{"id":4882,"date":"2011-10-29T14:45:33","date_gmt":"2011-10-29T18:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifisaturdaynight.com\/?p=4882"},"modified":"2011-10-29T14:45:35","modified_gmt":"2011-10-29T18:45:35","slug":"fiction-friday-robert-sheckley-tell-me-something-funny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/scifisaturdaynight.com\/?p=4882","title":{"rendered":"Fiction Friday – Robert Sheckley, Tell me something funny."},"content":{"rendered":"
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Robert Sheckley<\/p><\/div>\n

Robert Sheckley<\/a> was one of the few science fiction writers to have a true sense of humor that translated into his work. A multiple Hugo and Nebula nominee, he was best known for his absurdist outlook and his stories were uniformly wry with a futuristic bent. His fan peers included Douglas Adams, Neil Gaiman, and Harlan Ellison<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story, “Bad Medicine”, is a fan favorite. It\u2019s the story of a man being treated by a psychotherapy machine intended for\u2026<\/p>\n

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On May 2, 2103, Elwood Caswell walked rapidly down Broadway with a loaded revolver hidden in his coat pocket. He didn’t want to use the weapon, but feared he might anyhow. This was a justifiable assumption, for Caswell was a homicidal maniac.<\/p>\n

It was a gentle, misty spring day and the air held the smell of rain and blossoming-dogwood. Caswell gripped the revolver in his sweaty right hand and tried to think of a single valid reason why he should not kill a man named Magnessen, who, the other day, had commented on how well Caswell looked.<\/p>\n

What business was it of Magnessen’s how he looked? Damned busybodies, always spoiling things for everybody….<\/p>\n

Caswell was a choleric little man with fierce red eyes, bulldog jowls and ginger-red hair. He was the sort you would expect to find perched on a detergent box, orating to a crowd of lunching businessmen and amused students, shouting, “Mars for the Martians, Venus for the Venusians!”<\/p>\n

But in truth, Caswell was uninterested in the deplorable social conditions of extraterrestrials. He was a jetbus conductor for the New York Rapid Transit Corporation. He minded his own business. And he was quite mad.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, he knew this at least part of the time, with at least half of his mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The entire text can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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