War was where it belonged — in the hands of the individual

Based on Robert Sheckley's short story "Seventh Victim."


(via)

See also Movies and Books Like The Hunger Games (full text of the story is posted there).

Sheckley's store of worlds

"But your skin is made of metal," Melisande said. "And metal can't feel."

"Darling Melisande," the Rom said tenderly, "if flesh can stop feeling, can't metal begin to feel? If anything feels, can anything else not feel? Didn't you know that the stars love and hate, that a nova is a passion, and that a dead star is just like a dead human or a dead machine? The trees have their lusts, and I have heard the drunken laughter of buildings, the urgent demands of highways..."

— from "Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?," in Store of the Worlds, by Robert Sheckley.

(That story was originally published in Playboy, and yes, the title means what you think it does.)

I've been reading the stories of Robert Sheckley since early summer. This collection, issued by NYRB Classics, has been my go-to book when I needed something short or witty or thoughtful, as a palate cleanser between books, sometimes during other books, or just because.

As I've mentioned before, the stories have a very Twilight Zone-y feel. Some of the details are dated (for example, references to Fuller Brush salesmen), but the ideas themselves are not. Some may call the prose naive, but I find it refreshingly straightforward.

I'm sorry to have finished this collection. I wish only that there might be another to get me through next year.

That least predictable of entities

When his ship finally settled it was an hour before dawn, the safe hour, the time when most creatures, no matter what planet spawned them, are least alert. Or so his father had told him before he left Earth. Invading before dawn was part of the lore of Earth, hard-won knowledge directed solely toward survival on alien planets.

"But all this knowledge is fallible," his father had reminded him. "For it deals with that least predictable of entities, intelligent life." The old man had nodded sententiously as he made that statement.

"Remember, my boy," the old man went on, "you can outwit a meteor, predict an ice age, outguess a nova. But what, truthfully, can you know about those baffling and constantly changing entities who are possessed of intelligence?"

— from "Dawn Invader," in Store of the Worlds, by Robert Sheckley.

This is the way our ancestors worked off their aggressions

But even the flightiest girl could not ignore Danton's lack. He was liable to weary after only a few hours of Mass Dancing, when the fun was just beginning. At Twelve-hand Bridge, Danton's attention frequently wandered and he would be forced to ask for a recount of the bidding, to the disgust of the other eleven players. And he was impossible at Subways.

He tried hard to master the spirit of that classic game. Locked arm in arm with his teammates, he would thrust forward into the subway car, trying to take possession before another team could storm in the opposite doors.

His group captain would shout, "Forward, men! We're taking this car to Rockaway!" And the opposing group captain would scream back, "Never! Rally, boys! It's Bronx Park or bust!"

Danton would struggle in he close-packed throng, a fixed smile on his face, worry lines etched around his mouth and eyes. His girlfriend of the moment would say, "What's wrong, Edward? Aren't you having fun?"

"Sure I am," Danton would reply, gasping for breath.

"But you aren't!" the girl would cry, perplexed. "Don't you realize, Edward, that this is the way our ancestors worked off their aggressions? Historians say the game of Subways averted an all-out hydrogen war. We have those same aggressions and we, too, must resolve them is a suitable social context."

"Yeah, I know," Edward Danton would say. "I really do enjoy this. I — oh. Lord!"

For at that moment, a third group would come pounding in, arms locked, chanting, "Canarsie, Canarsie, Canarsie!"

In that way, he would lose another girlfriend, for there was obviously no future in Danton. Lack of Fit can never be disguised.

— from "The Native Problem," in Store of the Worlds, by Robert Sheckley.

Ah, subways. And here I thought they were the source of my aggression.

Art is a cruel mistress

"You want to ask me about class and status? Is that it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You Opinioners are always asking about class and status. One would think you'd know all about it by now. But very well. Today, since everyone is equal, there is only one class. The middle class. The only question then is — to what portion of the middle class does one belong? High, low, or middle?"

"And how is that determined?"

"Why, by all sorts of things. The way a person speaks, eats, dresses, the way he acts in public. His manners. His clothing. You can always tell your upper middle class man by his clothes. It's quite unmistakable."

"I see. And the lower middle classes?"

"Well, for one thing they lack creative energy. They wear ready-made clothing, for example, without taking the trouble to improve upon it. The same goes for their homes. Mere uninspired adornment won't do, let me add. That's simply the mark of the nouveau upper middle class. One doesn't receive such persons in the home."

"Thank you, Citizen Gotthreid. And where would you classify yourself statuswise?"

(With the very faintest hesitation). "Oh, I've never thought much about it — upper middle, I suppose."

— from The Status Civilization, by Robert Sheckley.

Maybe it's because of the job posting I saw last week, for a scriptwriter at Ubisoft, that I'm spending these last few days imagining everything as a video game — the journey to work, a news story, meal preparation, whatever I happen to be reading. This week I happen to have been reading Robert Sheckley, and I'm convinced The Status Civilization would make a most excellent videogame.

This is a novella written in 1960. It appears to be widely available online (I downloaded a free ebook from Kobo Books). Go, download it, read it now.

Will Barrent wakes up to find himself being shipped to the prison planet (think Great Britain's relationship to Australia). He has little recollection of his life on Earth ad does not remember having committed a crime. But here he is with hundreds of others being introduced into a prison society and left to figure out the "rules" on his own, which is something of a challenge — when you let the lawless run things their own way, the law doesn't quite work on the same assumptions you and I would make. And no one's willing to help you out — that's part of the game.

So Will essentially faces one challenge (or puzzle, or enigma) after another, and with every success, he levels up. The challenges mostly consist of staying alive, and usually as part of some society-sanctioned games, some gladiator-style, some mass hunts. Every win gains him some status in this prison world's hierarchy.

Behind all his miniquests lies the greater mystery of the crime he committed on Earth and how Earth society operates now that it exports its convicts. Will does beat the odds and make it back to his home planet, but the egalitarian utopia that Earth society has aspired toward is as stratified as ever, though perhaps more subtly (see the quote above), and with new sets of complications and dirty truths.

The following exchange is not exactly representative; it occurs toward the end, shares little with the rest of the story to this point in terms of pacing and mood, and is not especially videogame-like. But I find this idea of re-creating a work of art both fascinating and hilarious.

"You are a verbalizer, Citizen Honners?"

"I am, sir. Though perhaps 'author' would be a better word, if you don't mind."

"Of course. Citizen Honners, are you presently engaged in writing for any of the periodicals I see on the dissemination stands?"

"Certainly not! These are written by incompetent hacks for the dubious delectation of the lower middle class. The stories, in case you didn't know, are taken line by line from the works of various popular writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The people who do the work merely substitute adjectives and adverbs. Occasionally, I'm told, a more daring hack will substitute a verb, or even a noun. But that is rare. The editors of such periodicals frown upon sweeping innovations."

"And you are not engaged in such work?"

"Absolutely not! My work is noncommercial. I am a Creative Conrad Specialist."

"Would you mind telling me what that means, Citizen Honners?"

"I'd be happy to. My own particular field of endeavor lies in re-creating the works of Joseph Conrad, an author who lived in the pre-atomic era."

"How do you go about re-creating those works, sir?"

"Well, at present I am engaged in my fifth re-creation of Lord Jim. To do it, I steep myself as thoroughly as possible in the original work. Then I set about rewriting it as Conrad would have written it if he had lived today. It is a labor which calls for extreme diligence, and for the utmost in artistic integrity. A single slip could mar the re-creation. As you can see, it calls for a preliminary mastery of Conrad's vocabulary, themes, plots, characters, mood, approach, and so on. All this goes in, and yet the book cannot be a slavish repeat. It must have something new to say, just as Conrad would have said it."

"And have you succeeded?"

"The critics have been generous, and my publisher gives me every encouragement."

"When you have finished your fifth re-creation of Lord Jim, what do you plan to do?"

"First I shall take a long rest. Then I shall re-create one of Conrad's minor works. The Planter of Malata, perhaps."

"I see. Is re-creation the rule in all the arts?"

"It is the goal of the true aspiring artist, no matter what medium he has chosen to work in. Art is a cruel mistress, I fear."

I am beginning to like, and admire, Robert Sheckley a great deal.

Sheckley stories

I'd never heard of Robert Sheckley until New York Review Books released a collection of his stories. It's got a gorgeous cover, and it's sci-fi. Along with the NYRB Classics seal of approval, it looks like a sure thing. But I'm not so good with spontaneity and the art of succumbing to the impulse purchase — first I had to look up Sheckley online.

I downloaded a sampling of stories from Kobo Books:

• Bad Medicine
• Death Wish
• Forever
• The Hour of Battle
• Warm
• The Status Civilization (a novella)
• Warrior Race

These have a great Twilight Zone-y vibe and hint at some vast conspiracy lurking behind the facade of society. Straightforward in the telling with twist punch endings. The stories are more than 50 years old, but there's nothing dated about them apart from that mood. Besides The Status Civilization, which merits a post of its own (coming soon), I like "Bad Medicine" and "Forever" the best of the lot, but they are all thought-provoking and have something to commend them.

"Now you're implying that machines think," said Rajcik.

"Of course I am," Watkins said. "Because they do! No, I'm not out of my head. Any engineer will tell you that a complex machine has a personality all its own. Do you know what that personality is like? Cold, withdrawn, uncaring, unfeeling. A machine's only purpose is to frustrate desire and produce two problems for every one it solves. And do you know why a machine feels this way?"

"You're hysterical," Somers told him.

"I am not. A machine feels this way because it knows it is an unnatural creation in nature's domain. Therefore it wishes to reach entropy and cease — a mechanical death wish."

— from "Death Wish," by Robert Sheckley.

Several other stories are available at Project Gutenberg. You can be sure I'll be working my way through them in the coming weeks. And I'll be picking up a copy of Store of the Worlds.

If you're familiar with the work of Robert Sheckley, I'd love to hear about your experiences with it.

It's a question of seeing things correctly

"I'll know when you're close," the voice said. "You were warm just then."

"Just then?" All he had done was look around the room. He did so again, turning his head slowly. Then it happpened.

The room, from one angle, looked different. It was suddenly a mixture of muddled colors, instead of the carefully blended pastel shades he had selected. The lines of wall, floor and ceiling were strangely off proportion, zigzag, unrelated.

Then everything went back to normal.

"You were very warm," the voice said. "It's a question of seeing things correctly."

— from "Warm," by Robert Sheckley.

I'm seeing shades of China Miéville, something "old and predatory and utterly terrible" like in his story "Details," one aspect of which might be seen as growing into something vaster yet more mundane in the crosshatching of The City & the City.

Sheckley's story is from 1953, and it's included in Store of the Worlds, a collection of his stories recently issued by NYRB Classics.