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The Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley

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About this book

Robert Sheckley wrote science fiction the way a stand-up comic works a crowd, setting up a neat premise and then twisting it until it turns absurd, unsettling, or both. The stories collected here come from the great years of the magazines, where his quick, ironic tales made him one of the field's sharpest satirists. Robots that follow their instructions too literally, tourists undone by alien logic, ordinary people tripped up by their own cleverness: his plots run on paradox and a deadpan sense of the ridiculous. Beneath the jokes sits a real skepticism about technology, bureaucracy, and human nature. Readers who enjoy Douglas Adams or Kurt Vonnegut will recognize the ancestor.

About the author

Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) was an American science fiction writer celebrated for his witty, satirical short stories. A frequent contributor to Galaxy and other magazines in the 1950s, he became known for absurdist, ironic tales that influenced later humorists such as Douglas Adams.