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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : ( S ) : Sheckley, Robert
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An NYRB Classics Original
Robert Sheckley was an eccentric master of the American short story, and his tales, whether set in dystopic cityscapes, ultramodern advertising agencies, or aboard spaceships lighting out for hostile planets, are among the most startlingly original of the twentieth century. Today, as the new worlds, alternate universes, and synthetic pleasures Sheckley foretold become our reality, his vision begins to look less absurdist and more prophetic. This retrospective selection, chosen by Jonathan Lethem and Alex Abramovich, brings together the best of Sheckley’s deadpan farces, proving once again that he belongs beside such mordant critics of contemporary mores as Bruce Jay Friedman, Terry Southern, and Thomas Pynchon.
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THE LIFE EXPECTANCY OF A NEW ARRIVAL ON OMEGA AVERAGED THREE EARTH YEARS Will Barrent could choose--exile on a nightmare planet, or life under the tyranny that had taken over Earth! Barrent had been tried, convicted, and memory-washed on Earth - an Earth strangely altered and stratified by fear of the radical and non-conformist. Now he was serving his sentence on Omega - a prison planet walled by a ring of hovering guard-ships from which there was no escape. Omega was a world of horror, a savage, ruthless way of life. But it was only a momentary ordeal, a prelude to a return to Earth and the subtle terrors of its own status civilization. The Status Civilization first appeared under the title Omega in Amazing Science Fiction Stories. Robert Sheckley was a Hugo- and Nebula-nominated author. His stories first appeared in science fiction magazines of the 1950s.His quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical. Sheckley was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.
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The Fleet thought the wars were over, but as a deadly race of insectoid invaders, the Ichton, sweep through the galaxy, races new to the Alliance are in dire need of aid. Star Central answers with the mammoth battlestation Stephen Hawking. The Hawking takes the fight beyond the boundaries of human space where the Ichton prove to be a formidable foe. Meanwhile, within the pseudoplanet’s stratified decks, the pressures of constant combat and close quarters may become the enemy’s most dangerous advantage.
For the first time in one volume: the complete stories of the Stephen Hawking, its multi-race military and civilian crew, and its desperate fight against the Ichton.
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The space freighter Queen Dierdre was a great, squat, pockmarked vessel of the Earth-Mars run and she never gave anyone a bit of trouble. That should have been sufficient warning to Mr. Watkins, her engineer. Watkins was fond of saying that there are two kinds of equipment - the kind that fails bit by bit, and the kind that fails all at once. Compared with a spaceship in distress, going to hell in a handbasket is roomy and slow!
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"Of course," said Mr. Pathis, Carrin's Account Executive from th AE company that supplied -- well, everything, everything the family bought or needed, "we would not want to deprive you of necessities, which in any case is fully protected by the laws we helped formulate and pass. To say nothing of the terrific items that are coming out next year. Things you wouldn't want to miss, sir!"
Mr. Carrin nodded. Certainly he wanted new items.
"Well, suppose we make the customary arrangement. If you will just sign over your son's earnings for the first thirty years of his adult life, we can easily arrange credit for you."
Carrin made his payments, even when they were awful. But how could they aswk him to sign away his son's life. . . ?
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He had realized, only seconds ago, that he was in love with her.
Well, he'd tell her. The evening would be memorable. He would propose, there would be kisses, and the seal of acceptance would, figuratively speaking, be stamped across his forehead.
Not too pleasant an outlook, he decided. It really would be much more comfortable not to be in love. What had done it? A look, a touch, a thought? It didn't take much, he knew, and stretched his arms for a thorough yawn.
"Help me!" a voice said, not for the first time -- though it was the first that he remembered.
His muscles spasmed, cutting off the yawn in mid-moment. He sat upright on the bed, then grinned and lay back again.
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A curated collection of some of the best short story science fiction from the past century. Selected authors include:
Jules Verne
H.G. Wells
Robert Sheckley
Kurt Vonnegut
Philip K. Dick
John W. Campbell
Andre Norton
Tom Godwin
Philip Jose Farmer
Poul William Anderson
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Something had gone wrong when they'd loaded the ship, and the rations hadn't quite lasted long enough to make the outbound end of the uranium prospecting trip. Then they found an abandoned world, and landed the ship on an old warehouse facility . . . and tried to found somehting to eat.
Not an easy thing to do, going through an alien warehouse when they could barely read the manuals, and had not much cluse as to the nature of the local biology.
They would have eaten a horse, if there'd been one. But there wasn't. And that was probably for the best -- it might have eaten them first!
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He said he wasn't immortal -- but nothing could kill him. Still, if the Earth was to live as a free world, he had to die.
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When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot.
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First published in 1959 as a startling, revolutionary novel of the future, then pushed to new cinematic limits as the feature film adaptation FREEJACK in 1992, Robert Sheckley's unsettling vision of Tomorrow now arrives in ebook format for the 21st century.
Thomas Blaine awoke in a white bed in a white room, and heard someone say, "He's alive now." Then they asked him his name, age and marital status. Yes, that seemed normal enough---but what was this talk about "death trauma"?
Thus was Thomas Blaine introduced to the year 2110, where science had discovered the technique of transferring a man's consciousness from one body to another. Where a man's mind could be snatched from the past, when his body was at the point of death, and brought forward into a "host body" in this fantastic future world.
But that was only a small part of it. For the future had proved the reality of life after death, and discovered worlds beyond or simultaneous with our own---worlds where, through scientific techniques, a man could live again, in another body, when he died here. And in the process, the reality of ghosts, poltergeists, and zombies was also established.
What did it all mean? How had this discovery of what they called the "hereafter" shaped the world of 2110?
Thomas Blaine found himself living in a future where the discoveries and techniques imagined by peo
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In the future, interstellar travel to alien worlds will be too expensive for most ordinary people. It certainly is for Marvin, a college student who wants to take a really good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford, a mindswap, in which your consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien lifeform. But Marvin is unlucky, and finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal, a body that he has to vacate fast. But that criminal consciousness has stolen Marvin's earthly body, and Marvin has to find a body on the black market.
Travel from world to world with Marvin, each one crazier than the last, as he keeps finding far from ideal bodies in awful situations, just to stay alive.
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This is a collection of eleven short stories about robots that are compiled from various sources. The stories are: (1) Arm of the Law (How could a robot—a machine, after all—be involved in something like law application and violence?), (2) The Velvet Glove (New York was a bad town for robots this year. In fact, all over the country it was bad for robots....), (3) Survival Tactics (The robots were built to serve Man; to do his work, see to his comforts, make smooth his way. Then the robots figured out an additional service—putting Man out of his misery), (4) Beside Still Waters, (5) A Spaceship Named McGuire (The basic trouble with McGuire was that, though "he" was a robot spaceship, nevertheless "he" had a definite weakness that a man might understand....), (6) Service with a Smile (Herbert was truly a gentleman robot. The ladies' slightest wish was his command....), (7) The Helpful Robots (This is the story of Rankin, who prided himself on knowing how to handle robots, but did not realize that the robots of the Clearchan Confederacy were subject to a higher law than implicit obedience to man), (8) Robots of the World! Arise! (What would you do if your best robots—children of your own brain—walked up and said "We want union scale"?), (9) The Love of Frank Nineteen (What will happen to love in that far off Day after Tomorrow? The result is a unique love story from that same Tomorrow), (10) Benefactor (We can anticipate that robots will be fiercely resented, at first, in a society that will see them as the latest—and an indestructible—widespread threat to the workers whom they will replace. The men who will seek to alter the status quo will be called "robot lovers" and stoned. But what happens next?), and (11) The Stutterer (A man can be killed by a toy gun—he can die of fright, for heart attacks can kill. What, then, is the deadly thing that must be sealed away, forever locked in buried concrete—a thing or an idea? ). It is a pleasure to publish this new, high quality, and affordable edition of these timeless stories.
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Robert Sheckley was one of the most interesting science fiction authors of the 50’s and 60’s. While he wrote in the same language of aliens and spaceships as many of his contemporaries, he used his works as a mirror in which he showed us a reflection of society with all its flaws and foibles. Best known for his novels such a The 10th Victim, Immortality, Inc., and The Status Civilization, he also was a fine writer of short stories. Resurrected Press has collected some of the best of these from the 50’s including "Warrior Race", "The Leech", "Watchbird", "Warm", "Diplomatic Immunity", "The Hour of Battle", "Besides Still Waters", "Keep Your Shape", "One Man’s Poison", 'Ask a Foolish Question", "Cost of Living", "Death Wish Forever".
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This time the humans are taking the offensive! Stan Myakovsky is a once-famous scientist fallen on hard times. Now he dodges spaceship repo men and dreams of the marketability of his cybernetic ant. Then a woman named Julie Lish walks into his life. She is beautiful, mysterious, and totally amoral. She is also skilled in the arts of thievery and Oriental self-defense. What's more, she has a plan so outrageous there might be one chance in a million to pull it off.
Together Stan and Julie become the most unlikely pair of pirates in the universe. With a hijacked spaceship and a crew of hardcase misfits, they're searching for the ultimate pot of gold at the end of a bloody intergalactic rainbow: royal jelly from an alien hive. The only problem is that the fortune lies on the universe's most godforsaken planet. And once they get their hands on it, the'll have to fight their way past the aliens to get off the planet alive.
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CONTENTS: NOVELETTE: The Seal of the Damned August Derleth; SHORT STORIES: The Native Soil Alan E. Nourse; The Machine Robert Sheckley; A Candle For Katie Lila Borison; Book of Goots John Healy; Backward Turn Backward Dorothy M. Edgerly; Landing For Midge Lee Correy; Voyage Beyond the Night John Victor Peterson; Song of Death C. Bird; The Fuzzies Lloyd Arthur Eshbach; Fiddler on Titan Manly Wade Wellman; ARTICLE: Shapes in the Sky *Civilian Saucer Intelligence*
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This is a spoof of everything from fairytales to Biblical notions. The demon Azzie Elbub finally thinks he's in with a good chance of tipping the balance towards evil once and for all. The millennium approaches and the forces of Good and Evil are in a battle for supremacy.