Author(s): SHECKLEY ROBERT

Rock & Roll

Robert Sheckley was science fiction's in-house reply to theblack humorists of the 1950s and 60s- Bruce Jay Friedman,Terry Southern, and the young Thomas Pynchon were his nonetoo-distant relatives; Mort Sahl's comedy, Charles Schultz'scartoons, and Tom Lehrer's songs all mined similar veins.Sheckley targeted the conformity and consumerism of ourmid-century technotopia while it was still under construction.His new worlds, alternate universes, and future dystopias haveonly become more present with the passing years, even as hiscareer, played out both in the pulp magazines and in front-linevenues like Playboy and Omni, is a glimpse of a time when"science fiction writer" could be a kind of hipster credential.Mordant, absurdist, and deadpan, the best of Sheckley's dissidentfarces represent science fiction's high-water mark as anallegorical clearinghouse for twenty-century angst.