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Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley
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.
404 pages, Paperback
First published August 12, 2009
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About the author
Robert Sheckley
1,052books639followersOne of science fiction's great humorists, Sheckley was a prolific short story writer beginning in 1952 with titles including "Specialist", "Pilgrimage to Earth", "Warm", "The Prize of Peril", and "Seventh Victim", collected in volumes from Untouched by Human Hands (1954) to Is That What People Do? (1984) and a five-volume set of Collected Stories (1991). His first novel, Immortality, Inc. (1958), was followed by The Status Civilization (1960), Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Mindswap (1966), and several others. Sheckley served as fiction editor for Omni magazine from January 1980 through September 1981, and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.
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October 10, 2021
Kingsley Amis called Robert Sheckley "science fiction's premier gadfly." And for good reason - in the world of 1950s sf with such big names as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury and Robert A. Heinlein, the joker in the deck was undoubtedly this Brooklyn born American author.
Store of the Worlds - twenty-six Sheckley short stories collected here in this New York Review Books edition, stories originally published back in the 1950s in magazines ranging from Galaxy to Playboy. There's also an introductory essay by Alex Abramovich and Jonathan Lethem.
If you are primed for well-crafted fable-like blasters, usually about twelve pages in length, told with humor, irony and sharp wit, then I highly recommend you treat yourself to Robert Sheckley. Here's my write-up on three of my absolute favorites from the collection:
SPECIALIST
Catastrophe hits an alien spaceship with some highly unusual aliens on board - there’s Talker, Feeder, Thinker, Eye, Engine, Walls, Pusher, each a specialist performing their part in the spirit of cooperation. Following a photon storm, nearly everyone appears to be alive and kicking, everyone having legs to kick, that is, but most regrettably, one member perished during the disruption: Pusher. An especial tragedy since Pusher was a great friend to all in addition to carrying out his function of pushing the spaceship beyond the speed of light.
You may ask: How precisely is such “pushing� done? In keeping with the spirit of "soft" sf, there's no more detail given than Aesop provided on how the animals in his fables could talk. In many ways, the author's soft treatment of hard science adds great charm to his telling.
No doubt about it, the crew is in a quandary � they desperately need a new Pusher if they want to return to their home galaxy. Off they go on their search and we are given a number of tantalizing tidbits regarding the members: Walls are happy-go-lucky guys who love to party and drink, Talker waxes philosophic, and Eye can’t resisting making verses for the poem he’s in the process of writing, Peripheral Glow. But none of the crew wants to hear it. Ha! Poetry has no audience � alas, some things never change.
When the crew finally does find a Pusher on a Pusher planet, they encounter some serious resistance to their sense of cooperation. They wonder: What is it with Pusher’s mechanical civilization, a civilization that seems to be based on lack of trust, fear, violence and war? Any guesses what planet in the galaxy we’re talking about here?
THE STORE OF THE WORLD
Free, free, free at last! A curious, quizzical tale where a Mr. Wayne is given an opportunity to liberate his mind. Certainly the price is high but to have your bad memories obliterated, your apprehensions removed and your every desire fulfilled . . . ah, Mr. Wayne, surely you will pay.
Irrespective of your decision, when you return to what you call home, Mr. Wayne, what will you find? “With the aid of his wrist Geiger he found a deactivated lane though the rubble. He’d better get back to the shelter before dark, before the rats came out. If he didn’t hurry he’d miss the evening potato ration.� By my judgement, one of the most memorable short post-nuclear war tales written back in those duck-and-cover, fallout shelter 1950s.
SHAPE
Transformation, such an important theme from myths and legions around the world. Two powerful images come to mind. First, from Greek myth � the phoenix rising from the ashes, the legendary bird taking on new life from the death of its predecessor. The second is the following traditional tale from India about mistaken identity: There once was a lion cub raised by sheep. It began acting like a sheep, even began making baa baa baa sounds like a sheep. An adult lion came by and immediately understood what had happened. She grabbed the cub by the fur and carried it to a lake where it could peer into the water and see it wasn’t a sheep at all; it was a lion.
How I wish I knew about this Robert Sheckley story in my early teens. Such an action-packed, electrifying tale on the power of transformation. I can see my toehead thirteen year old self reading it over and over, even daydreaming about it, and maybe even committing a few lines to memory.
Sheckley frames his tale thusly: what happened to the twenty previous Grom missions to planet Earth remains a mystery. Pid the Pilot heads mission number twenty-one. Pid has two assistants, Gur the Detector and Ilg the radioman, both chosen for the ingenuity and resourcefulness but, unfortunately for the Grom powers that be, both are among the lower Grom castes prone to shaplessness. Very important for those Grom leaders since every creature on Grom, amorphous by nature, is given a shape prescribed by tradition and enforced by strict discipline and a keen sense of duty.
Pid takes great pride in being a pilot, following in the footsteps of his father, gradfather, right on back to beginning of time. After Pid pilots a successful landing on Earth, the crew is now ready to take the first step in fulfilling their mission � prepare for a full Grom military attack by linking the power from one of Earth’s atomic plants to a power source back on Grom.
Quickly the unexpected happens: there exists on Earth something Pid, Gur and Ilg experience for the first time: freedom. More specifically, freedom to change shape. Gur and Ilg take to their new found freedom immediately. What do you expect from the lower classes?! Pid is more conflicted � it is tradition and duty versus freedom and joy. One of the most charming science fiction tales ever written. Drats! I wish I read this back as a kid.
Robert Sheckley, 1928-2005
April 30, 2012
I'm not much of a huge sci-fi fan but I thought this collection was awesome. Though many of the stories are formulaic, I suspect that they are really meant to be, since they were written for sci-fi pulp mags of the past, and although the reader quickly learns to expect the twist if reading this collection straight through, there is really a lot to get out of these weird tales. I won't bother to go into what I got out of them, except to say it is the best of the morality of sci-fi tales: a strange mix of criticism of humanity morals (with a healthy dose of anti-imperialism thrown in) with a conservative defense of the "old ways" of the world and a naked fear of the future, progress, and technology. Isn't this inherent in all good sci-fi? I hope so (at various levels and with various highlighting) but it is important to remember that these stories are from the 50s and 60s, and therefore a true progenitor, at least in my eyes.
And also the style is so fun. Or should I say, funny. Some of these stories are absolutely hilarious. The word play and dialogue is incredibly inventive (I guess easy to do when the writers is inventing news names of people, races, and places, as well as new and changing languages), and the writing always engaging. If you are a sci-fi fan and haven't read Sheckley you should. If you are not a sci-fi fan and like good literature, and are curious about the evolution of US genre fiction, this is also a book for you.
And also the style is so fun. Or should I say, funny. Some of these stories are absolutely hilarious. The word play and dialogue is incredibly inventive (I guess easy to do when the writers is inventing news names of people, races, and places, as well as new and changing languages), and the writing always engaging. If you are a sci-fi fan and haven't read Sheckley you should. If you are not a sci-fi fan and like good literature, and are curious about the evolution of US genre fiction, this is also a book for you.
December 26, 2016
Video-review:
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2016:
A treasure chest of some of Sheckley's best stories, which means some of the best in Golden-Age science fiction. Goofy and over-the-top as some of these are, they are sheer fictional gold, the same way Creature From the Black Lagoon is goofy and perfect.
Special mentions go to Warm, which is unbelievably postmodern AND came out in 19fucking53, to Beside Still Waters and The Store of the Wordls, which are terribly heartrending, and to The Accountant, The Native Problem and Holdout, which are just plain fucking awesome.
Featured in my Top 20 Books I Read in 2016:
A treasure chest of some of Sheckley's best stories, which means some of the best in Golden-Age science fiction. Goofy and over-the-top as some of these are, they are sheer fictional gold, the same way Creature From the Black Lagoon is goofy and perfect.
Special mentions go to Warm, which is unbelievably postmodern AND came out in 19fucking53, to Beside Still Waters and The Store of the Wordls, which are terribly heartrending, and to The Accountant, The Native Problem and Holdout, which are just plain fucking awesome.
November 18, 2018
Si esto fuera el hit-parida de Gigamesh le cascaría un 4. Pero como aquí se valoran las "sensaciones", lo que te ha "gustado", es un 5 de pleno derecho. La selección de Abramovich y Lethem ha conseguido retrotraerme a cuando tenía 18 o 20 años y me encontré con mis primeros relatos de Sheckley. La sencillez en la construcción de la historia, la manera de retratar sentimientos e ideas (la ambición, el espíritu de conquista, la soberbia, la intolerancia...), cómo aborda ciertos temas tradicionales de la ciencia ficción (el pánico nuclear, la superpoblación, la colonización, el solipsismo...) y los conecta ingeniosamente con otro tipo de inquietudes, el certero giro final... ¡Guau!
Más de 300 páginas se dedican a los años 50. Casi llego a entender la ausencia de dos cuentos inexcusables: "A Ticket to Tranai" y "Citizen in Space". No hay narración que baje del notable. Las 100 últimas mantienen el tipo, aunque ya hay un par de cuentos en los que se aprecia la problemática tradicional de Sheckley con las novelas: situaciones que se estiran más de lo debido, se reiteran ideas, se pierde el nervio...
Si España fuera un mercado literario normal, este libro con los mejores relatos de uno de los mejores cuentistas de la ciencia ficción, estaría disponible. Siempre. Sin embargo no queda otra que acudir al inglés, a una colección que, mirando los autores que publica, tiene pinta de ser un equivalente a Alianza Bolsillo o la de los clásicos de Cátedra. De hecho, un libro semejante con la mitad de relatos cuadraría a la perfección en Letras populares de Cátedra. Soñar es gratis.
Más de 300 páginas se dedican a los años 50. Casi llego a entender la ausencia de dos cuentos inexcusables: "A Ticket to Tranai" y "Citizen in Space". No hay narración que baje del notable. Las 100 últimas mantienen el tipo, aunque ya hay un par de cuentos en los que se aprecia la problemática tradicional de Sheckley con las novelas: situaciones que se estiran más de lo debido, se reiteran ideas, se pierde el nervio...
Si España fuera un mercado literario normal, este libro con los mejores relatos de uno de los mejores cuentistas de la ciencia ficción, estaría disponible. Siempre. Sin embargo no queda otra que acudir al inglés, a una colección que, mirando los autores que publica, tiene pinta de ser un equivalente a Alianza Bolsillo o la de los clásicos de Cátedra. De hecho, un libro semejante con la mitad de relatos cuadraría a la perfección en Letras populares de Cátedra. Soñar es gratis.
July 25, 2014
While there are a few stand-out stories here ("Store of the Worlds", "Watchbirds", "Morning After" and "Shall We Have a Little Talk?") Sheckley's stories are best taken collectively as a study of the mid-twentieth century imagination and psychology. Taken together, they paint a technopessimistic view of the future, one in which humans readily give up moral, ethical and political duties in favor of ease and comfort. There are also many stories of first contact (mainly botched first contacts), that might speak to Cold War paranoia, or anxiety about the gradual diversification of American culture and increasing globalization as cultures find themselves in closer contact than ever before. There are stories warning about overpopulation, excessive urbanization and the dangers of artificial intelligence. Sheckley also examines hypothetical relationships between alien peoples, or people and robots, in order to ask questions about imperialism, equality, and the possibilities of technology. (Here we see seeds that have blossomed in films like "Her" or Bradbury's more dystopic stories like "The Veldt".)
Sheckley's best stories are like dramatized thought experiments that ask us to question our technological advances in the light of older philosophical questions about the "good life". Well worth reading.
Sheckley's best stories are like dramatized thought experiments that ask us to question our technological advances in the light of older philosophical questions about the "good life". Well worth reading.
December 15, 2024
There is a very inventive 1965 cult film by Elio Petri that stars Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress: 'The 10th Victim'. It's a spec-fic tale in which people are assigned to hunt each other to kill, for sport. The premise sounds sort of creepy but it plays out as futuristic camp and it's a fun flick (which has aged well since its time). I'd always wanted to read the source material (a short story called 'Seventh Victim') but it proved somewhat hard to find... until I was led directly to this immensely satisfying collection of stories by Robert Sheckley. (The film, by the way and as it turns out, takes logical liberty with the story; both have their rewards.)
Short story collections can be mixed bags. Sometimes half can be sharp while the other half are mildly engaging. I once read a volume that really only had one solid story in it, as the rest meandered with potential. This endlessly imaginative, 26-story volume is, however, an almost-complete knock out of the park. It served well as 'a bus-ride book' but I pretty much swallowed it whole.
Sheckley (at least here) mainly occupies himself with life (and conflict) on other planets. I have a limited appreciation when it comes to standard sci-fi; Sheckley has changed that, through an uncanny intelligence marinated in rich (occasionally cynical) humor. (At times, certain passages are laugh-out-loud funny.) To augment, a fair amount of stories are set on Earth - though they still dabble in the fantastic. Regardless of where one of Sheckley's stories is set, he will immediately set up the rules of engagement for each one - and the sooner you submit to his outlandish realities, the more fun you'll have.
Sheckley is mainly a bringer of brain-teasers. As such, he often gleefully holds back the last cards up his sleeve in order to conclude with a 'gotcha' ending - the kind that causes everything that preceded the ending to reverberate in the reader's head.
It's hard to pick a favorite here (not that that's necessary) - but my gut tells me to highlight 'The Language of Love', in which a young man makes the expensive journey to a planet unoccupied save for an Earthman who has traveled there to make the study of a unique and perfect love among a dying alien race his life's work. The ending - a Sheckley 'Gotcha!' - is hilarious.
Short story collections can be mixed bags. Sometimes half can be sharp while the other half are mildly engaging. I once read a volume that really only had one solid story in it, as the rest meandered with potential. This endlessly imaginative, 26-story volume is, however, an almost-complete knock out of the park. It served well as 'a bus-ride book' but I pretty much swallowed it whole.
Sheckley (at least here) mainly occupies himself with life (and conflict) on other planets. I have a limited appreciation when it comes to standard sci-fi; Sheckley has changed that, through an uncanny intelligence marinated in rich (occasionally cynical) humor. (At times, certain passages are laugh-out-loud funny.) To augment, a fair amount of stories are set on Earth - though they still dabble in the fantastic. Regardless of where one of Sheckley's stories is set, he will immediately set up the rules of engagement for each one - and the sooner you submit to his outlandish realities, the more fun you'll have.
Sheckley is mainly a bringer of brain-teasers. As such, he often gleefully holds back the last cards up his sleeve in order to conclude with a 'gotcha' ending - the kind that causes everything that preceded the ending to reverberate in the reader's head.
It's hard to pick a favorite here (not that that's necessary) - but my gut tells me to highlight 'The Language of Love', in which a young man makes the expensive journey to a planet unoccupied save for an Earthman who has traveled there to make the study of a unique and perfect love among a dying alien race his life's work. The ending - a Sheckley 'Gotcha!' - is hilarious.
April 29, 2012
An excellent retrospective of Sheckley - an incredibly underrated and underknown early sci-fi writer - and his short fiction. Funny, moving, and incredibly prescient, he had a pulse on not the fantastic sci-fi of those who came after (although plenty of stories are indeed quite fantastic) but on the human side of the sci-fi equation. The people who go off to those planets, who create those machines, who do those things. There's real heart here and quite a lot of smart serious intense thought. Well worth your time if you're even remotely interested in the genre.
More about it at RB:
More about it at RB:
July 5, 2020
I absolutely love Robert Sheckley. About 3 years ago someone in a old sci-fi goodreads club suggested Mortality Inc and it started one of the best reading experiences ever. No one writes like him. He is nuts. He is imagination unleashed. This collection really showcases his unique voice. He is so funny w/o being silly. He can be silly w/o treating the reader like a mouth breathing moron. I honestly picked up this book to reread 2 of my favorites Can you feel it when I do this and Pilgrimage to Earth. I loved Dawn Invader with is essentially about growing past your limitations and the necessity of compromise but told as an alien invasion. Watchbird was an unexpected gem. I will probably be quoting Cordle to Onion to Carrot forever. Gotta put carrots in or it ain't a stew! There is no filler just pure imagination. He proudly puts the fiction in science fiction. His writing style is not for everyone. But if you can dig it grab a shovel and hold on tight.
December 1, 2023
Holy smokes did Robert Sheckley stick every single crazy landing in his short story anthology The Store of the Worlds. If you have someone who likes Scifi or short stories, this is the book to buy them for Christmas. It is —bar none—the tightest short story collection I’ve ever read in my life. Yes, I’ve read O’Conner’s and Hemingway’s and Borges and several Best Of� and the O’Henry awards. And O’Henry himself. This is the tightest collection of short stories I’ve ever read, bar none.
Best place to read this review is here:
Holy smokes did Robert Sheckley stick every single crazy landing in his short story anthology
The Store
of the Worlds
. If you have someone who likes Scifi or short stories, this is the book to buy them for Christmas. It is —bar none—the tightest short story collection I’ve ever read in my life. Yes, I’ve read O’Conner’s and Hemingway’s and Borges and several Best Of� and the O’Henry awards. And O’Henry himself. This is the tightest collection of short stories I’ve ever read, bar none.
Holy smokes did Robert Sheckley stick every single crazy landing in his short story anthology The Store of the Worlds. If you have someone who likes Scifi or short stories, this is the book to buy them for Christmas. It is —bar none—the tightest short story collection I’ve ever read in my life. Yes, I’ve read O’Conner’s and Hemingway’s and Borges and several Best Of� and the O’Henry awards. And O’Henry himself. This is the tightest collection of short stories I’ve ever read, bar none.
Doesn’t mean they’re my favorite short stories of all time, not hardly. Each of the others I’ve listed wrote one of my favorite . I don’t think a single one of these stories rises to the level of “favorite� or “greatest.� But what they do is stick the landing promised in the premise, every single time. They’re “twist endings� insofar as they’re surprising, but there’s absolutely nothing in retrospect that isn’t promised in the premise.
Rather than review them all, I’m going to say the premise and offer a couple of comments:
The Monsters
Possibly the most provocative line ever uttered by a protagonist in a science fiction story:
“Wait! What day is this?�
Hum calculated silently, then said, “the fifth day of Luggat.�
“Damn,� Cordovan said. “I have to go home and kill my wife.�
You don’t expect to be taking both Cordovan’s and Cordovan’s wife’s side by the end. Brilliant commentary on our liberalism.
Seventh Victim
People are allowed, for pleasure, to murder one another. But on a man’s seventh victim, he suddenly loses the thirst for the hunt. Wonderful commentary on peace, love, and war.
Shape
Is it better to abide by the specific forms of your militarized, stratified society?
Or to try out new shapes?
What is formlessness?
Specialist
This was easily the weirdest of the bunch. Imagine an entire shape made out of the various bodies of different alien species. And the most central of them is the Pusher —human beings.
The Pusher dies.
So they need a new human. From Earth.
And their ship is basically a giant bulbous gooey body horror.
Warm
This could be a short film directed by Christopher Nolan, honestly. It’s so clean, so simple, and yet so disturbing. A man, laying on his bed, hears a cry for help. In his head.
He sees no one, what does he do?
Watchbird
This basically predicted the drone state we have in New York City and Yemen, both. But it deals predominately with finding technological solutions to ethical problems BEFORE we determine the ethics of said technology, which just creates more ethical problems.
This is obvious to the wise, but not to inventors.
The Accountant
A kid grows up a witch, but wants to be an Accountant.
Hilarious.
But also has a twist that, again, is baked into the premise.
Paradise II
Two men in a fringe risky real estate play bet on an Earth type that has been extinguished of billions of human souls. They see it as the perfect opportunity.
Of course, there’s sort of this lingering question:
What killed them?
All the Things You Are
God, I loved this story. Several of them made me weep, but I love the premise of this —it’s so basic on a chemical level and therefore so, so genius.
This story —more than all of the fringe, crazy out there tech —shows me that Sheckley had a fundamental knowledge of the sciences and how the physical world works.
Because the premise is simple: your breath is a biome of germs, your voice is vibrating sound just like a train or a trumpet, your sweat has acid in it. This is generally seen as a frailty in Scifi stories.
But what of a race that can’t stand the smell? The sound?
Whose very skin is burned by your touch?
What if All The Things You Are hurt another race? Just your physical being?
How does that affect diplomacy?
And can anything good come from you in that instance? Or are you just made to wound them and cause them intense suffering?
I love, love, love this story.
Protection
Gosh.
This story is about an alien species —or perhaps a paranoid delusion —trying to protect the main character from threats. The threats become more and more ludicrous that you think this character is just going through paranoid urban delusions.
Yet the ending of this is so innocuous, so terrifying.
The Native Problem
What if you settled a planet alone, by yourself, to get some peace and quiet and your own people with limited rocket-burn technology who left before your era, actually arrived after you did with quicker technology?
What if they saw you as a native with the capacity to communicate in their own tongue?
How would you prove to them that you’re the exact same?
Could you?
Pilgrimage to Earth
If you came back to Earth as a sort of pilgrimage after generations have been away and the whole Earth was advertising something —and someone advertised a real, honest, falling-in-love moment with a real, honest romance —and then took it away that night, how would you react?
A Wind Is Rising
What if a race evolved to handle hurricane force winds?
Trigger warning on this one.
I lived through the Joplin Tornado and there was stuff in here that set me a bit on edge. Still brilliant.
Dawn Invader
What if you could invade a planet using only your mind?
As a single, individual human?
If your body disintegrated, what would be left of you?
And would that YOU win?
Double Indemnity
Is there a way that a double indemnity clause in a time travel agency could become particularly problematic for people investigating ancestral genetic tendencies?
Holdout
Is there a way, in the long trend of anti-racism, for us to become racist against a people group no one would would ever have expected?
The Language of Love
Is it possible for a rather autistic lover generally incapable of romantic talk to learn the language of love � to learn it so fully � that it actually ruins love the other way?
Can you be too ignorant —and too wise � for love?
Morning After
A bad hangover.
Leads to survival in an alien jungle.
Or a hallucination.
Which is it?
If the Red Slayer
How many times do you have to die for the American government to earn the right to stay dead?
The Store of the Worlds
I wept and wept and wept at the ending of this one.
If you could buy any alternate life than the one you have, what would you spend your entire life savings on?
Even if it was only there for a little while?
Shall We Have a Little Talk
This story is a science fiction story for linguists. It’s on par with Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang and Out of the Silent Planet by Lewis. This one, however, is of a man trying to nail down a language that won’t let him nail it down.
Why?
So that he can conquer the planet in a totally legal real estate deal.
The story slowly devolves into hilarious nonsense.
Cordle to Onion to Carrot
If you had a hallucination with the god Mercury, would it make you more assertive, less assertive, both?
Would you drive away the people you love?
Would you change at all?
The People Trap
This one was absolutely wild.
It’s riffing on the land races of Oklahoma, but imagining if you had to fight through a super cyberpunk and gas punk, smog riddled Westchester on foot into the heart of Times Square. If you get there, you get of acre of land.
What would you do to get it for your family of ten?
Would you be happy when you had?
Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?
Easily the most erotic of the bunch, a vacuum cleaner with� other attachments� is delivered to a sexually unsatisfied wife.
When it comes to sex: whose fault is it if you’re unhappy?
Is That What People Do
This is like a weird, surrealist Rear Window for voyeurs. And it really turns the lens on who is watching whom.
Beside Still Waters
This one made the preacher in me weep.
Easily the most tender of them and, knowing Sheckley will write no more, it is very, very full of long term heartache.
February 22, 2019
The stories in this volume, originally published in the 1950s and 1960s, reflect certain societal concerns of the day. For Robert Sheckley, science fiction seems to have offered a vehicle by which to deliver his social commentary. There is not much science involved in his stories and his world-building is typically skeletal. Instead Sheckley employs subtle, deadpan humor and absurd situations to confront issues such as overpopulation, xenophobia, and the conformity endemic to post-WWII American society. Many of his interplanetary stories revolve around first contact scenarios, leading to us versus them inter-species communication difficulties. Sheckley can at times be heavy-handed in his critique, but when he reins it in the effect is powerful, especially when he places his characters in existential quandaries. His endings sometimes include a twist, and these range from the clever to the ridiculously comical. However, the collection could have used some trimming, as there are a few duds here, which unfortunately tarnish the memory of the strongest stories, such as 'Seventh Victim', in which murder has been legalized in order to prevent future wars, or 'The People Trap', a pleasantly absurd tale set in a dystopic New York City, where overpopulation has led to the establishment of annual races, the winners of which receive one acre of land in some godforsaken area of the country, and the losers of which often die in the wilds of the city. Other favorites include 'Warm', an existential horror tale of the highest order, and 'Dawn Invader', where an overconfident human parasite gets much more than he bargained for. Perhaps a better approach to Sheckley than this NYRB anthology would be to track down his original paperback collections? It's either that or make peace with the fact that not every story here is a winner, which is often par for the course with these overly long anthologies.
January 19, 2016
Robert Sheckley is an author who has got neglected by the ‘mainstream� media despite being one of the finest writers of 20th Century simply because he used to write stories & novels that the bigoted sneer at as ‘genre� fiction. The book under review, although not quite as brilliant as the NESFA Press Collection “The Masque of Manana�, should be a splendid example in support of my aforesaid assertion, with its stories that would NEVER be dated simply because they deal with human emotions, with an underlying tone of wry humour & pathos, despite the tropes being deployed coming straight out of a textbook for the science fiction writer (if any such stuff exists). Its contents are (the stories that can also be found in the NESFA collection have been indicated with an asterisk):
1. The Monsters (*)
2. Seventh Victim (*)
3. Shape (*)
4. Specialist
5. Warm
6. Watchbird
7. The Accountant (*)
8. Paradise II
9. All the Things You Are (*)
10. Protection
11. The Native Problem (*)
12. Pilgrimage to Earth (*)
13. A Wind Is Rising (*)
14. Dawn Invader
15. Double Indemnity
16. Holdout (*)
17. The Language of Love (*)
18. Morning After
19. If the Red Slayer
20. The Store of the Worlds (*)
21. Shall We Have a Little Talk? (*)
22. Cordle to Onion to Carrot
23. The People Trap
24. Can You Feel Anything I Do This?
25. Is That What People Do?
26. Beside Still Waters
The book loses one star ONLY in comparison to the astounding collection that had been brought out by NESFA Press. Nevertheless, if you come across book anywhere, I would suggest taking a dip. Believe me, even if the story is not having a very happy or positive ending, it’s better than a detox.
Recommended, obviously.
1. The Monsters (*)
2. Seventh Victim (*)
3. Shape (*)
4. Specialist
5. Warm
6. Watchbird
7. The Accountant (*)
8. Paradise II
9. All the Things You Are (*)
10. Protection
11. The Native Problem (*)
12. Pilgrimage to Earth (*)
13. A Wind Is Rising (*)
14. Dawn Invader
15. Double Indemnity
16. Holdout (*)
17. The Language of Love (*)
18. Morning After
19. If the Red Slayer
20. The Store of the Worlds (*)
21. Shall We Have a Little Talk? (*)
22. Cordle to Onion to Carrot
23. The People Trap
24. Can You Feel Anything I Do This?
25. Is That What People Do?
26. Beside Still Waters
The book loses one star ONLY in comparison to the astounding collection that had been brought out by NESFA Press. Nevertheless, if you come across book anywhere, I would suggest taking a dip. Believe me, even if the story is not having a very happy or positive ending, it’s better than a detox.
Recommended, obviously.
March 28, 2013
This is the second book I have read by Robert Sheckley and I thoroughly enjoyed it! His books are really hard to find and hate it. The only way you can find his work is sifting through used bookstores (which are the very best to endeavor inside, right?) with the hopes of finding that lost treasure. I truly love Sheckley's work. He always gives such a visualization of his tales that grabs hold of your hand and relentlessly pulls you through the pages. If you think you know what will happen at the end - think again! It'll reaches up and smack you!
May 26, 2019
من فقط داستان کوتاه "بنگاه دنیا ها" رو خوندم، ولی این کتابی که دارم روش نظر میدم احتمالا مجموعه داستان کوتاه های این نویسنده هست.
میتونید از این لینک کتاب رو بخونید:
تا حالا شاید بیشتر از 15 تا داستان کوتاه علمی تخیلی نخونده باشم، ولی بدون شک این یکی بهترینش بود. به نظرم نوشتن یه داستان کوتاه درست و حسابی واقعا کار دشواریه، ولی این داستان کوتاه انگار که تمام ویژگی های یه داستان بلند رو تو چند صفحه داشت.
حتما سراغ بقیه کتاب های این نویسنده هم میرم.
توصیه میکنم بخونید این داستان کوتاه رو.
میتونید از این لینک کتاب رو بخونید:
تا حالا شاید بیشتر از 15 تا داستان کوتاه علمی تخیلی نخونده باشم، ولی بدون شک این یکی بهترینش بود. به نظرم نوشتن یه داستان کوتاه درست و حسابی واقعا کار دشواریه، ولی این داستان کوتاه انگار که تمام ویژگی های یه داستان بلند رو تو چند صفحه داشت.
حتما سراغ بقیه کتاب های این نویسنده هم میرم.
توصیه میکنم بخونید این داستان کوتاه رو.
July 27, 2015
I enjoyed this collection which brought together some stories I'd previously read and many I had not seen. They have common preconceptions - almost everything is told from a masculine point of view, which was the usual in the days when Bob Sheckely began writing but which we now find odd in a more balanced market. Although we have space travel, people back on Earth still read morning papers - not zines on a screen - and children still get mumps - no vaccines.
Everyone will pick their own favourites, and some of the ones you didn't necessarily like will prove the most memorable. There are twenty-six tales and almost all hold the attention from the start. Some are funny, some ironic, some tragic. There's a good deal of violence and conniving, while women are not always portrayed in flattering terms. But nor are men, nor beings from other planets, so that's okay.
Titles include:
Pilgrimage to Earth
The Monsters
The Store of the Worlds
The Accountant
Seventh Victim
A Wind is Rising
Shall We Have a Little Talk
Watchbird.
Thanks to the editors for compiling this book.
Everyone will pick their own favourites, and some of the ones you didn't necessarily like will prove the most memorable. There are twenty-six tales and almost all hold the attention from the start. Some are funny, some ironic, some tragic. There's a good deal of violence and conniving, while women are not always portrayed in flattering terms. But nor are men, nor beings from other planets, so that's okay.
Titles include:
Pilgrimage to Earth
The Monsters
The Store of the Worlds
The Accountant
Seventh Victim
A Wind is Rising
Shall We Have a Little Talk
Watchbird.
Thanks to the editors for compiling this book.
September 10, 2018
Twilight Zone by way of Richard Yates. This is my favorite sci-fi I've read by a mile--I've always been a little put off by the self-seriousness of the genre, which is why this was such a tonic. At at time, the 50's, when many sci-fi writers were crafting Utopian yarns about the ways technology would benefit society, Sheckley instead held up a mirror, a black mirror (haha), to show that even when technology changes, we'll still be the same flawed, weak people but will now have more ways to get ourselves into trouble. He also writes about the environmental collapse a full century before it started to happen, which is pretty impressive.
Some of these short stories are as good as any I've read in any genre and will stick with you after reading it.
Some of these short stories are as good as any I've read in any genre and will stick with you after reading it.
October 17, 2014
All but a couple of the stories perfectly complete the author's intent.
April 5, 2021
5/5. Quite simply some of the most creative, imaginative, original, and unique short stories, and sci-fi, I’ve ever read in my life.
January 14, 2013
An enjoyable mix of great, good, and eh. Most of these short stories are engaging and chew-on-able, and frequently funny (though there are a few clunkers, including one overflowing with embarassingly dated hipster slang.) It's a long collection which definitely could have benefitted from some weeding. Still, when he's on, Sheckley is very clever at putting someone (usually an average guy, but often a story is told from an alien's perspective) in futuristic/alien setting to say something about the current state of human relations and aspirations here on earth. My favorite was a story about a easygoing guy who settles on a paradise planet to get away from it all only to be followed by a clueless and agressive band of human colonists who are convinced he represents a warlike native tribe. A few of the other stories I enjoyed: a spaceship that functions as a living colony made up of individualy aware parts; a doomed invasion of earth by unhappy shapeless beings; a human being's attempt at psychic colonization; and a thinly veiled indictment of US foreign policy about a guy whose job is to land on an inhabited planet and create a situation that can be used to legally justify invasion.
October 23, 2018
Robert Sheckley's sci-fi story collection, Store of the Worlds: The Stories of Robert Sheckley, is a singularly high-quality set of stories, with not a clinker in the bunch. I would not even venture to indicate my favorite stories, because about half of them qualify. Sheckley's stories verge on the humorous, and almost always bring in different points of view. In an introduction to another selection of his stories, the author wrote:
From this position, these stories from a vanished age appear to me safe; acceptable; commodities sanctioned by their own continues existence, and given a mysterious and no doubt spurious air of rightness by the processes of time. Yet when I wrote them, each story involved me in a dangerous movement into an unfamiliar situation, and each story initiated a process in which a concept, itself sometimes barely visible, was to be freighted with words, and perhaps sunk by them.I can't actually identify any that were sunk by them. And I can't see that any of them are unreadable today, though most of them were penned in the 1950s.
January 22, 2018
Прекрасная книга жанра фантастики! Хотя все рассказы и были написаны несколько десятелетий назад, я нахожу их довольно актуальными. Ведь что такое книги жанра фантастики? Это размышления над нашими мечтами и их последствиями. Сколько мы живем, столько мы ищем ответы, к чему же приведет нас наша же фантазия.
В рассказах Шекли, попавшихся мне под руку, затрагиваются довольно важные социальные образы. В одном рассказе человек соглашается играть в риалити-шоу, где его на самом деле могут убить. В другом человек раздумывает над возможностью попасть в мир своих мечтаний в обмен на 10 лет жизни и всего своего состояния. В третьем описываются достижения в медицине и их последствия.. Разве эти сюжеты до сих пор не актуальны? Что только люди не делают за деньги сейчас, чего только не добилась медицина.
Книга однозначно рекомендую к прочтению, особенно фанатам сериала "Черное зеркало".
В рассказах Шекли, попавшихся мне под руку, затрагиваются довольно важные социальные образы. В одном рассказе человек соглашается играть в риалити-шоу, где его на самом деле могут убить. В другом человек раздумывает над возможностью попасть в мир своих мечтаний в обмен на 10 лет жизни и всего своего состояния. В третьем описываются достижения в медицине и их последствия.. Разве эти сюжеты до сих пор не актуальны? Что только люди не делают за деньги сейчас, чего только не добилась медицина.
Книга однозначно рекомендую к прочтению, особенно фанатам сериала "Черное зеркало".
August 12, 2012
I read one short story by Robert Sheckley in a anthology, and decided I'd like to read more of him, and I'm glad I did. This was a great collection of stories. He writes with a lot of humor, with interesting and odd twists and with a generally light touch, but there are a few stories, especially the title story and the last story, that might bring you to tears. I would not call these stories strictly science fiction. They are more like a cross between sci-fi, O. Henry and the best kind of reading you find in the New Yorker. I savored this collection, reading it much more slowly than I usually read anything.
February 27, 2014
The NAtive Problem )))
August 21, 2024
Really uneven. Some stories were incredible, others I really didn't care for.
July 8, 2013
Jeff Ford was very canny in suggesting Sheckley to me. I love his dry sense of humor about dark and complicated things. I bet he would have a been a fun guy to know. Some of the stories felt a little too much like builds to a punchline, but the best ones feel progressive and keenly observed in a way that's impressive, given that most of the stories are 50+ years old.
Favorites:
"Seventh Victim" - Society where murder for sport is allowed. Woman gets best of man through making him fall in love.
"The Accountant" - Boy whose parents are warlocks wants to be an accountant instead of joining family business. Goes to the extent of swearing fealty to an accounting demon. Great comment on resisting joining the family business, and parents coming to grip with their children being different (but not TOO different) from them.
"All the Things You Are" - Team of space ambassadors does its level best to ingratiate to an alien race, but cannot escape base human-centric assumptions of societal norms. They annoy the shit out of aliens and get run off the planet...but it turns out the human touch does wonders for plant life on the planet.
"The Language of Love" - Guy can't find words to express his love, so he makes a pilgrimage to an alien world where an eccentric man has been studying an extinct alien race that explored love in greatest detail. After long training montage, the man finds he's paralyzed in thinking about love instead of doing it.
***"Morning After" - Guy wakes up with a hangover to find himself in an alien jungle, being hunted by creatures. He recalls that he visited an amusement business on earth that creates VR scenarios of adventures, and assumes that this is one. He becomes less sure as the story goes on, though. Turns out he's been actually transported to Venus, and his display of mettle there has him being recruited into a cadre of people whose job it is to shake people on post-scarcity earth from their ennui. Anticipates Dick.
***"If the Red Slayer" - A human soldier is resurrected and put back into battle more than the prescribed 3 times due to clerical error. He just wants to be allowed to die. Short, absurdist, pointed. Excellent.
***"Store of the Worlds" - title story. Also short. Man enters a store where one can be transported into an alternate universe to live any life...for a time. He goes home to his family and debates doing it for a whole year, and when he goes back to the store and decides to do it, we find out that the year of mundane deliberation WAS his trip to the alt uni. The real world is a sad post-apocalypse and he just longed for the mundane stability of his past.
"The People Trap" - Race into Manhattan to win an acre of land in an overcrowded future world. Funny. A bit predictable, but the comment at the end about city (awful) vs. country (worse) is great. Very Pippin-esque. Bob Mulligan would have been proud.
Favorites:
"Seventh Victim" - Society where murder for sport is allowed. Woman gets best of man through making him fall in love.
"The Accountant" - Boy whose parents are warlocks wants to be an accountant instead of joining family business. Goes to the extent of swearing fealty to an accounting demon. Great comment on resisting joining the family business, and parents coming to grip with their children being different (but not TOO different) from them.
"All the Things You Are" - Team of space ambassadors does its level best to ingratiate to an alien race, but cannot escape base human-centric assumptions of societal norms. They annoy the shit out of aliens and get run off the planet...but it turns out the human touch does wonders for plant life on the planet.
"The Language of Love" - Guy can't find words to express his love, so he makes a pilgrimage to an alien world where an eccentric man has been studying an extinct alien race that explored love in greatest detail. After long training montage, the man finds he's paralyzed in thinking about love instead of doing it.
***"Morning After" - Guy wakes up with a hangover to find himself in an alien jungle, being hunted by creatures. He recalls that he visited an amusement business on earth that creates VR scenarios of adventures, and assumes that this is one. He becomes less sure as the story goes on, though. Turns out he's been actually transported to Venus, and his display of mettle there has him being recruited into a cadre of people whose job it is to shake people on post-scarcity earth from their ennui. Anticipates Dick.
***"If the Red Slayer" - A human soldier is resurrected and put back into battle more than the prescribed 3 times due to clerical error. He just wants to be allowed to die. Short, absurdist, pointed. Excellent.
***"Store of the Worlds" - title story. Also short. Man enters a store where one can be transported into an alternate universe to live any life...for a time. He goes home to his family and debates doing it for a whole year, and when he goes back to the store and decides to do it, we find out that the year of mundane deliberation WAS his trip to the alt uni. The real world is a sad post-apocalypse and he just longed for the mundane stability of his past.
"The People Trap" - Race into Manhattan to win an acre of land in an overcrowded future world. Funny. A bit predictable, but the comment at the end about city (awful) vs. country (worse) is great. Very Pippin-esque. Bob Mulligan would have been proud.
March 12, 2016
Started to read this book because someone recommended "The Wind is Rising". It was a somehow pleasant dive into some old-fashioned sci-fi. While some stories (especially "Watchbird") look extremely naive these days, most of the stories are definitely worth reading, and some of them made me think, which is what I like good sci-fi for. From the top of my head, would recommend: "Double Indemnity", "Specialist" and "Seventh Victim".
June 12, 2012
Science fiction fans and short story loves unite! this collection is
wonderfully human in its realization especially because all the characters
and settings are not. See how we are in the face of otherness!
wonderfully human in its realization especially because all the characters
and settings are not. See how we are in the face of otherness!
June 3, 2012
I had not heard of Scheckley until I received this book from the NYRB book club. The stories are clever, twisted, and outrageous. There's not a single dud in this collection.
May 5, 2014
This book was great. The stories are impeccably selected and laid out and some of them were so funny I just burst out laughing wherever I was. Highly recommended to pretty much anyone.
July 2, 2015
Never read one of Sheckley's short stories, but I really fell in love with them. Sci-Fi and insight, social justice, and some plain creepiness. Think Twilight Zone.
March 16, 2018
Az bilinen bir bilimkurgu yazarıymış Robert Sheckley. Distopya portreleri, bilimkurgu ve uzay operaları ile mizahı birleştiren bir yazar. Tarzı Douglas Adams'ı andırıyor ancak kendisi aynı kafanın Amerikan şubesi. Hikayeleri çok büyük keyifle okudum, şiddetle de tavsiye ediyorum ama sanırsam Türkçesi basılmış bir kitap değil. "Orjinalinden okurum" der iseniz hodri meydan.
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