Alternative Reading: Passion Bum

Robert Silverberg is the great 20th-century pioneer of science fiction, the multiple Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning author of books such as Nightwings and Lord Valentine’s Castle.

Robert Silverberg is the great 20th-century pioneer of science fiction, the multiple Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning author of books such as Nightwings and Lord Valentine’s Castle. What few know, however, is that he is also the super-prolific author of scores of soft-porn pulp titles under pseudonyms such as John Dexter, Don Elliott and Loren Beauchamp. Passion Bum is a prime example of this output (the phrase ‘passion bum’ sounds like the sign-off in a letter from Philip Larkin to Kingsley Amis, but uses ‘bum’ in the US sense of ‘tramp’ or ‘ne’er-do well’). The back cover distills the plot: ‘One wild night in the palatial mansion of the love-crazed Marilyn, he proved he was the sin king of the orgy world.’ Silverberg’s other pulp titles are far too numerous to list, but a small selection, mainly from the 1960s, includes The Bra Peddlers, The Lust Plotters, Dial O-R-G-Y, Lust Lover, Nympho, A Change for the Bedder, Convention Girl, Cousin Lover, The Decadent, Diary of a Dyke, Flesh Bigamist, Flesh Boarder, Flesh Bride, Flesh Cry, Flesh Flames, Flesh Fever, Flesh Lesson, Flesh Man, Flesh Melody and Take My Wife.