Robert Sheckley (1928–2005)

This is vintage Sheckley, and I personally find his work from the 50s and 60s to be consistently fun and entertaining (something I can't always say of his later work). These are stories that are well written and often full of witty, dry humor delivered with a wink--but don't expect characters to leap off the pages at you, or any probing of the profound. Aliens tend to look like, act like, and be capable of having relations with people from Earth.

My favorites were "Proof of the Pudding," a show more story that could have come off as sexist, but was really rather touching instead; "The Odor of Thought," the tale of an insterstellar mailman stranded on a planet populated by telepathic predators; "Fishing Season" which tells of a housing track where people are going mysteriously missing; the haunted planet tale "Ghost V"; "The Victim from Space" about a clueless spacefarer who ingratiates himself with planetary natives with a dark secret; "Shall We Have a Little Talk?" in which a capitalist explorer tries to trick the natives; "The Petrified World" about a man who lives in a world where everything is constantly changing; and "The People Trap" a sort of precursor tale to "The Running Man." In fact, the only tale in this collection that left me disappointed was "Redfern's Labyrinth" a sort of Borgesian excercise in metatext that didn't really work for me. show less

A vintage paperback, collecting ten stories (in the UK edition) from the early to mid-1950s. Indeed, reading a slender A-format paperback (only 125 pages) was a pleasure in itself when compared with the somewhat inflated B-format books now so commonplace. I read through this in three sittings in the course of one day.

Sheckley was a master of the short form; I visualised some of these stories as Twilight Zone episodes, and indeed The Altar almost played itself out for me in black-and-white! show more Cost of Living has a timely warning on consumer debt.

A couple of the stories betray their age in their attitudes to women, but even then Sheckley undermines even a modern reader's expectations by giving female characters agency in sometimes surprising ways.

The title story is a classic where two spaceship pilots running short of supplies find themselves stranded in an alien warehouse full of food they cannot eat, with labels like "VIGROOM - FILLS ALL YOUR STOMACHS AND FILLS THEM RIGHT!" and "VORMITASH - AS GOOD AS IT SOUNDS!".

Perhaps the stand-out story for me was Watchbird, where robot birds are deployed to predict murderous intent and prevent the crimes happening (a theme familiar from the "Precrime" in Philip Dick's 1956 novella - and [much] later film - Minority Report). But the robot birds have "learning circuits" and begin to learn human behaviour too well. This story could be almost contemporary - change some of the vocabulary to include the words "AI", "algorithm" and "drone", and a modern reader wouldn't turn a hair.

The collection ends with another classic, The Seventh Victim.

Many of the best of these stories have been reprinted since in other collections. but this is worth acquiring if you see a copy. And frankly, any Robert Sheckley is worth acquiring. show less

Robert Sheckley was a master of science fiction short stories that warned us to be careful what we wish for because disaster could follow if our dreams come true.

The collection’s title story, “Pilgrimage to Earth,” is the best of the bunch. It first appeared as “Love, Inc.” in Playboy. A young man from a farming planet comes to Earth to find true love. He finds just what he wants for sale at a good price, but it is not, of course, what he bargained for. Reading it is like watching show more a train wreck—you don’t want it to happen, but you can’t stop watching, and in this case, laughing—and feeling guilty about doing so.

The stories often take shots at conformity and consumerism. Characters frequently make deals with aliens and unscrupulous humans that backfire in creative ways. In “Protection,” for instance, a man hires an alien to warn him of dangers in his future but discovers that doing so also increases the threats he faces. It may be an allegorical critique of the 1950s arms race.

I wish Sheckley were still around to poke fun at the Internet economy. show less

Archived on openlibrary.org. Don't miss the introduction.

"Language might actually be compared to the sparkling, ever-changing face of the sea. Like the sea, you never know what reefs may be concealed in its pellucid depths. The brightest water hides the most treacherous shoals."

What a bunch of short, strange, and def. not sweet stories. Not all are SF, either, for example 'Cordle to Onion to Carrot.' But even while reading that one, we can admit that it's Speculative, in its own way. Mostly show more pretty bleak, but with black humor too. Intelligent, but not pretentious.

Unfortunately there's lots of "the man and the girl" and other casual sexism. But he objectifies and satirizes the male pov too, so it's really not so unpalatable as it could be.

Definitely recommended to those interested in the history of quality science fiction. show less