I’m with Fandom Pulse on this one. I think Robert Silverberg should be far better known, and far more well-read, than many authors with whom most science fiction and fantasy readers today are much more familiar:
Lord Valentine’s Castle ran in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction across four issues from November 1979 to February 1980, then appeared as a book in 1980. It won the Locus Award for best fantasy novel and was nominated for the Hugo. Majipoor became the most commercial project of his career.
Valentine wakes outside the city of Pidruid with money in his pockets and no memory. He joins a troupe of jugglers and travels the planet of Majipoor, a world far larger than Earth with a population in the billions and several species living under dream-based politics. Dreams on Majipoor are a regulated service, run by the Lady of the Isle and the King of Dreams. They tell Valentine he is the deposed Coronal, his body taken from him. He raises an army, crosses the continent, and marches on Castle Mount.
The planet carried more than one book. Majipoor Chronicles followed in 1982 and Valentine Pontifex in 1983. The Mountains of Majipoor arrived in 1995, Sorcerers of Majipoor in 1997, Lord Prestimion in 1999, and King of Dreams in 2001. Silverberg returned in 2013 with Tales of Majipoor, which collected seven stories, among them the novella “The Book of Changes” from Legends II. His own contribution to the original Legends, “The Seventh Shrine,” is a Majipoor story too.
While it’s not possible to describe Robert Silverberg as a first-tier science fiction and fantasy author in the vein of Tolkien, Asimov, Heinlein, or Lee, I think that he is woefully underrated. Lord Valentine’s Castle and the rest of the Majipoor series are proper “fat fantasy” novels, as we used to call “epic fantasy” and I think it is much better than anything Robert Jordan or Brandon Sanderson ever wrote, and I would put it ahead of the Belgariad of David Eddings as well.
In addition to being one of the best anthologists in the business, he is also an excellent short story writer. His “Not Our Brother” and “A Thousand Paces Along the Via Dolorosa” from The Conglomeroid Cocktail Party are two of the most chilling science fiction stories you will ever read; if you read the latter you will probably be able to detect not only an influence on “Seven Kill Tiger” but also the Covid-19 madness.
If you’ve never read Silverberg before, you are in for a series of serious science fiction treats.