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 fablelike 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 WORLDS
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
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