One will find the stories quite discontinuous in quality and tone, but the good ones are true masterpieces of the genre.
One of them is, possibly, the most uplifting sci-fi story ever. Imagine that Gene Roddenberry and [a:Adrian Tchaikovsky|1445909|Adrian Tchaikovsky|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1282303363p2/1445909.jpg] of [b:Children of Time|25499718|Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)|Adrian Tchaikovsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1431014197l/25499718._SY75_.jpg|45276208] fame have a literary child, and you will get an idea of it. Imagine an eco-system galaxy where every species is interconnected to the other. Imagine keeping your identity without any need to be ever isolated or misunderstood or scared anymore. One cannot but put down the story and start day-dreaming.
Writing the review few months after finishing the listen, few other stories come to mind. The title one, classic comedic sci-fi, presents quite the lame ending; however, the description of the various life-forms in the storage building is mind bending enough to lure one back again and again to the story. Sheckley had indeniably a wild imagination.
The best title, however, is the first one. It would be difficult to find modern, "woke" sci-fi able to describe in the same, poignant way the point of view of the irreducible other.
Worth listening to, although the thick accent of Master Sheckley himself reading one of the stories made it next to impossible to understand the plot for this poor, ignorant, tone deaf foreigner; in general, the readers did a decent job.
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A vintage paperback, collecting ten stories (in the UK edition) from the early to mid-1950s. Indeed, reading a slender A-format paperback (only 125 pages) was a pleasure in itself when compared with the somewhat inflated B-format books now so commonplace. I read through this in three sittings in the course of one day.

Sheckley was a master of the short form; I visualised some of these stories as Twilight Zone episodes, and indeed The Altar almost played itself out for me in black-and-white! Cost of Living has a timely warning on consumer debt.

A couple of the stories betray their age in their attitudes to women, but even then Sheckley undermines even a modern reader's expectations by giving female characters agency in sometimes surprising ways.

The title story is a classic where two spaceship pilots running short of supplies find themselves stranded in an alien warehouse full of food they cannot eat, with labels like "VIGROOM - FILLS ALL YOUR STOMACHS AND FILLS THEM RIGHT!" and "VORMITASH - AS GOOD AS IT SOUNDS!".

Perhaps the stand-out story for me was Watchbird, where robot birds are deployed to predict murderous intent and prevent the crimes happening (a theme familiar from the "Precrime" in Philip Dick's 1956 novella - and [much] later film - Minority Report). But the robot birds have "learning circuits" and begin to learn human behaviour too well. This story could be almost contemporary - change some of the vocabulary to include the words "AI", "algorithm" and "drone", and a modern reader wouldn't turn a hair.

The collection ends with another classic, The Seventh Victim.

Many of the best of these stories have been reprinted since in other collections. but this is worth acquiring if you see a copy. And frankly, any Robert Sheckley is worth acquiring. ( )

Good short story collection. This is where Sheckley excels. ( )

Really fun and imaginative stories each exploring a different aspect of human nature. And a little bonus- blatantly where King got his idea for The Running Man from. ( )

Very readable classic sci-fi, structured in the Twilight Zone tradition. Often funny, always concise. ( )