Robert Sheckley

Robert Sheckley (born July 16, 1928) is an American author. He first appeared in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s with stories and novels, fantasies that are often moralistic (in the sense that they have a moral), but more often absurdist and broadly comical.

Typical Sheckley stories include "Bad Medicine" (in which a man is mistakenly treated by a Martian psychotherapy machine), "Protection" (whose protagonist is warned of deadly danger unless he avoids an act that is never explained to him), and "The Accountant" (in which a family of wizards learns that their son has been taken from them by a more sinister trade).

He is the author of a number of episodes of The Twilight Zone. One of his early works, the 1965 novel The 10th Victim, was the basis for a film of the same name, also known by the original Italian title, La Decima Vittima. The film starred Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. Another novel, Immortality Inc. — about a world in which the afterlife could be obtained via a scientific process — was very loosely adapted into a film, the 1992 Freejack, starring Mick Jagger, Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins.

In the 1990's, Sheckley wrote a well-received series of three mystery novels featuring detective Hob Draconian.

His novel Dimension of Miracles is often cited as an influence on Douglas Adams, although in an interview for Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Adams claimed not to have read it until after writing The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Biography

Robert Sheckley was born in Brooklyn, New York on and raised in New Jersey. He was in the U.S. Army from 1946-1948 and served in Korea. He then attended New York University. In 1951 he began to sell stories to science-fiction magazines, producing several hundred stories.

In the 1970's he lived on the Spanish island of Ibiza. He then returned to New York City as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine.

Robert Sheckley continues to write at his home in Portland, Oregon.

His pen names included Phillips Barbee and Finn O'Donnevan

 "If the Marx Brothers had been literary rather than thespic fantasists ... 
 they would have been Robert Sheckley."
 --Harlan Ellison 

Science fiction novels

(incomplete)

• Immortality Inc. (1959)
• The Status Civilization (1960)
• Journey beyond Tomorrow(1962)
• The 10th Victim (1965)
• Mindswap (1966)
• Dimension of Miracles (1968)
• Options (1975)
• The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton (1978)
• Dramocles (1983)
• Victim Prime (1987)
• Hunter / Victim (1988)
• Minotaur Maze (1990)
• Aliens: Alien Harvest (1995)
• Godshome (1999)

Mystery novels

(incomplete)

• The Alternative Detective (1993)
• Draconian New York (1996)
• Soma Blues (1997)

Short story collections

(incomplete)

• Untouched by Human Hands (1954)
• Citizen in Space (1955)
• Pilgrimage to Earth (1957)
• Notions: Unlimited (1960)
• Shards of Space (1962)
• Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? (1974)
• The Robot Who Looked Like Me (1982)

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