Robert Sheckley | |
|---|---|
 Sheckley in the mid-1990s | |
| Born | (1928-07-16)July 16, 1928 Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | December 9, 2005(2005-12-09) (aged 77) Poughkeepsie, New York, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer, Humorist |
| Nationality | American |
| Period | 1952–2005 |
| Genre | Science fiction, fantasy, mystery |
| Notable works | Immortality, Inc.,Seventh Victim |
| Website | |
| sheckley | |
Robert Sheckley (July 16, 1928 – December 9, 2005)[1] was an American writer. First published in the science-fiction magazines of the 1950s, his many quick-witted stories and novels were famously unpredictable,absurdist, and broadly comical.
Nominated forHugo andNebula Awards, Sheckley was namedAuthor Emeritus by theScience Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.
Sheckley was born to a Jewish family inBrooklyn, New York City. In 1931, the family moved toMaplewood, New Jersey. Sheckley attendedColumbia High School, where he discovered science fiction. He graduated in 1946[2] and hitchhiked to California the same year, where he tried numerous jobs: landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general laborer "board man" in a hand-painted necktie studio. Still in 1946, he joined theU.S. Army and was sent toKorea.[3] During his time in the army, he served as a guard, an army newspaper editor, a payroll clerk, and as a guitarist in theArmy Band. He left the service in 1948.[4]
Sheckley graduated with an arts degree fromNew York University in 1951.[5] The same year he married, for the first time, to Barbara Scadron. The couple had one son, Jason. Sheckley worked in 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," toImagination magazine. He quickly gained prominence as a writer, publishing stories inImagination,Galaxy, and other science fiction magazines. The 1950s saw the publication of Sheckley's first four books: short story collectionsUntouched by Human Hands (Ballantine, 1954),Citizen in Space (1955), andPilgrimage to Earth (Bantam, 1957), and a novel,Immortality, Inc. (first published as a serial inGalaxy, 1958).
Sheckley and Scadron divorced in 1956. The writer married journalist Ziva Kwitney in 1957. The newly married couple lived in Greenwich Village. Their daughter,Alisa Kwitney, born in 1964, would herself become a successful writer. Applauded by criticKingsley Amis, Sheckley was now selling many of his deft, satiric stories to mainstream magazines such asPlayboy. In addition to his science fiction stories, in the 1960s Sheckley started writing suspense 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.
Sheckley spent much of 1970s living onIbiza. He and Kwitney divorced in 1972 and the same year Sheckley married Abby Schulman, whom he had met in Ibiza. The couple had two children, Anya and Jed. The couple separated while living in London. In 1980, the writer returned to the United States and became fiction editor of the newly establishedOMNI magazine.[6] Sheckley leftOMNI in 1981 with his fourth wife, writer Jay Rothbell: they subsequently traveled widely in Europe, finally ending up in Portland, Oregon, where they separated. He married Gail Dana of Portland in 1990. Sheckley continued publishing further science fiction and espionage or mystery stories, and collaborated with other writers includingRoger Zelazny,Harlan Ellison andHarry Harrison.
During an April 2005 visit toUkraine for the Ukrainian Sci-Fi Computer Week, an international event for science fiction writers, Sheckley fell ill and had to be hospitalized inKyiv.[7] His condition was very serious for a week, but he appeared to be slowly recovering. Sheckley's official website ran a fundraising campaign to help cover his treatment and his return to the United States. He settled in Red Hook, in northern Dutchess County, New York, to be near his daughters Anya and Alisa. On November 20 he had surgery for abrain aneurysm; he died in aPoughkeepsie hospital on December 9, 2005.[citation needed]
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[8][9]), stories inshared universes such asHeroes in Hell, and collaborations with other writers. He was best known for his several hundred short stories,[3] 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 the common activity of "lesnerizing", a word whose meaning is not explained), and "The Accountant" (in which a family of wizards learns that their son has been taken from them by a more sinister trade—accountancy). In many stories Sheckley speculates about alternative (and usually sinister) social orders, of which a good example is the story "A Ticket to Tranai [fr]" (which tells of a sort ofUtopia designed for human nature as it actually is, which turns out to have terrible drawbacks).
Sheckley's early stories include the far future AAA Ace detective agency series. In these tales, the two partners face unusual problems often related to human incompetence or laziness.[10]
In the 1990s, Sheckley wrote a series of three mystery novels featuring detective Hob Draconian, as well as novels set in the worlds ofStar Trek: Deep Space Nine andAlien. Before his death Sheckley had been commissioned to write an original novel based on the TV seriesThe Prisoner for Powys Media, but died before completing the manuscript.
His novelDimension of Miracles is often cited as an influence onDouglas Adams'sThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, although in an interview forNeil Gaiman's bookDon't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, Adams said he had not read it until after writing the Guide.[11]
One of Sheckley's early works, the April 1953Galaxy short story "Seventh Victim", was the basis for the filmThe 10th Victim, also known by the original Italian titleLa decima vittima.[12] The film starredMarcello Mastroianni andUrsula Andress. Anovelization of the film, also written by Sheckley, was published in 1966. The satirical premise is that in the future killings are legal and televised, and that potential victims or hunters can get corporate sponsors and extra perks to assist them in succeeding as a professional, corporate-sponsored, celebrity killer.
His 1953 short story "Watchbird" was adapted for the short-lived TV seriesMasters of Science Fiction. It did not initially air in the US, but on February 12, 2012, theScience Channel began airing the episodes, under the titleStephen Hawking's Sci-Fi Masters, beginning with the first domestic airing of the episode "Watchbird".[13] It was included on the DVD set for the series.
The 1954 story "Ghost V" and the 1955 story "The Lifeboat Mutiny" were adapted into two episodes of theUSSR science fiction TV seriesThis Fantastic World.[14] "Ghost V" was staged also by Estonian TV channelETV in 1997.[15]
The 1958 short story "The Prize of Peril" was adapted in 1970 as the West German TV movieDas Millionenspiel,[16] and again in 1983 as the French movieLe 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[weasel words] the first-ever published work predicting the advent of reality television. There are many similarities between Sheckley's story and Stephen King's novelThe Running Man, published later in 1982, of which a film adaptation was later made.
The 1958 short story "The Store of the Worlds" from the collectionStore of Infinity was adapted twice as a short film, first in Hungary in 1975 with its original title translated to Hungarian ("Világok boltja").[17] The second was titledThe Escape by the filmmakerPaul Franklin, starringJulian Sands,Art Malik,Olivia Williams andBen Miller. This film had its premiere at the 2017Tribeca Film Festival in New York.
Sheckley's 1959 novelImmortality, Inc.—about a world in which the afterlife could be obtained via a scientific process—was very loosely adapted into a film, the 1992Freejack, starringMick Jagger,Emilio Estevez,Rene Russo, andAnthony Hopkins. It was also adapted into the first episode of the third season of the British BBC seriesOut of the Unknown. This episode is lost due to the then common practice of wiping the shows after broadcast.
His 1962 novel,The Man in the Water was filmed under that title and was also released asEscape from Hell Island.[18]
"The Game of X" (1965) was loosely adapted as the 1981 Disney film,Condorman.[19]
The 2023 film titled"Robots", starringShailene Woodley is based on the short story "The Robot That Looked Like Me".
A number of Sheckley's works, some of which under thepseudonym "Finn O'Donnevan", were also adapted for the radio showX Minus One in the late 1950s, including the above-mentioned "Seventh Victim," "Bad Medicine," "Protection," and "The Native Problem," the last of which was an exploration of Zimmer's Law, or the waiting time paradox. The radio showTales of Tomorrow also in the late 1950s did a version of "Watchbird" andSouth Africa radio did their version of "Watchbird" on the seriesSF68.
In 2007, Chris Larner and David Gilbert created the radio show "The Laxian Key" based on Sheckley's short stories. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra.[20]
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(copyright Sheckley 2000–2005)