Store of the Worlds by Robert Sheckley
This collection of sci-fi author Robert Sheckley's shorter works, edited by Alex Abramovich and Jonathan Lethem, focuses on the fertile mid-1950s period of his career. This anthology is the best entry point for readers approaching Sheckley's work for the first time.
Dimension of Miracles by Robert Sheckley
When Douglas Adams discovered the works of Robert Sheckley, he was unnerved by how uncannily these efforts, especially Dimension of Miracles , anticipated his The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy . When asked to compare the two, Adams replied: "Sheckley's are better."
In his late 20s, Robert Sheckley showed all the signs of greatness. With his knack for social satire and taste for the absurd, Sheckley anticipated many of the major figures of the 1960s counterculture. He could write crisp straight narratives, or brilliantly parody a range of commercial and historical prose styles. He effortlessly mixed adventure and humor, insights and entertainment, highbrow and lowbrow. He seemed poised to break out of the confines of genre fiction and reinvent himself as a mainstream literary lion. Indeed, Sheckley appeared just a step away from establishing himself as the next Kurt Vonnegut, or even a sci-fi Italo Calvino. Yet even as he delighted readers, Sheckley increasingly frustrated them with his flippancy, his willingness to abandon a plot with loose ends hanging, revealing a peculiar impatience with his own characters and stories. By his mid-30s, his best work was behind him, and the same author who had once seemed on the brink of crossover success now settled for repeating the formulas of the past—although even at this point, Sheckley still managed to show in brief bursts of creative energy the scope of his prodigious talent.
In these three essays, I look at some of Sheckley's essential works, and try to make sense of his puzzling and provocative legacy.
M Indswap by Robert Sheckley
Is Mindswap a rambling disaster or a virtuoso postmodern pastiche? Here Robert Sheckley moves from sci-fi to satire to cowboy story to Elizabethan drama to sword-and-sorcery fantasy. Every ten pages, both style and plot undergo a cosmic sea-change.