Robert Sheckley, RIP

Jesse Walker | December 9, 2005

Robert Sheckley, the author of hundreds of satiric science-fiction stories and Borgesian fables, died in Poughkeepsie this morning. It's been a couple decades since I last cracked open one of his books, but in his honor I just took Is That What People Do? off the shelf and read a bit. The prose was a little more awkward than I remembered, but the jokes were still dry and sly; in a better world, their author would be a household name.