Immortality Inc

"Immortality Inc" is a pretty solid read for both the intentional and unintentional humor that it provides. The book is funny, in a dry sort of way (a good example is the concept of the afterlife being basically a paid admission type thing controlled by a couple corporations, as well as everyone's nonchalant nature toward death - the concept of the suicide booth in Futurama originated here) but it's also funny in just how 1952 this future 2110 is. The newspaper is on microfilm, we are treated to numerous extensive paragraphs detailing the process of preparing for the afterlife (it's clear Sheckley put some thought into this), and yet everyone still smokes cigars and cigarettes. Further, here are some distinctive 1952 ideologies present here (minorities are described as the kinds of names you'd expect in a book from 1952 - "Negros", "Chinamen", "[American] Indians", etc) and I noticed women in this book seemed to not have many ideas besides being in love with the main character, but honestly it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book and it's still worth reading despite these things. A worthwhile read if you can find it for a good price.

Immortality Inc. is another funny book by Robert Sheckley, with some of his trademark humour and satire evident. A dead man wakes up a couple of hundred years later to find out that everything is for sale, even the afterlife. A book that is definitely very entertaining.

"Immortality, Inc." is Sheckley's first novel. It has some claim to being his best. For the best part of the 1950s, Robert Sheckley bristled with ideas: he seemed to write a short story every other week, and very few of these fell flat. He wrote this novel in 1959, just as he was slowing down, and in many ways it's the apotheosis of his 50s writing style: slick, just as long as it needs to be, and a little flippant. There's also something serious behind the flippancy.The story begins in the twentieth century, with the hero's death. He wakes up in 2110 where the afterlife and every aspect of a person's mental life is a marketable commodity - or so it seems at first. The hero has to survive in a very confusing world. This is a Sheckley trademark - one he handles more entertainingly than anyone else - and this is one of the very best bewildering futures he has created.(I was, I should note, dissatisfied with the ending - not the ending of the story proper, but the tacked-on epilogue. You can forget about these few paragraphs. I did.)If, by some chance, the previous reviewer is right, and this volume contains some of Sheckley's short stories as well, then it's even more worth getting. Consider yourself lucky.

I look forward to each new book by Robert Sheckley, and have yet to be disappointed. This new novel in Sheckley's adventures of the soft-boiled detective Hob Draconian is a fast-paced romp, filled with ironic wit, intrigue and plot situations that are as bizarre as the characters that inhabit them. So put on your traveling shoes and read your way to a smile. Highly recommended.

Pilgrimage to Earth is the title story and one of the best in this collection of short stories first published in 1957. Though the background of all the 15 stories is science fiction,Scheckley emphasizes seemingly normal characters in oddball and problem-filled situations. He keeps it interesting in these stories, which are fast paced. Some have twist endings. This collection is a good introduction to Scheckley's short stories, but does not represent him at his peak, in the now out of print collections Untouched by Human Hands and Citizen in Space. The author's novel, The Tenth Victim [expanded from his short story] was the basis for a tacky 1967 Italian movie. Scheckley was at his peak as short story writer in the 1950s', when these stories were written