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Robert Sheckley

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Robert Sheckley
Born July 16, 1928(1928-07-16)
New York City
Died December 9, 2005 (aged 77)
Poughkeepsie, New York
Occupation Author
Nationality American
Genres Science fiction
Official website

Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005) was a Hugo and Nebula nominated American author. First published in the science fiction magazines of the 1950s, his numerous quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable, absurdist and broadly comical.

Sheckley was given the Author Emeritus honor by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

Contents

[edit] Biography

Robert Sheckley was born to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. In 1931 the family moved to Maplewood, New Jersey. Sheckley attended Columbia High School, where he discovered science fiction. He graduated in 1946[1] and hitchhiked to California the same year, where he tried numerous jobs: landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general labourer in a hand-painted necktie studio. Finally, still in 1946, he joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Korea.[2] During his time in the army he served as a guard, an army newspaper editor, a payroll clerk and a guitarist in an army band. He left the service in 1948.[3]

Sheckley then attended New York University, where he received an undergraduate degree in 1951. The same year he married for the first time, to Barbara Scadron. The couple produced one son, Jason. Sheckley worked for an aircraft factory and as an assistant metallurgist for a short time, but his breakthrough came quickly: in late 1951 he sold his first story, Final Examination, to Imagination magazine. He quickly gained prominence as a writer, publishing stories in Imagination, Galaxy, and other science fiction magazines. The 1950s saw the publication of Sheckley's first four books: short story collections Untouched by Human Hands (Ballantine, 1954), Citizen in Space (1955), and Pilgrimage to Earth (Bantam, 1957), and a novel, Immortality, Inc. (first published as a serial in Galaxy, 1958).

Sheckley and Scadron divorced in 1956. The writer then married journalist Ziva (Miri) Kwitney in 1957. Their daughter Alisa Kwitney later became a successful writer. The newly married couple lived in New York's Upper West Side. Sheckley was becoming famous enough to publish works in mainstream magazines such as Playboy. In addition to his science fiction stories, in 1960s Sheckley started writing detective fiction. More short story collections and novels appeared in the 1960s, and a film adaptation of an early story by Sheckley, The 10th Victim, was released in 1965.

I'm spending my life finding out what the relationship to me is between travel and writing. I keep on thinking I'll find some perfect method and some perfect place which will make writing easier for me. I find it very very hard.
— Robert Sheckley.[4]

Sheckley spent the bigger part of 1970s living on Ibiza. He divorced Kwithney in 1972 and married Abby Schulman the same year. The couple had two children, Anya and Jed. In 1980 the writer returned to the United States and became fiction editor of the newly established OMNI magazine.[5] He left OMNI in 1981 and subsequently led a cosmopolitan life, living and working in the Everglades, Paris, London, Connecticut, Portland, Oregon, and Red Hook, New York. He and Schulman divorced in 1982, and Sheckley married two more times: his fourth wife was writer Jay Rothbell (married 1982), and his fifth Gail Dana (married 1990, separated). Sheckley was as active as ever during his later years, publishing further science fiction and espionage/mystery stories, and collaborating with other writers such as Roger Zelazny and Harry Harrison.

During a 2005 visit to Ukraine for the Ukrainian Sci-Fi Computer Week, an international event for science fiction writers, Sheckley fell ill and had to be hospitalized in Kiev on April 27.[6] His condition was very serious for one week, but he appeared to be slowly recovering. Russian news sources referred to him as "The unkillable Robert Sheckley".[citation needed] Sheckley's official website ran a fundraising campaign to help cover Sheckley's treatment and his return to the United States. However, only a large donation from a Ukrainian businessman allowed him to pay the hospital bill and return home.[citation needed] On November 20 he had surgery for a brain aneurysm. Sheckley died in a Poughkeepsie hospital on December 9, 2005. He had vowed he would write fiction until slumped dead over the typewriter, and indeed, he was still writing the last day he was conscious.[citation needed]

[edit] Works

Sheckley was a prolific and versatile writer. His works include not only original short stories and novels, but also TV series episodes (Captain Video and His Video Rangers), novelizations of works by others (Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, after the film), shared universe stories, and collaborations with other writers. He was best known for his numerous (several hundreds) short stories,[2] which he published in book form as well as individually. Typical Sheckley stories include "Bad Medicine" (in which a man is mistakenly treated by a psychotherapy machine intended for Martians), "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). In many stories Sheckley speculates about alternative (and usually sinister) social orders, of which a good example is the story "A Ticket to Tranai" (that tells of a sort of Utopia adapted for the human nature as it is, rather than the human nature as some idealists believe it should be).

One of the most famous of Sheckley's stories was the AAA Ace Series involving a series of stories involving two partners in the far future encountering various unusual problems.[7]

In the 1990s, Sheckley wrote a well-received series of three mystery novels featuring detective Hob Draconian, as well as novels set in the worlds of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Alien. Before his death, Sheckley had been commissioned to write an original novel based upon the TV series The Prisoner for Powys Media but died before completing the manuscript.

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 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Adams claimed not to have read it until after writing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[8].

[edit] Film and TV adaptations

One of Sheckley's early works, the 1953 Galaxy short story "Seventh Victim", was the basis for the film The 10th Victim, also known by the original Italian title La decima vittima. The film starred Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress. A novelization of the film, also written by Sheckley, was published in 1966. The story may also have been the inspiration for the role-playing game Assassin.

Sheckley's 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.

The 1954 story "Ghost V" and the 1955 story The Lifeboat Mutiny" were adapted into two episodes of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World.[9]

The 1958 short story "The Prize of Peril" was adapted in 1970 as the German TV movie Das Millionenspiel,[10], and again in 1983 as the French movie Le Prix du Danger. Written about a man who goes on a TV show in which he must evade people out to kill him for a week in order to win a large cash prize, it is perhaps the first-ever published work predicting the advent of reality television.

A number of Sheckley's works, both as Sheckley and as Finn O'Donnevan, were also adapted for the radio show X Minus One in the late 1950s, including the above-mentioned "Seventh Victim", "Bad Medicine" and "Protection". The radio show Tales of Tomorrow also in the late 1950s did a version of "Watchbird" and South Africa radio did their version of "Watchbird" on the series SF68.

[edit] Opinions on Sheckley's work

[edit] Bibliography

[edit] Science fiction and fantasy

[edit] Novels

[edit] Short story collections

See also: List of short stories by Robert Sheckley

[edit] Short story compilations

[edit] Mystery and espionage

[edit] Other works

[edit] Books as editor

[edit] References

  1. ^ Maxine N. Lurie, Marc Mappen. Encyclopedia of New Jersey, p. 736. Rutgers University Press, 2004. ISBN 9780813533254
  2. ^ a b Jonas, Gerald. "Robert Sheckley, 77, Writer of Satirical Science Fiction, Is Dead", The New York Times, December 10, 2005. Accessed November 20, 2007.
  3. ^ Robert Sheckley. Untouched by Human Hands, p. 170. First edition, paperback. Ballantine Books 73, 1954.
  4. ^ Robert Sheckley interviewed by Roberto Quaglia, July 2004. Available online.
  5. ^ Priest, Christopher. Obituary: Robert Sheckley.
  6. ^ Mosnews.com
  7. ^ Science Fiction and Fantasy Reading Experience: Robert Sheckley
  8. ^ Video Interview with Neil Gaiman at Google campus. Gaiman testifies to Adams' claim in a question about Sheckley, beginning 31:58. Retrieved April 15, 2009
  9. ^ State Fund of Television and Radio Programs (Russian)
  10. ^ Millionenspiel, Das (1970) (TV)
  11. ^ BSC Interview - Alan Dean Foster | BSCreview, Jun 15, 2009
  12. ^ On the cover of Hunter/Victim.
  13. ^ Aldiss, Brian; Wingrove, David (1986). Trillion Year Spree. London: Paladin. ISBN 0586086846. p.411
  14. ^ a b c d [1]

[edit] External links

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