Notes
The Alien Years, a standalone novel by Robert Silverberg.

A fixup novel based on three short stories:

• Against Babylon (Omni, May 1986) – opening chapters
• Hannibal's Elephants (Omni, October 1988) – small piece in one of the early sequences
• The Pardoner's Tale (Playboy, June 1987) – nearly all in later part of book

• Beauty in the Night (September 1997)
• On the Inside (November 1997)
• The Colonel in Autumn (March 1998)

Publisher's Blurb – Lower Cover
'Robert Silverberg is doing more than anyone to bring science fiction back into the mainstream of literature'
-ANALOG

The new millennium has barely begun when a vast fleet of alien vessels descends without warning on the Earth. Some starships blaze mighty trails of fire; some pop into view, unfathomably silent. Three different but equally strange kinds of alien emerge. Wide-eyed UFOlogists who rush to welcome them are scooped up like bugs collected for study.

The aliens make no response when governments attempt to communicate with them, but a single act of resistance to them provokes massive retalliation. This is the first major catastrophe of the alien years and it will be followed by others. In silence the aliens take control of the world, effortlessly enslaving what remains of its population.

On a remote California ranch, the Carmichaels are a family of blue-eyed, straight-backed patriots, flawed by narrow thinking and repressed emotions – but redeemed by their courage. With them rests the slender hope that the natives of Earth may one day be free.

'One of the great storytellers of the century'
-ROGER ZELAZNY