Robert Sheckley: a science fiction author’s life (audio documentary).

Here’s an hour-long exploration of the classic SF author Robert Sheckley’s life and works, in this audio piece by the ever-reliable David Barr Kirtley.

In late 1951, Robert Sheckley sold his first story, Final Examination, to Imagination magazine. He then 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’s novel Immortality, Inc.—about a world in which the afterlife could be obtained via a scientific process—was adapted into a film, the 1992 Freejack, starring Mick Jagger, Emilio Estevez, Rene Russo, and Anthony Hopkins.