The Alternative Detective

Robert Sheckley

Apr 2014 · Hob Draconian Book 2 · Open Road Media

About this ebook

It’s the twenty-first century and the ugliness of war no longer exists, except on a very personal level. Nowadays, people like Marcello Polletti, seller of Roman sunsets, and Caroline Meredith, lithe, beautiful, blond, and backed by corporate sponsors and the Roy Bell Dancers, hunt, chase, and kill one another for sport and for the entertainment of the masses—until something oddly like personal human feelings pops up to confuse the players and up the stakes as each of them seeks to kill a tenth victim and rise in the ranks of the hunters.
 
From the very beginning of his career, Robert Sheckley was recognized by fans, reviewers, and fellow authors as a master storyteller and the wittiest satirist working in the science fiction field. Open Road is proud to republish his acclaimed body of work, with nearly thirty volumes of full-length fiction and short story collections. Rediscover, or discover for the first time, a master of science fiction who, according to the New York Times, was “a precursor to Douglas Adams.”
 

About the author

Robert Sheckley was one of the funniest writers in the history of science fiction. He did screwball comedy, broad satire, and farce. He could also be deadly serious, but he was always entertaining and always had something pointed to say about our world using the skewed versions of reality he created in his fiction. Starting in the early 1950s, he was an amazingly prolific short story writer, with a lot of his stories appearing in Galaxy Magazine. He launched his novel-writing career with Immortality, Inc., which he followed up with a sequence of excellent books: The Status Civilization, Journey Beyond Tomorrow, and Mindswap. He continued to produce novels and short stories in abundance until his death in 2005.