Xolotl

Pulphouse Short Story Paperbacks #3

by Robert Sheckley

41 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

One of science fiction's great humorists, Sheckley was a prolific short story writer beginning in 1952 with titles including "Specialist", "Pilgrimage to Earth", "Warm", "The Prize of Peril", and "Seventh Victim", collected in volumes from Untouched by Human Hands (1954) to Is That What People Do? (1984) and a five-volume set of Collected Stories (1991). His first novel, Immortality, Inc. (1958), was followed by The Status Civilization (1960), Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Mindswap (1966), and several others. Sheckley served as fiction editor for Omni magazine from January 1980 through September 1981, and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.

Reviews

[Lou Corn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Sheckley even though I’ve only read Mindswap and this, which I’m sure many a college student and Twitter user would call cultural appropriation, which sure but when Ursula K Le Guin does this kind of stuff people call it feminist. This is a short comic story about death, pleasure, and an interracial cross-underworld love story between Xolotl and Cassandra, two prophets “sharing one horse on their way to save the Cosmos.” Verging on dad joke territory but good fun. The edition I have was put out by a little press called Pulphouse Publishing based in Eugene, OR (1991).