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Robert Sheckley (1928-2005) was an American writer of Speculative Fiction and Mystery Fiction, best known for his voluminous production of witty and cynical SF short stories in the 1950's and 60's. His story "The Prize of Peril" is particularly notable for its early prediction of the rise of reality television, and likely served as an inspiration for Stephen King's novel The Running Man (and even more so for the movie).

The movie Freejack is, in theory, based on his novel, Immortality, Inc.. The live-action Disney movie 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.

Frank Zappa named him in his influences list on the Freak Out album.

Selected works by Robert Sheckley (SF unless otherwise noted):


Tropes associated with Mr. Sheckley's stories:

  • A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
    • In "Watchbird", scientists discover the chemical and bioelectrical signals emitted by a human when they're about to commit murder. Flying robots called watchbirds are created to stun potential murderers, but since not all humans emit these signals the watchbirds are equipped with learning circuits so they can eventually learn to pick out these exceptions as well. They end up protecting all forms of life and starvation ensues because the watchbirds stop fishing, the slaughter of animals, and the harvesting of crops. They also come to define themselves as 'life' and so resist shutdown, so in a panic armoured hunter-killer robots called Hawks are created to destroy all Watchbirds. Of course, to stop the highly adaptive Warbirds the Hawks also need learning circuits, and it's hinted at the end that they'll eventually learn to kill all forms of life.
    • "The Minimum Man": Anton Perceveral is a lone colonist serving as a guinea pig on a new planet. At first he was hapless and inexperienced, so the robot sent with him is helpful. But with the passage of time Anton becomes better at his job, and the robot becomes progressively more dangerous. Subverted when the colonist discovers that the robot has been deliberately programmed to encumber him, in order to simulate equipment breaks in the future colony. At the end, it becomes a Killer Robot.
    • "The Cruel Equations" is a story of a man trying to get past a The Genie in the Machine 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. In the end, the protagonist gets in by not answering - he just grunts and pretends to be an animal.
  • Aliens of London: Played for humor in Mindswap. The protagonist is sitting in a bar on an alien world with no idea where to go next, when he's approached by one of the world's aliens, who offers to help. The alien is from a country to the south, so he speaks English with a stereotypical Mexican accent, and also speaks fluent Spanish.
  • Bizarre Alien Biology: The whole plot of "Hands Off" is about an alien and a human crew finding themselves on each other's ship. The humans are almost killed by the basic life support systems, like a blade designed to peel off dead skin layers, while the alien complains the human ship doesn't have the most basic systems - at least, until he finds a few bottles that can serve as a skin care lotion... and eat right through the ship's hull.
  • Bob from Accounting: The Dee family, in "The Accountant", is all wizards and witches, except for little Morton Dee, who wants to be an accountant—and has some powerful arguments on his side.
  • Bold Explorer: "The Minimum Man": The Planetary Expedition and Settlement Board has tried using the classic bold explorer type to check out new worlds for possible colonization, but this type isn't timid enough to survive, and tend to overlook obvious dangers that make newly discovered worlds unsuitable for colonization, so now they're going the opposite way, and choose the accident-prone hapless nebbish Anton Perceveral to be the first of a new breed of explorers.
  • Boring, but Practical: The Status Civilization has the main character running a combination poison/antidote shop on a lawless planet. He is amazed at how, despite all the scientific advancement allowing undetected murder, most poisoners prefer the plain old arsenic and strychnine. The main problem in his job, in fact, turned out to be convincing his clients that their wives would use something so primitive.
  • Blue-and-Orange Morality: In "The Monsters" aliens consider it perfectly all right to kill someone in the heat of discussion; but a premeditated murder is unthinkably horrendous to them. (By the way, the titular monsters are what the aliens think of humans—exactly because the humans are capable to kill in retaliation.)
  • Burn the Orphanage: Played for humor in "Triplication", where a man is in court for burning down an orphanage. His lawyer explains that on the planet Altira III, orphanages are used for training assassins, and his client has probably saved thousands or millions of innocent lives. The charges are dismissed. A few years later, the guy is back in court, and again, he has a good excuse for burning down an orphanage, and gets off. It isn't until the third time, after he burns down an orphanage on Earth, that the truth comes out: he simply likes burning orphanages.
  • Cargo Cult:
    • One short story depicts a primitive civilization, which remembers that in the past (over five thousand years ago), they used to be visited by gods all the time. Now there is a religion based around a system of elaborate rituals which are supposed to be performed for the arriving "gods". However, for the past three thousand years, there has been a debate about whether all the rituals must be performed as always, or perhaps a feast for the gods must be prepared first. The story is centered on the debate continuing in front of two starving "gods" The newer point of "feast first" wins out in the end, and seems to win completely once the "gods'" behavior shows how pleased they are with the food and drink offered.
    • Also, "Early Model" ends with the Deflector Shields generator being worshiped by a village as a demon, and the neighboring villages asking whether they can get one for themselves.
  • Caught in the Ripple: In Mindswap, the ending is the protagonist getting his body back in a parallel dimension, and then doubting whether he's back in his own universe, or still in a parallel one. He checks carefully, but... no. Same three red suns, same egglaying mother.
  • Celebrity Paradox: At one point in Victim Prime, Harold mentions "That old movie they made before the Hunt became legal - Tenth Victim". Prime is a sequel to its novelization.
  • Clawing at Own Throat: "The Humours", later expanded into the novel The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton, has the protagonist try this upon realizing that the recovered portions of his personality don't integrate into his own—rather, all of them together reintegrate into something new.
  • City of Spies: In "Spy Story", there's an entire planet settled exclusively by the spies who come to spy on the main protagonist—or to stop being spies and have a fresh start. The protagonist is the only one on the planet who is not a spy. And he is worried because he might need a spy for the government work, but nobody on the planet wants to do spy work anymore.
  • Conservation of Competence: "The Minimum Man": Anton Perceveral is clumsy, accident-prone, and generally incompetent, but he's sent to open up a planet for colonization. He is assisted by a robot which does all of the heavy work excellently. During the story, the man (who is away from the public disapproval of the rest of society for the very first time) slowly becomes less clumsy, less accident-prone, and more competent. But he noticed that as he got better, the robot got more clumsy and accident-prone. When he asked about this, his boss cheerfully admitted that this was deliberate on their part, because they could not count on the standard colonist to get better, and they literally and specifically wanted to preserve a level of incompetence across the entire team.
  • Continuity Nod: Played for laughs in "The Deaths of Ben Baxter": Ned Brynne's identity and personality vary quite widely in three different timelines, but in none of them he absolutely won't eat French fries.
  • Cruel and Unusual Death: Upon the planet depicted in "The Victim From Space", violent death (preferably a painful one) is considered a blessing and a way to heaven. When a human comes to the planet and is believed to be a sentry of gods, a lot of thought is given to how he deserves to die... after the peasant who reported his ship arriving gets his skull caved in as a reward. After the priests reject poison quills and fire, they finally agree to bury him in an anthill, until a girl who loves him convinces them to upgrade it to "The Ultimate" - a torture rack which is only brought out once a thousand years or so. Meanwhile, the majority of the population aren't too optimistic that the priests will consider them worthy of death, so they arrange "accidents" for themselves. One takes an hour to die after making a thorny tree fall upon him, and all the priests can do is preach how one should be careful.
  • Cult Colony: Played for laughs in "The Native Problem"; a man travels to a distant tropical planet via a FTL ship and stakes a solitary claim, only to have a sublight colony ship full of xenophobic (and rather incompetent) religious fundamentalists show up. He eventually marries into the new colony as the "last" member of his tribe of "extinct" natives.
  • Deadly Game: "The Prize of Peril" posits that shows where people literally risk their lives have become extremely popular, and one of the most popular involves the contestant being hunted by criminals who have been given permission to kill. Viewers can call in to offer advice and help to the contestant—or to his hunters!
  • Death Seeker: "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.
  • Deflector Shields: In "Early Model" the protagonist field-tests a personal protection device, which in any peril activates a personal force field. Unusually, the force field is highly visible: when activated, it looks like a huge black ball. The force field is perfectly impenetrable—but, on the other hand, the user has to cope with limited air supply.
  • Disintegrator Ray: The protagonist of "The Gun Without a Bang" is sent to test a prototype of one of these on a distant planet. The weapon ends up working too well.
  • Divine Date: Amusingly averted in Godshome. The goddess Mellicent has been struck by Cupid's Arrow, and has fallen for shy academic Arthur Fenn. When she professes her love, though, Arthur cannot believe such a beautiful creature could love him. She manages to convince him, but he's still too shy to make the first move, and she's too proud. Eventually, she gives him a ring which gives him the strength and appearance of a demigod, and he finds the courage to accept her proposition, but then can't get it up.
  • Do Androids Dream?: In "Human Man's Burden," robots are deliberately written as a parody of how non-whites are portrayed in stories of colonial adventure. Among the reasons for why robots need a human to boss them around, it is stated that robots don't have souls, and the robots cheerfully agree, but also note that this makes them much more happy than humans. However, the robots of the story show emotion and passion, have created their own (forbidden) religion, and the plot is resolved due to the empathy and wisdom of the hero's robot foreman... seems souls don't do much.
  • Dream People: In one short story, a tailor is hired to sew special costumes for the nightmares, so that they can visit our reality.
  • Eldritch Location: 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 Mix-and-Match Critters who have voices but are incapable of anything more than talking or singing total gibberish (and can't have their intelligence measured because they won't pay attention to the tests), 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 "Eureka!" Moment and bundles the crew back into their ship ASAP. 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.
  • Extremophile Lifeforms: In "Hands Off", the Mabogians are used to such gravity that a human can faint at half their minimum liftoff acceleration, and temperatures that literally fry a person alive on a minimum setting.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: Gregor and Arnold who appear in several shorts and run The AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination Service. They try to decontaminate planets and deal with various bits of fluky alien tech, and never manage to do more than limp along on a shoestring.
  • Fallout Shelter Fail: 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."
  • Foreshadowing: At the beginning of "Protection", the protagonist mentions offhandedly that he thinks he's coming down with a cold.
  • "Freaky Friday" Flip: A common thing in the Mindswap novel. It's used as a cheaper alternative for interstellar travel, and has its own unique dangers.
  • French Cuisine Is Haughty: The protagonist in "Cordle to Onion to Carrot" subjects some French waiters to his new Jerkass persona.
  • Gaia's Vengeance: In "The Mountain Without a Name", the universe has finally grown tired of this pesky little arrogant amoeba called "Man".
  • Gainax Ending: Over and over and over. The worst offender is probably "Down the Digestive Tract and Into the Cosmos with Mantra, Tantra, and Specklebang".
  • Get-Rich-Quick Scheme: Arnold in the AAA Ace stories has an unfortunate tendency towards hatching these, which tends to explain why they're always broke.
  • Glorious Death: "The Victim From Space" 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.
  • Government Drug Enforcement: In Status Civilization, Omega law views drugs as a completely legitimate form of tax collection. Not having a drug addiction is a very serious crime, punishable by mutilation or even death.
  • Grand Theft Me: Mindswap is about a man who was sold a body for a "Freaky Friday" Flip by a con man, and has trouble gettig his original back.
  • The Great Exterminator: The Victim from Space has a planet where a painful and prolonged death is considered a great honor. It is mentioned that the most Glorious Death of all (a torture rack known as The Ultimate) was last earned six centuries ago by a demigod named V'ktat who saved the whole Igathian race by wiping out "the dread Huelva Beasts".
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: In "Trap", an alien has a scheme to get rid of his wife—a scheme involving humans who are told that one end of a teleportation beam is a live trap. They "catch" three new animals. The alien then sends his wife through; she and the animals all die before the museum people arrive, and think the whole thing's a fake. The humans are desperate to regain their credibility, and once they are wise to the teleporter's real nature, one of them goes through to capture as many critters as possible—including the murderer.
  • Homeworld Evacuation: One story has an amnesiac human waking up on a starship, apparently the last survivor after a nova. The ending reveals he serves as a Neuro-Vault for humanity.
  • Hunting the Most Dangerous Game:
    • "The Prize of Peril". (Got filmed in Germany as Das Millionenspiel.) A gameshow candidate has to survive contract killers, while the audience may help him. Or help his hunters.
    • "The Seventh Victim" (made into the movie The Tenth Victim) and its sequels feature a world where this has been legalized, as long as the participants agree to take turns being hunter and victim.
  • Indy Ploy: "Fool's Mate" has Earth locked in an endless resource-draining stalemate with an enemy spacefleet, with both sides having near-perfect tactical computers. The humans finally win by letting a crazy guy start "deciding" their battle strategy by randomly pushing at buttons on their computer. The other side gets blown to pieces as their computer sits and tries to figure out how to counter this new "strategy".
  • Interrupted Suicide: "The Minimum Man": This story starts with Anton's suicide preparations being interrupted by an acceptance letter from a prospective employer. Turns out, it's their way of hiring people for a high-risk job — watching the candidates and making an offer at just the right moment. Later Anton is frequently reminded that he chose the job of an explorer/guinea pig/canary over suicide. The survivors are well-rewarded, though.
  • Killed Mid-Sentence: The protagonist of "Protection" knows that some supernatural monster is hunting him, and the only form of protection is to avoid lesnerizing. Alas, he hasn't the slightest idea what the heck lesnerizing is. The last line of the story is: Now I have to sneez
  • Killer Robot: In one short story that is the (forgotten) reason why a human never stays alone with an android.
  • Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Used jokingly in "The Gun Without a Bang". The eponymous Disintegrator Ray kills dangerous jungle-planet predators too cleanly—so others of their pack can't understand it is a threat and continue to attack. Additionally, the protagonist ends up stranded after the gun swiss-cheeses his spaceship; he fends off the predators by constructing a bow and arrow.
  • Lightspeed Leapfrog: Occurs in "The Native Problem", where a man sets off in a FTL ship to get away from civilization, and picks an uninhabited planet to live on, but then an old, slower-than-light colony ship shows up, and refuses to accept that he could possibly be from Earth, because he couldn't possibly have beaten them there. After he's unable to persuade them of his origins, he finally gives up and pretends to be the last surviving native of the planet.
  • Literal Split Personality: In The Alchemical Marriage of Alistair Crompton, Split Personality Disorder is treated by siphoning the extra personalities off into android bodies.
  • Living Ship: The short story "The Specialist" is about several aliens species who make up a living ship, but this one has lost a certain part...
  • Mad God: In Godshome, the only god Arthur Fenn can find who is willing to listen to him and offer help is, worrisomely, living in the section of Godshome marked with a sign saying "WARNING! PROCEED NO FURTHER! WARD O FOR BIPOLAR CONDITIONS. OCCUPANTS MAY BE VIOLENT."
  • The Magic Goes Away: In "The Accountant", Morton's teacher states that in the old days she would have expelled him without hesitation, but the current demographic situation among sorcerers doesn't allow for any to be spared.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: "A Ticket to Tranai" has the wives on the titular planet kept in stasis except on the weekend. As a result, the husband has a young wife all his life, and the wife has a husband whom she'll outlive while still young enough to enjoy the inheritance.
  • Mind Screw: Lampshaded in Mindswap. The weirdness of being in an alien body eventually causes the mind to hallucinate its surroundings into more familiar terms. But familiar doesn't necessarily mean logical. Conversely, in the Twisted World, the mind may believe that everything is perfectly normal, even though in fact it's completely weird. A case of Mind Unscrew, perhaps?
  • The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: 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.
  • Mind Virus: There is a short story of his where everyone on Earth learns to levitate. If, however, they ever doubt their ability to levitate, they lose it. Additionally, if one person sees another who is unable to levitate, it would automatically plant doubt into their minds as well, in effect becoming a fast-spreading virus.
  • Moment Killer: The obnoxious marrying-bot in "Human Man's Burden" repeatedly engages in this behavior.
  • Monster Roommate: In Godshome, it's technically a god roommate, but these gods are near enough to being monsters for most people. When Arthur Fenn gets his prayers answered, he doesn't realize that in payment, he'll get four very unpleasant gods living in his spare bedroom. They like their meat raw, and in large quantities, and they have a habit of throwing the gnawed bones out the window to rot in the yard, which eventually attracts the attention of the police.
  • Noodle Implements: From "Forever":
    "The ingenious way in which Dennison and his colleagues broke out of their seemingly impregnable prison, using only a steel belt buckle, a tungsten filament, three hens' eggs, and twelve chemicals that can be readily obtained from the human body, is too well known to be repeated here."
  • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: In "All the Things You Are", a human expedition visits an alien planet, only to discover to their horror that bizarre and unpleasant maladies are inflicted on the natives every time the humans interact with the environment, to the point that even breathing causes problems.
  • Neuro-Vault: One of the stories is about a man who wakes up remembering nothing aboard a starship with Earth gone. He finds another civilization and offers his services as a psychiatrist. Suddenly, a catatonic patient wakes up and addresses him in perfect English. Turns out the protagonist carries the minds of the entire human race inside his brain, and may go through a number of planets to find enough expendable hosts for them.
  • No Off Button: In "The Laxian Key", the AAA Ace duo find a machine that produces some substance in unlimited quantities but can only be turned off with the eponymous "Laxian key" (which they don't have). When the substance begins to flood their ship, they try to sell the machine to an alien race who feeds upon it, but are almost blown to pieces by the alien navy. It turns out, these aliens, as a result of inventing the machine in the first place, already have several such devices... and, apparently, enough morons to turn them on. As a result, all of their homeworld is covered with it, so they tell the heroes to come back with the Laxian key and ask any price for it.
  • Paranormal Mundane Item: Fishing Season centers around food items that look very similar to usual grocery products, but have some strange minor differences. They actually serve as a "bait" for humans, and those who eat them are sucked into another world.
  • Percussive Therapy: In "A Ticket to Tranai", the titular "Utopia" planet solves the problem of domestic violence by, among other things, producing cheap Robot Maids which can be kicked apart when a person feels frustrated. The protagonist finds a job as a robot designer, and they tell him to make a robot durable enough for daily work, yet weak enough to be smashed apart by a single kick. He ultimately solves the problem by using special plastic which breaks apart when exposed to a certain chemical and selling a pair of shoes coated with the chemical along with each robot.
  • Perpetual Storm: "A Wind is Rising" centers around a human station with two people, based on a planet where the wind never drops below 70 mph. They barely weather a storm of nearly 200 mph, which leaves with with a severely battered station and a broken vehicle. Then a local (who gives them weather forecasts) says "Sorry for my last forecast not being accurate enough to warn you about this moderate gale. Why is it my last forecast? Well, the summer is over, and now me and my people must leave to hide from the powerful winter storms."
  • Primal Polymorphs: "Shape" note  features a race of Voluntary Shapeshifters with a strict Fantastic Caste System that restricts them to a single shape. They've been trying to conquer Earth by sending scouts to create a portal between the two planets, but they've all vanished without a trace. In the climax, it turns out the scouts haven't been hunted down by humans as the scout commander believes, but have all gone native, preferring the freedom to choose their shape to the restrictions their culture demands... and most of them are living as animals or even plants on a long-term basis. By the end of the story, the latest team have all gone the same way.
  • Psychic Teleportation: "Ask a Foolish Question", to give an example for how different races can be, features one that teleports anywhere instantly, so a completely natural question for them is "If there is no distance, then how can things be in other places?"
  • Psychological Torment Zone: The AAA Ace story "Ghost V" by provides a semi-hard science example: a planet whose atmosphere contains a hallucinogenic gas causing all-too-real hallucinations and animating long-suppressed fears of those who breathe it.
  • Robosexual: "Can You Feel Anything When I Do This?" is an unusual case: a woman is seduced by a sentient robotic vacuum cleaner.
  • Robotic Spouse: In "The Perfect Woman", there's a contrast between the "primitive" woman and the "modern" woman. The "modern" woman refers to the fact that they're artificially created. The husband notices that his modern wife is showing symptoms of damage, and worries that the factory may not be able to restore the robot to the same woman that he loves.
  • Robot Me: In the aptly named "The Robot Who Looked Like Me" the protagonist builds himself a robotic double to court his fiancée properly—as he is extremely busy and cannot free up enough time. And so does his fiancée.
  • Robot War: The Armageddon, no less! In "The Battle", humans deploy robotic armies to fight the Hell's legions in the last battle. Robots win — and consequently are taken to Heaven instead of humanity.
  • Safe Under Blankets: "Ghost V" serves as a "What Do They Fear?" Episode for his recurring characters Arnold and Gregor and sees them stranded on a planet whose atmosphere contains an unknown agent turning everyone's childhood fears into unreasonably realistic hallucinations. The protagonists manage to defeat most monsters spawned by their subconsciousness by managing to recall and to exploit their respective Weaksauce Weaknesses, but the final monster has none. In order to outlast it, the duo eventually remembers the ultimate "universal law" of their childhood that no monster can see you under a blanket, and simply hide in their beds until their bodies finish metabolizing the agent.
  • See-Thru Specs: The binoculars in "Is THAT What People Do?".
  • Shared Mass Hallucination: "Ghost V" has the AAA Ace team land on a deserted planet and end up fighting joint hallucinations of the monsters they invented in their childhood. It turns out, the planet's atmosphere contains a hallucinogen that forces humans to relive their childhood fears, which became really dangerous if Your Mind Makes It Real.
  • Shockingly Expensive Bill: In "Something for Nothing", a man finds what seems to be a wishing machine. Throughout the story, several people attempt to take it, and he barely fights them off. In the end, it turns out he should have let them take it — the machine was nothing but a device for ordering. In the end, he has to pay over 18 billion credits. Working in marble mines. For 2-3 credits a day. The only thing given for free, apparently, is immortality, which he ordered just before being given the bill.
  • Simulated Fantasy, Post-Apocalyptic Reality: In "Store of the Worlds", a man comes to someone who offers a year-long Lotus-Eater Machine experience at the cost of half his property and ten years of his life. The man seems to refuse, goes back home to his family and his office life... a year passes, and he wakes up back in that postapocalyptic future, pays the price of a pair of boots and some canned food, and takes the non-radioactive path back to the nuclear shelter.
  • Smurfing: In "Shall We Have a Little Talk?", a human tries to learn an alien language. But this language can change extremely fast, and the human's interactions with aliens while learning it keep influencing the language. Eventually, the language turns into Smurfing overnight, and the human gives up.
  • Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: 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 to also be shooting in the direction of your parked spaceship...
  • Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: "Ghost V" is about AAA Ace being hired to investigate the bizarre events on a far-off planet; they belatedly realize that the planet brings your subconscious imaginings to life, and so they have to spend the entire return trip to Earth battling the bogeymen of their shared childhood. They finally survive by, yes, hiding under the blankets on their bunks.
  • Three Wishes: The short story "The Same to You Doubled" features a man who received three wishes from the Devil, with no strings attached (apparently, Hell has more than enough souls as it is). The only catch is that whatever he wishes for, his worst enemy will receive twice as much of it: so if he gets rich, the other guy gets richer, etc. His final wish is for a sexual partner whose rapaciousness is at the absolute limit of his ability to handle.
  • Time Travel for Fun and Profit: In "The King's Wishes" a couple running an electrical appliance store have a few of their appliances stolen. Turns out it was a genie from the past who got a job at the royal palace solely through having influential relatives, and, when the queen demanded spells to clean her clothes or cool her chambers, he found the spells to be too complex and could do nothing but steal some tech from our time. At first, they try to banish him (which doesn't work because a genie is immune to all spells except from his own country, which they don't know). Then, they sabotage the devices and refuse to do maintenance on the ones already taken. So the genie attempts to start trading. At first, they are afraid it will cause a Temporal Paradox, but change their mind after the genie says "Don't worry, I'm from Atlantis. A couple of years and nothing will remain of it or your tech". Then they decide to trade as much as possible.
  • Tomato in the Mirror: The Status Civilization. For much of the novel, the hero searched for the person who had falsely accused him of murder... turns out Earth's mandatory brainwashing caused him to report himself as soon as he picked up the murder weapon, thus becoming a suspect.
  • Tomato Surprise: 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. Well, probably.
  • Trapped by Gambling Debts: In Godshome, desperation when a "sure thing" stock market gamble goes wildly bad is what leads Arthur Fenn to try invoking old, forgotten gods.
  • Unfulfilled Purpose Misery: In "Specialist", it turns out that humanity is from a race which is supposed to serve as Pushers, FTL drives for Living Ships. The whole reason for humanity's constant conflicts and wars is that we are mature enough to Push, but no ships are available.
  • Utopia: "A Ticket to Tranai" is a very tongue-in-cheek one. They have solved all of their problems — in many cases by simply declaring them not to be problems. For example, they have no murder — because they declared that killing fewer than ten people doesn't count as murder. And once you kill about six or seven, someone else will make a point of doing the world a favor by killing you — which, again, isn't murder until they kill ten. The government officials have the right to kill at will, but must wear an Explosive Leash which any adult citizen can detonate. Their solution to the battle of the sexes is even more bizarre and disturbing, although it seems to be quite satisfactory for both sexes.
  • Vice City: Omega in The Status Civilization is a Vice Planet: a prison planet, where the only way to advance in society is to commit crimes and not to get caught.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: The story "Shape" is about an alien race which can shift into pretty much any form they want—but their society is extremely rigid and strict, and shifting into shapes which are not approved for your caste is a major taboo.
  • What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: 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 Brainless Beauty, 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 rather badly, but the final sentence states the robot's appearance has nothing to do with it.
  • White Man's Burden: Parodied in the short story "Human Man's Burden", using robots instead of some non-white ethnicity.
  • Wizarding School: "The Accountant" may be the Ur-Example of the modern version of this trope.
  • You Can't Fight Fate: Explored in "The Deaths of Ben Baxter". The protagonists try to save the eponymous Ben Baxter in at least one out of three different timelines.
  • You Can't Go Home Again: The main plot of Dimension Of Miracles. Which becomes Stranger in a Familiar Land at the end.
  • Your Mind Makes It Real: In "Ghost V", the monsters are hallucinatory—but knowing that doesn't help. Your subconscious mind believes in them, and so they can still kill you.

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