Short Fiction · Chapters

Chapters explained

Chapter companions for Short Fiction by Robert Sheckley.

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Chapter 1
Final Examination
An alien voice announces that judgment of Earth will occur in five days. The narrator, Mr. Ostersen, goes to work despite the impending end, witnessing chaotic crowds and a sudden global outpouring of peace, charity, and goodwill. Nations declare peace, people give away money, and a brief utopia emerges. However, when judgment is postponed by ten years, humanity gradually reverts to greed, war, and self-destruction, culminating in nuclear and biological devastation. The narrator survives, wandering northward as civilization collapses.
Chapter 2
Proof of the Pudding
The last man on Earth, a former space-pilot, carves an epitaph into a cave wall after a devastating war has wiped out all life. He discovers he has the power to create anything he imagines, but struggles with the meaning of his existence and the reality of a woman named Joan who appears as a stowaway from his ship. Their interaction explores the nature of reality, love, and the desire to start anew.
Chapter 3
Warrior Race
Fannia and Donnaught, stranded on the planet Cascella after running out of fuel, attempt to refuel from a Galactic Survey cache. They discover the Cascellans have a unique social structure where suicide is honorable and fighting is taboo. After a failed attempt to exploit this taboo, Fannia physically subdues the chief and threatens to kill him if the natives attack, forcing them to surrender the fuel. They escape, leaving the Cascellans frustrated with no one to fight.
Chapter 4
Cost of Living
Carrin, a man haunted by the recent suicide of his friend Miller, spends his day off preparing for a visit from an Avignon Electric finance man. Despite the luxury of his automated home, he cannot shake a vague fear. He signs a contract mortgaging his son's future earnings for new appliances, then goes to his monotonous factory job where he reflects on his unfulfilled dream of becoming a rocket pilot.
Chapter 5
The Leech
An alien leech, a spore-like organism that consumes matter and energy, drifts through space and lands on Earth. Professor Micheals, during his resting week, discovers it in a ditch when his neighbor Frank Conners shows him that it dissolves his spade. The leech grows rapidly, consuming everything in its path. General O'Donnell takes military command, attempting to destroy it with conventional weapons, which only feeds it. After the leech grows to two miles in diameter and causes panic, O'Donnell uses a hydrogen bomb to destroy it, but the explosion fragments the leech into billions of spores that drift into space, waiting to be fed again.

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Final Examination

Proof of the Pudding

Warrior Race

Cost of Living

The Leech