Showing results by author "Robert Sheckley" in All Categories

The Journey of Joenes, also published as Journey Beyond Tomorrow, tells the tale of a picaresque journey through an imagined future taken by a naive and innocent man unprepared for the wonders and oddities he encounters. Sheckley examines the present through the distorting lens of a future wonderfully skewed from and yet darkly, hilariously, similar to our own world.

Untouched by Human Hands consists of 13 stories of beings who dwell on the strange borders of reality. Some of these stories tell of people you know or of events that might happen - but haven't yet. Some will take you to the furthermost reaches of the sky and to planets whose names are unknown this side of Arcturus. And some - perhaps the richest and most memorable of these stories - open into the interior of strange minds to reveal the reflection of ourselves.

Incredible Science Fiction: Amazing Tales from the 50's and Beyond, Volume Two collates a collection of some of the very best science-fiction stories published in the '50s together. All these stories (with the exception of The Anatomy of Fear) are now in the public domain and were original published in various science-fiction magazines that were very popular in the 1950s. This is a lovingly curated collection of some of the very best stories published during this time. This collection includes a further story from the Hugo Award-nominated Rog Phillips.

Dimension of Miracles is a satirical science fiction novel first published by Dell in 1968. It's about Tom Carmody, a New Yorker who, thanks to a computer error, wins the main prize in the Intergalactic Sweepstakes. Tom claims his prize before the error is discovered and is allowed to keep it. However, since Tom is a human from Earth without galactic status and no space traveling experience, he has no homing instinct that can guide him back to Earth once his odyssey begins - and the galactic lottery organizers cannot transport him home.

Want to be immortal? You can be in AD 2110. Just go to the Hereafter Insurance Corporation and hook yourself up to the Machine. There’s nothing to fear. That is, if it happens to be working right, and if nobody slips another mind into your body when you’re not looking, and if you’re not on a poltergeist hatelist.

Interstellar travel to alien worlds is too expensive for Marvin, a college student in need of a good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford: a mind swap, in which his consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien life-form. Unfortunately, Marvin finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal—a body that he has to vacate, fast.

In "The Robot Who Looked Like Me," a busy man and a busy woman find a way to carve out time to romance each other—by having look-alike robots made to do the job—who then run away together.

A space explorer wearing a force shield encounters a little problem when he makes first contact. Based on a story by Robert Sheckley, this episode of X Minus One originally aired on July 11, 1957.

Alastair Crompton skilled nosologist at Psychosmell, Inc. sniffs out something he's been missing his whole life - his other selves. His disturbed psyche was divided into three parts and the other parts were implanted in other bodies on other planets. His obsession to re-unite himself leads to disturbing discovers about the underpinnings of the society he lives in, personal conflicts, a vastly destructive war and a shocking ultimate revelation.

All secret agents need to look out for William Nye, now known as Agent X. His recruitment was simple and his legend is brilliant but un-earned. Somehow, he thinks he's the best there is and we all know how pride goeth before a fall. The master of SF hilarity and biting social satire creates a spy world that has gathered praise from the greats of the genre.

If a society was created entirely by criminals with no memory of their former world, what would they come up with? It couldn't be crazier than Omega, where the religion is the worship of evil, humans are hunted for fun, status is attained one corpse at a time, and life expectancy is three years...if you're lucky. Omega - a fun place to live, if the plants, animals, weather, or your neighbors don't kill you first.

It's the 21st Century and the ugliness of war no longer exists, except on a very personal level. Nowadays, people like Marcello Polletti, seller of Roman sunsets, and Caroline Meredith, lithe, beautiful, blonde, and backed by corporate sponsors and the Roy Bell Dancers, hunt, chase, and kill each other for sport and for the entertainment of the masses - until something oddly like personal human feelings pops up to confuse the players and up the stakes...as each of them seeks to kill their 10th victim and rise in the ranks of the hunters.

Launch your imagination and break the bonds of time and space with radio's highly acclaimed science-fiction anthology X Minus One! Produced in cooperation with science fiction magazines of the day, the series featured provocative stories by the genre's top genre authors. Ray Bradbury, Ernest Kinoy, Robert Sheckley, and more helped Americans of the 1950s look to the future. Dramatized with an atmosphere of excitement, top radio voices like Raymond Edward Johnson, Les Damon, Staats Cotsworth, Ruby Dee, Mandel Kramer, Joe DeSantis, and Bill Lipton gave voice to their visionary tales.

Elwood is a homicidal maniac with a gun who seeks help from a robot psychiatrist. Only problem is, this one is designed to treat...Martians. Based on a story by Robert Sheckley, this episode of X Minus One originally aired on July 10, 1956.

On a distant planet, a marooned man is joyous to see a ship landing. But what does the crew make of him? Based on a story by Robert Sheckley, this episode of X Minus One originally aired on September 26, 1957.

Ready for a story? Here's a selection of some of the finest science fiction shorts of recent years, including stories from Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, Robert Sheckley, Terry Bisson, Avram Davidson, and Philip K. Dick.

Take a look at a dark, deadly future where the game is hunting and the results are killing - human to human - with status, money, power, and sex as the prizes. The operation runs underground and Frank Blackwell is a new recruit who is destined to change the game and turn it into legitimate popular entertainment for the masses.

Salvatore commands the battleship Endymion. He's seen his share of battles and fought them bravely, too. So he doesn't hesitate when beautiful Princess Hatari pleads for his help. She wants to regain her throne, but it may be more than Salvatore can accomplish, for the deadly race known as the Balderdash has taken over the planet Melchior--and now, even his own men have turned against him!

Learn the truth behind the mask of Hollywood in these 10 bizarre tales of dreams and dream weavers, movies and movie-makers, by some of the most respected fantasy writers of our time.

Twenty-four of the greatest science fiction stories of all time in this fourth sci-fi short story collection, including works by Jerry Dunham, Emmett Dowell, James Causey, Gordon Randall Garrett, James A. Cox, Phyllis Sterling Smith, Richard A. Sternbach, Robert Sheckley, E. G. Von Wald, Keith Laumer, Jerome Bixby, Frederik Pohl, Roger Dee, Arnold Marmore, James H. Schmitz, Lester del Rey, Cordwainer Smith, Ray Bradbury, and Philip K. Dick.