Philip Athans’s Reviews > Pilgrimage to Earth > Status Update

If you're one of the few people in the known universe who doesn't understand how complicated it can be to transport smags, firgels, and queels through space, you'll want to study "Milk Run" (1954).

I need to adapt this into a Traveller adventure!

“The Academy” (1954)

“Good Lord, man, don’t you understand anything about Social Sanity, Responsibility, and Stasis? I was on my way to becoming wealthy. From there, I would have founded a financial empire. … After that, who knows where I would have gone? Into indirect control of the government, eventually. I’d want to change the psychological policies to conform to my own abnormalities…"

In "Deadhead" (1955) we get a look at the early days of a Mars colony, not yet self-sufficient, dealing with a "deadhead"--a stowaway from Earth not qualified for a place on Mars… and then a surprisingly weird ending! This was another good one.

"Earth, Air, Fire, and Water" (1955) is a tight little survival tale based on a wildly inaccurate imagining of what it's like on the surface of Venus. Our hero is caught out in the snow…?

"Protection" (1956) begins with the question: What if an alien intelligence made itself known to a random human, and that guy just did not give a fraction of a fuck?

The short but effective psychological horror story “Fear in the Night” is completely out of place amongst the snarky, sometimes silly SF tales that have have dominated the collection so far. But it’s also my favorite story so far. I’d like to read more horror from Mr. Sheckley!

The story "Human Man's Burden" is so hopelessly steeped in the rigid gender roles of its day (originally published in 1956) that it's maybe THE example of SF authors of that era easily imagining changes in technology but gleefully ignoring the possibility of changes in social customs. Younger readers will struggle (thankfully) to understand what these people are even talking about.

I did not see the end (really the punchline) of "Disposal Service" coming. A super short sci-fi joke, really, and it works.

“Early Model” is as intriguing a read as it is silly. Here we see how thoughtlessly designed technology can interfere with personal and political relationships. Wow, has this “come true” in sad and tragic ways since its original 1956 publication.

"The Body" was a fun, short, high concept goof that Sheckley pulled off with great humanness and good natured humor.