On the evening of Monday (rather than the usual first Tuesday, due to a scheduling conflict), 7 April 2014, at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art (aka Soho Artspace) on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, the New York Review of Science Fiction (and not, as File 770 reported, The New York Review of Books!) Readings Series presented a special tribute to comic/satirical sf/fantasy writer and editor Robert Sheckley (1928-2005), with a reading of a classic Sheckley story and a panel about his life and work.

Jim Freund, the Series’ Executive Curator and the host of WBAI’s (99.5 FM) Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (broadcast and streamed Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings from 1:30-3:00 AM), opened the event by welcoming the audience and guests, and announcing the next reading – on Tuesday, 13 May, Andrea Hairston will bring her troupe for a play reading.  While April 1st would have been a perfect day to honor the whimsical and humorous Sheckley, he noted that April 7th was also a fitting day as it was the anniversary of his and Ziva Kwitney’s wedding (in 1957); Ziva was present as a guest and panelist.  (It was also reportedly International Terry Pratchett Appreciation Day, likewise appropriate in its way as Sheckley was a precursor to Sir Terry.)  Freund recounted that the genesis of the evening’s tribute was his meeting Alisa (pronounced “Uh-lisa,” not “Uh-lih-sa”) Kwitney at a Fantastic Fiction at KGB Reading (that Series’ co-host Ellen Datlow was also present as a guest and panelist) and learning that she was Sheckley’s daughter.  (As it turned out, she was also a classmate of fellow panelist Henry Wessels, who baked her rhubarb pie – not a euphemism:  “Sometimes a rhubarb pie is just a rhubarb pie.”)  Around the room on the SGDA’s screens were displayed photos of the panelists and of Sheckley, the latter provided by Ziva.  One notably showed Sheckley at his electric typewriter with 5-year-old Alisa standing nearby; she was allowed in the room, said Ziva, only after promising to be quiet.

Alisa Kwitney, a former editor for the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics and the genre-bending (“genre slut”) author of various works of fiction, non-fiction and comics, was joined at the podium by Michael Swanwick, who “needs no introduction,” but who has won and lost the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, for a dramatic – strike that, a comic – reading of “Warm”.  The story (which may be found in Untouched by Human Hands) holds a special significance for the Kwitneys; it impressed her mother Ziva and led to her meeting (and marrying) Sheckley, thus to Alisa being born.  It does not do the story, which veers between comically absurd and seriously psychological, justice to summarize it as an invisible telepathic voice shows the protagonist the underlying patterns of people and things, ultimately the universe.  Alisa and Swanwick, who shared the reading, with she largely narrating and doing male voices and he the female character’s, enlivened the performance with their own perverse touches, grimaces and gestures.

Following a recess – and extended photo session – the second half of the evening featured an illustrious and lively (with much digressing) panel, moderated by Freund, huge Sheckley fan, with the aforementioned Kwitneys, Swanwick, Datlow, the award-winning editor and anthologist, who succeeded Robert Sheckley as Fiction Editor at Omni Magazine, and Wessells, a writer, editor/publisher and local antiquarian bookseller, who displayed a nearly encyclopedic knowledge of Sheckley’s stories.  Sheckley wrote more than 15 novels and over 400 short stories (he used many pseudonyms), and Freund asked the panelists their favorite(s).  Wessells’ is “In a Land of Clear Colors,” Alisa’s the collection Untouched by Human Hands, and Datlow’s his blends of sf and horror.  For Ziva, “Warm” “holds a golden spot in my heart,” as it “electrified” her at age 16 and led to her meeting Sheckley, and also to her interest in psychology.  (She is a psychotherapist, and, incidentally, was once an advice columnist at Seventeen Magazine.)  Swanwick, who was Guest of Honor at Aelita, a Russian sf convention, a year after he was, reported that Sheckley is very big in Russia, partly because he was seen as subversive; as a member of the Convention Committee put it “Swanwick is a writer, Sheckley is a god!”  Freund comment that, as we saw from the reading, one doesn’t just read him, one hears a Sheckley story; his own favorites are “Ghost V” (in the “AAA Ace Interplanetary Decontamination” Series) and “The Prize of Peril”, and his favorite film adaptations are The 10th Victim (a quip was made about Ursula Andress’ gun-bra, “pair of 38s”) and Freejack (from Immortality, Inc. – Mick Jagger, Emilio Estevez and a race to Park Slope, Brooklyn!).

After considering that his stories may have touched on misogyny, but he wasn’t – one-on-one, said Alisa, he took women seriously – the panel turned to his character.  He was not much of a father, said Alisa, noting her use of her mother’s surname, but grew up reading the contents of his bookcase, and, insulting as it seemed at the time, he may have given her the best advice she ever got as a writer.  (The 10th Victim, his novel expansion of “Seventh Victim,” was dedicated to her.)  Ziva added that he was big-hearted and intellectually generous, and made people feel smart.  Datlow told of their time together at Omni.  Wessells and Swanwick cited Barry Malzberg’s eulogy:  he was cold, but he didn’t spare himself.  His stories were about the absurdity of being a human being.  Finally, his legacy was examined.  His humor, stated Wessells.  Freund touched upon his influence on other writers, that he created the tropes that others have used (for example, though denied, the influence of Dimension of Miracles on Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and “The Prize of Peril,” which anticipated reality tv and whose main idea appears in Stephen King’s The Running Man), and predicted that, as with Philip K. Dick, we might see a slew of adaptations.  Alisa concurred; he was a master of the short form and, after a while out of style, short stories are back in fashion.  Datlow, a major proponent of short stories, added a comment about audiobooks.  Concluding the tribute, the panelists exhorted the audience to read and re-read Sheckley.

As near as we could ascertain, there was no lesnerizing.

The audience of about 50 included Melissa Beckman, Karen Berger, Richard Bowes, Ellen Datlow, D.T. Friedman, Elena and Ed Gaillard, Amy Goldschlager, Kim Kindya, John Kwok, Lissanne Lake, Frank LeFever, Shawna McCarthy, Marianne Porter, James Ryan and Chandler Klang Smith.  After what has been referred to here as the ceremonial folding-up of chairs (so much for untouched by human hands), the readers and members of the audience adjourned to the SoHo Room, a nearby bar (Milady’s having closed).