Keep Your Shape
by Robert Sheckley
Galaxy Science Fiction (November, 1953); UK No. 13 (April 1954), pp. 4-20.
Humorous SF invasion short story with philosophical undertones. Sheckley posits a race of shapechangers whose oppressive caste system limits each individual to a prescribed set of forms. Confronted with Earth’s biological diversity, the disgruntled lower echelons exhibit a tendency to go native!
Masters of Science Fiction: Robert Sheckley
ed. John Pelan (Centipede Press, 2021)
A vast collection (33 stories, 700+ pages) in stately hardcover. The selection is representative, capturing Sheckley’s mastery, his near misses, and his distended bouts of abject self-indulgence. Never lacking for voice, Sheckley championed narrative informality and shifted the frontier of satirical SF.
The Robot Who Looked Like Me
by Robert Sheckley (Sphere, 1978)
A short fiction collection in which the reader is promised (and given) satire, inventiveness and humour, but also off-the-cuff storytelling, an intrusive sexual focus, a name writer’s complacency and maddening, devil-may-care flights of fancy that lead nowhere under the guise of surrealism.