Robert Silverberg/YMMV

• Esoteric Happy Ending: Silverberg's moral and philosophical stances are a bit unusual for a modern-day American -- or anyone else. For instance, in The Face Upon the Waters joining a Hive Mind that's trying to kill or assimilate all life on a Death World is to him a happy ending because people should follow the beliefs and customs of whatever culture they're living in, and with Earth destroyed humanity's best choice is to join other cultures. This is an explicitly Broken Aesop -- the main character argued at length for the maintenance of human culture and customs until a sudden epiphany in the last few pages.