like: "Do that,' she cried. 'I want that! I want that!'"  

Silverberg was a fast writer and able to crank out the smut at a pretty fast pace (all puns intended). He ended up writing 150 porn novels during his five-year career. And of course, Silverberg has no shame about it. I highly recommend you check out the full article (and all the book covers) over on Vice.com. 

Next time you’re the mood, why not change things up a bit—live like it’s the 1960s and see if you can some find paperback smut online, just to see if it does anything for you. I bet it’s better than anything EL James can write.