Starman's Quest by Robert Silverberg, Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera

The Lexman Spacedrive gave man the stars -- but at a fantastic price. Interstellar exploration, colonization, and trade became things of reality. The benefits to Earth were enormous. But because of the Fitzgerald Contraction, a man who shipped out to space could never live a normal life on Earth again. Travelling at speeds close to that of light, spacemen lived at an accelerated pace. A nine-year trip to Alpha Centauri and back seemed to take only six weeks to men on a spaceship. When they returned, their friends and relatives had aged enormously in comparison, old customs had changed, even the language was different. Alan was a spacer, just like his whole family -- until, suddenly and without intending to, he in turn jumped ship and remained on Earth! There were times he regretted that. Earth was a bewildering and utterly hostile place. To stay alive, he had to play a ruthless game -- and he couldn't even find anyone to tell him the rules. . . .

About the Author :
Robert Silverberg (born January 15, 1935) is an American author and editor, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple winner of both Hugo and Nebula Awards, a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame, and a Grand Master of SF. He has attended every Hugo Awards ceremony since the inaugural event in 1953. In the mid-1960s, science fiction writers were becoming more literarily ambitious. Frederik Pohl, then editing three science fiction magazines, offered Silverberg carte blanche in writing for them. Thus inspired, Silverberg returned to the field that gave him his start, paying far more attention to depth of character development and social background than he had in the past and mixing in elements of the modernist literature he had studied at Columbia. Silverberg continued to write rapidly-Algis Budrys reported in 1965 that he wrote and sold at least 50,000 words weekly - but the novels he wrote in this period are considered superior to his earlier work; Budrys in 1968 wrote of his surprise that "Silverberg is now writing deeply detailed, highly educated, beautifully figured books" like Thorns and The Masks of Time. Perhaps the first book to indicate the new Silverberg was To Open the Sky, a fixup of stories published by Pohl in Galaxy Magazine, in which a new religion helps people reach the stars. That was followed by Downward to the Earth, a story containing echoes of material from Joseph Conrad's work, in which the human former administrator of an alien world returns after the planet's inhabitants have been set free. Other acclaimed works of that time include To Live Again, in which the memories and personalities of the deceased can be transferred to other people; The World Inside, a look at an overpopulated future; and Dying Inside, a tale of a telepath losing his powers. In the August 1967 issue of Galaxy, Pohl published a 20,000-word novelette called "Hawksbill Station." This story earned Silverberg his first Hugo and Nebula story award nominations.