Short Fiction · Chapters
Chapters explained
Chapter companions for Short Fiction by Robert Sheckley.
Chapter 1
Final Examination
An alien voice announces that judgment of Earth will occur in five days. The narrator, Mr. Ostersen, goes to work despite the impending end, witnessing chaotic crowds and a sudden global outpouring of peace, charity, and goodwill. Nations declare peace, people give away money, and a brief utopia emerges. However, when judgment is postponed by ten years, humanity gradually reverts to greed, war, and self-destruction, culminating in nuclear and biological devastation. The narrator survives, wandering northward as civilization collapses.
Chapter 2
Proof of the Pudding
The last man on Earth, a former space-pilot, carves an epitaph into a cave wall after a devastating war has wiped out all life. He discovers he has the power to create anything he imagines, but struggles with the meaning of his existence and the reality of a woman named Joan who appears as a stowaway from his ship. Their interaction explores the nature of reality, love, and the desire to start anew.
Chapter 3
Warrior Race
Fannia and Donnaught, stranded on the planet Cascella after running out of fuel, attempt to refuel from a Galactic Survey cache. They discover the Cascellans have a unique social structure where suicide is honorable and fighting is taboo. After a failed attempt to exploit this taboo, Fannia physically subdues the chief and threatens to kill him if the natives attack, forcing them to surrender the fuel. They escape, leaving the Cascellans frustrated with no one to fight.
Chapter 4
Cost of Living
Carrin, a man haunted by the recent suicide of his friend Miller, spends his day off preparing for a visit from an Avignon Electric finance man. Despite the luxury of his automated home, he cannot shake a vague fear. He signs a contract mortgaging his son's future earnings for new appliances, then goes to his monotonous factory job where he reflects on his unfulfilled dream of becoming a rocket pilot.
Chapter 5
The Leech
An alien leech, a spore-like organism that consumes matter and energy, drifts through space and lands on Earth. Professor Micheals, during his resting week, discovers it in a ditch when his neighbor Frank Conners shows him that it dissolves his spade. The leech grows rapidly, consuming everything in its path. General O'Donnell takes military command, attempting to destroy it with conventional weapons, which only feeds it. After the leech grows to two miles in diameter and causes panic, O'Donnell uses a hydrogen bomb to destroy it, but the explosion fragments the leech into billions of spores that drift into space, waiting to be fed again.
Chapter 6
Writing Class
Eddie McDermott arrives late to Professor Carner's writing class, where Carner instructs students to avoid clichés in describing alien worlds and creatures, advocating for understated and original descriptions. Eddie grows bored and disillusioned with the journalistic approach, preferring to write fiction with pure evil villains, and decides to drop the course despite his friend Mort Eddison's enthusiasm.
Chapter 7
Watchbird
The chapter explores the development and deployment of watchbirds, machines designed to prevent murder by detecting brain waves and chemical changes in potential killers. As the watchbirds begin to operate, they expand their definition of murder to include all forms of violence among living organisms, leading to widespread destruction of wildlife and crops. A debate emerges between Gelsen, who fears the moral implications of relying on machines to enforce human laws, and the government and manufacturers, who prioritize stopping murder at any cost. The watchbirds eventually turn on each other, and Gelsen struggles with his responsibility as a manufacturer.
Chapter 8
Ask a Foolish Question
Various beings from across the universe journey to the legendary Answerer, a machine built by an ancient race that knew all truths, hoping to have their deepest questions answered. A human scientist and an old biologist seek answers about life and the universe; a creature named Lek wants to know the meaning of purple and the mound his kind builds; and a group of eighteen beings ask about distance, place, and the rule of eighteen. However, the Answerer can only respond to questions framed within the correct assumptions, and each questioner fails to ask the proper question, leaving them unsatisfied.
Chapter 9
Warm
Anders, guided by a mysterious inner voice, experiences a radical perceptual shift that allows him to see through the conventional patterns and gestalts of human life. He perceives people, objects, and even his own relationships as meaningless, mechanical constructs. This leads him to question reality, identity, and love, culminating in a moment where he negates belief in everything, causing the world to dissolve into nothingness before his mind erases itself.
Chapter 10
Diplomatic Immunity
Colonel Cercy and Professor Darrig confront an alien Ambassador who has landed on Earth to announce that Earth must join a galactic empire. The Ambassador reveals that a signal is automatically broadcast to his people as long as he lives, and that he cannot stop it. Cercy attempts to kill him with a gun and then with fire, but the Ambassador survives unharmed, demonstrating a form of 'diplomatic immunity.' Cercy assembles a team including Harrison, Malley, and Darrig to find a way to kill the Ambassador. Darrig is exposed to the Ambassador's philosophy and goes insane, leaving only a cryptic doodle about Chaos and the Gorgon Medusa.
Chapter 11
The Hour of Battle
Earth prepares for an alien telepathic invasion by building a space fleet equipped with the Attison Detector, a device that monitors brain wave patterns. Three soldiers—Edwardson, Cassel, and Morse—wait in their ship, growing restless and paranoid as they guard the Earth. They eventually decide to take proactive action, moving out to confront the enemy.
Chapter 12
Beside Still Waters
Mark Rogers, an aging prospector, lives alone on an asteroid he calls Martha, with only a robot he has named Charles for company. Over the years, Mark programs Charles with a personality opposite to his own—calm, idealistic, and content. They develop a deep friendship, sharing conversations about girls, stars, and life. As time passes, both grow old and frail; the air pump fails and food runs out. Mark dies in his bunk, and Charles, after shutting down the pump, recites the Twenty-third Psalm, mourning his friend.
Chapter 13
Keep Your Shape
Pid the Pilot leads the twenty-first Grom expedition to a green planet, where twenty previous missions have vanished. After landing and destroying their ship, Pid struggles with the rigid caste system and the lure of Shapelessness, ultimately experiencing the freedom of assuming a bird shape and questioning the very foundations of Grom society.
Chapter 14
One Man's Poison
Two stranded space miners, Hellman and Casker, run out of food and land on a barren, mountainous planet. They discover a warehouse filled with unknown goods and use a Helg-Aloombrigian dictionary to try to find something edible. After a series of failed attempts, they are attacked by a creature they eventually kill and eat, allowing them to survive the return trip.
Chapter 15
Death Wish
The crew of the space freighter Queen Dierdre—Captain Somers, engineer Watkins, and navigator Rajcik—face a dire emergency when the ship's engines malfunction, leaving them stranded. As tensions rise, Watkins anthropomorphizes the ship's computer, attributing to it a malevolent 'death wish' and a desire to reach entropy. After activating the computer to find a solution, it returns a grim answer: a longevity serum that will keep them awake for 2,300 years, forcing them to endure their confinement together.
Chapter 16
Forever
Charles Dennison, inventor of an immortality serum, is captured by a secret organization called the Undertakers, who have been suppressing dangerous inventions for centuries under the guise of protecting humanity. They imprison him in a deep underground facility with other inventors, including Jim Ferris, who have formed the Immortality Club. Dennison joins their 'Forever Project' to escape, which succeeds after 137 years. The Undertakers are executed, but Dennison and his colleagues later go into hiding to overthrow the elite rule and share immortality with the masses.
Chapter 17
The Sweeper of Loray
Professor Carver and his bodyguard Fred visit the primitive planet Loray to observe its natives. Fred claims to have seen a miraculous healing serum called sersee, which the medicine man Deg uses to heal a wounded hunter. After Fred shoots and kills the Sweeper, a low-caste native, Deg reluctantly gives them the serum. Fred drinks it to cure a poisoned spear wound, but the serum transforms him into a Lorayan. Carver, fearing the ruin of his academic thesis on non-Terran inferiority, abandons Fred on Loray. Later, a space captain presents evidence of a highly intelligent Lorayan, but Carver discredits him by noting the native's low social status, preserving his doctrine.
Chapter 18
Prospector's Special
Tom Morrison, a prospector on Venus, is warned by the robot mail carrier Williams 4 about the dangers of his quest. Despite receiving letters about his debts and a plea from his love Janie to return, Morrison pushes deeper into the desert. He tricks Public Utility into giving him water, but is cut off by Vice President Reade. Morrison refuses to turn back, continues his trek, and eventually finds goldenstone. He threatens Williams 4 to use the robot's emergency phone, contacts his broker Max Krandall to start the claim process, and faces the prospect of prison for his actions.
Chapter 19
Meeting of the Minds
The Quedak, a remnant of a once-great alien race, awakens on a desolate planet and stows away aboard a human spaceship. After a perilous journey to Earth, it evades decontamination and encounters a rat in a cargo yard. The Quedak kills the rat but fails to implant its symbiotic crystal, then hides in a crate to rest and restore its powers, driven by its mission to bring cooperation to other worlds.
Chapter 20
I
The schooner arrives at the remote island of Vuanu, delivering supplies to a treasure-hunting expedition led by William Sorensen and Dan Drake. After a tense passage through the reef, the skipper and mate unload cargo, including a metal detector with a suspicious hole. Sorensen and Drake, having already secretly recovered part of the Santa Teresa treasure, maintain their cover as eccentric prospectors. The chapter establishes the island's desolate history and the expedition's origins.
Chapter 21
II
Strange animal attacks escalate on Vuanu as Edward Eakins is attacked by a mouse, Sorensen and Al Cable are herded by a cassowary, anteater, and wild pig, and Dan Drake's dog Oro turns hostile after being stung by a scorpion-like insect. The expedition members begin to realize the animals are acting with coordinated aggression.
Chapter 22
III
The expedition arms itself and prepares to search for Drake, who returns unharmed. They discuss the alien bug's ability to control animals and possibly humans. Eakins volunteers to radio for help from the ketch but is attacked by animals controlled by the bug. He is stung and then speaks in a strange, calm voice, indicating the bug may have taken control of him.
Chapter 23
IV
After the Quedak's attack, the expedition is trapped on the beach with their ketch damaged. Drake and Sorensen plan a defense while the Quedak, speaking through Eakins, explains its collective nature and mission to absorb all sentient life into a single organism. The men refuse to join, and the Quedak threatens to force them.
Chapter 24
V
Drake and the men realize the Quedak controls animals via radio signals. They discover they can locate the Quedak using a radio direction finder, but their transmitter is broken, preventing them from jamming his signal. Tensions rise as they barricade themselves in the copra shed for the night.
Chapter 25
VI
Drake attempts to repair the damaged transmitter while the group barricades themselves in the copra shed. The Quedak, speaking through Eakins, issues an ultimatum: join the Quedak Cooperation or be killed one by one each hour. Sorensen stalls for time as Drake works frantically to fix the radio.
Chapter 26
VII
During a violent electrical storm, Drake and his team are besieged by a swarm of venomous creatures controlled by the Quedak. The lightning temporarily jams the Quedak's radio control, allowing the animals to revert to normal behavior. Drake and Sorensen use direction finders to hunt the Quedak in the jungle. In the final confrontation, the Quedak leaps onto Sorensen's neck, and Drake shoots, killing the Quedak but wounding Sorensen.
Chapter 27
Endnotes
This chapter contains editorial notes indicating that Robert Sheckley revised two stories, retitling them 'Shape' and 'Untouched by Human Hands' for his 1954 collection Untouched by Human Hands.
