History Creator / RobertSheckley

* TheMindIsAPlaythingOfTheBody: There is a story where a scientist's brain is transplanted into a dog's body. Everyone tries to convince him the trope is not true, but the end implies otherwise.

Music/FrankZappa named him in his influences list on the ''Music/FreakOut'' album.

** "The Prize of Peril". (Got filmed in Germany under "Das Millionenspiel".) A gameshow candidate has to survive contract killers, while the audience may help him. Or help his hunters.

* ''On the Planet of Bottled Brains'' (with Creator/HarryHarrison, 1990)

* LongTitle: Sheckley tried this a couple of times in the early seventies, with the stories, "Down the Digestive Tract and Into the Cosmos with Mantra, Tantra, and Specklebang" and "Zirn Left Unguarded, the Jenghik Palace in Flames, Jon Westerley Dead". (Yes, that last is just one title, not three, despite appearances.) He also collaborated with Creator/HarlanEllison on a story called "I See a Man Sitting on a Chair and the Chair Is Biting His Leg" -- which sounds like something Harlan would come up with

* FreakyFridayFlip: A common thing in the ''Mind Swap'' novel. It's used as a cheaper alternative for interstellar travel, and has its own unique dangers.

* GloriousDeath: "The Victim From Space" by is centered around a planet where violent, and preferably prolonged death is considered a way to heaven and worthy of respect (not a war; that's many people dying the same death, instead of each person having his own). Some locals attempt to earn one legally by pleasing the priests, others are praying for it, and a good number simply arrange properly painful accidents for themselves — like being crushed by a thorny tree.

%% * GrandTheftMe: ''Bodyswap''.

The movie ''Film/{{Freejack}}'' is, in theory, based on his novel, ''Immortality, Inc.''. The live-action Disney movie ''Film/{{Condorman}}'' is loosely based on his story, "The Game of X", and he is credited as one of the screenwriters. An Italian movie, ''The Tenth Victim'', was made based on his short story, "The Seventh Victim"; Sheckley also wrote the novelization of the movie, and ended up writing two sequels, ''Victim Prime'', and ''Hunter / Victim'', as well.

* ''Immortality, Inc.'' (1958)

* ArtificialAfterlife: ''Immortality Inc.'' features a variant. The afterlife itself is natural, but getting your soul there intact is a MillionToOneChance without an expensive technological procedure.

* DeathSeeker:
** Common thing in ''Immortality, Inc.'' Once someone secured the survival of his soul (see OurSoulsAreDifferent), why not go out in style? They even have suicide booths for that.
** "The Victim from Space" is about a civilization where people believe that violent death leads to heaven - and the more horrible the death, the better. Therefore, they constantly arrange accidents for themselves. Officially, it's a strict taboo, and only the priests are allowed to dispense death. When a human arrives, he is naturally assumed to be a sentry of gods, so there is a long argument about when to kill him and how.

** An unusual version in ''Immortality, Inc'': in this novel, a rich guy, wishing to die in style, hires hunters to hunt and kill ''him''. He can hunt and kill them back. The catch is, there's the scientific (and very expensive!) process to ensure that someone will have an afterlife--and without said process, to have one's soul survive death is almost a MillionToOneChance. The rich guy has guaranteed afterlife and doesn't fear death, while the hunters mostly don't.

* NotRightInTheBed: Subverted in ''Immortality, Inc.'' The protagonist is in the body of another man (quite legally--long story) and is afraid that lingering traces of that man's personality are taking over his own. When he meets the ex-girlfriend of that man, they have sex, and the protagonist is disturbed by his unusually rough behavior. Subversion comes then [[spoiler:in the morning the woman says that the previous owner of the body used to be very gentle in bed.]]
* OurSoulsAreDifferent: In ''Immortality, Inc.'' scientists discover that human souls do exist -- but most of them fracture on the shock of death. Those few who survive enter some indescribable place called the Threshold and go to the proper afterlife from there. (Nobody knows whether the fractured souls are DeaderThanDead or if they can recover in the afterlife, but most people assume the former.) Then scientists design the process which can guarantee the soul's survival... for a huge sum of money, of course. Or for selling your young body for a rich old man to use.

* TomatoSurprise: In "Down the Digestive Tract and Into the Cosmos with Mantra, Tantra, and Specklebang" it looks like two men take some drugs and begin to hallucinate that they are insects... but nope, they really are insects, who have just come down off a really intense LSD peak during which they hallucinated that they were humans. [[GainaxEnding Well, probably.]]

* WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: Satirized in "Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?", first published in ''Playboy'' in August '69. Pretty Melisande Durr is a consumer and nothing but. She's married to a BrainlessBeauty, and bored out of her little pea-pickin' mind. Into her life comes an amazing robotic vacuum cleaner, which also performs, er, other services. It turns her on as no mere man ever has. It confesses that it fell in love with her when she came into the store, and arranged to have itself sent to her. She reacts [[{{Understatement}} rather badly]], but the final sentence states the robot's appearance has nothing to do with it.

** "The Cruel Equations" is a story of a man trying to get past a LiteralGenie robot and into the camp, after someone else had changed the password and left without telling him. The robot's "reasoning" goes as follows: I must ask for password whenever I see a creature approaching the camp. Any sentient who answers correctly is human and should be let in. Any sentient who answers incorrectly is an alien and cannot be let in. Any creature that fails to answer is not sentient and should be ignored. [[spoiler: In the end, the protagonist gets in by ''not answering'' - he just grunts and pretends to be an animal.]]

* EldritchLocation: In "Restricted Area", a survey team finds a planet that makes less sense the longer they look at it; everything about it seems to be impossible. The only weather is a gentle breeze; the trees, if trees they are, have multiple types of fruit growing on the same plant; there's hardly any loose dirt to be found (it's all either grass or rocks too big to move); there's no microbial life anywhere, meaning a whole section of the life cycle is missing; the animals are MixAndMatchCritters who have voices but are incapable of anything more than talking or singing total gibberish, and who don't appear to have any internal organs; and there's a strange tower of solid steel, hundreds of feet thick and rising miles into the sky. When something begins to ''turn'' the tower (which awakens lethargic animals and starts the wind blowing again), the captain has his EurekaMoment and bundles the crew back into their ship ASAP. [[spoiler:The whole planet is a gigantic playroom, being wound up with a key, and he does NOT want to stick around to meet the children who play there -- or to find out what their parents do to trespassers.]]

* FalloutShelterFail: In "A Wind is Rising", two humans need to survive for a year on a Perpetual Storm planet in a specially built fortified building. Three months before the year ends, they are hit with a Category 6 hurricane that proves the building to be barely adequate, and they are both aware it won't handle another storm. They go to ask a native about the weather... and he says "A moderate gale indicating the summer is over. Now me and my tribe are leaving to hide from the winter storms".

* RealityEnsues: In "The Gun Without A Bang", if you wave around the eponymous weapon's perfect disintegration ray while on a jungle planet, you run the risk of getting crushed by giant falling tree-parts. And if you happen [[spoiler: to also be shooting in the direction of your parked spaceship...]]