I’ve read some of the other novels by Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) and if, after reading this, you like the idea of his stories, try ‘Mindswap’. This one, ‘Shards Of Space’, is an anthology of eleven stories from the 1950s to 1960. As such, they are all influenced by the science known at the time. Sheckley also added some wit to his stories, spotting the absurd and making fun of it.
The opening story, ‘Prospector’s Special’, has Tom Morrison using his $20,000 savings to look for wealth in a Venusian desert. This was written before we knew how dangerous and uninhabitable the planet truly is. Although he is readily in contact with people elsewhere, by law, none of them can supply him with anything on credit. When his transport loses two back wheels in a crash, Morrison continues on foot. If he finds the gold, then he will be able to afford everything. Of course, red tape muddles things and, even when he finds the motherlode, it isn’t seen as currency.
‘The Girls And Nugent Miller’ is set after a war and Miller thinks himself the last man on Earth. That is, until, out looking for supplies, he encounters teacher Miss Denis and her five post-teen lady students. One problem: Denis is a misandrist, that’s someone who hates men, and will even resort to the labs for breeding.
The next two stories, ‘Meeting Of The Minds’ and ‘Potential’, share a similar theme of group minds. I checked the indicia and ‘Potential’ originally came out in 1953, while ‘Meeting Of The Minds’, which is far better and longer, came out in 1960. In it, an alien sentient bug called the Quedak hitches a ride back to Earth from Mars and later starts taking over some treasure hunters and nearby animals. We see this from both perspectives. As you read these stories, you’ll realise just how good a storyteller Sheckley was. Even if you changed the names of the planets, they would still be gripping yarns. He pays attention to detail and you care about the characters.
‘Fool’s Mate’ is a space battle where chess statistics decide who would win, until presidential representative Margraves arrives and breaks the stalemate in a drastic way. In case you think that’s a ‘Star Trek’ plot, this one came first.
Two of the stories, ‘The Slow Season’ and ‘Alone At Last’, are borderline horror stories. In the first, a tailor is asked to make clothes to a certain specification and then meets these particular people. The second has a man wanting to live alone on an asteroid, well, apart from his robot, which has similar problems.
Again, two stories share the same theme, this time a longevity drug. ‘Forever’ came out in early 1959 and ‘The Sweeper Of Loray’ a couple of months later. At least they were in the right order this time. The former is the better one, where Charles Dennison is being pursued for his new drug and has no choice but to take it himself. He later finds he is not the first to discover it and that all of them are imprisoned until they either join the team that caught them or go mad. The ending feels a bit rushed but captures a lot of ideas.
When you think that these stories mostly came out in the 1950s and yet still read so refreshingly, it shows the strength of Sheckley’s writing. He wrote a lot of short stories and novels in his lifetime, so there’s a lot to choose from.
GF Willmetts
September 2026
(pub: Corgi/Transworld Publications, 1962. 152 page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: GS7503)
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