Robert Sheckley
"Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming" is a notable work by Robert Sheckley, the American science fiction and mystery writer who lived from 1928 to 2005. The title's irreverent tone reflects the kind of writing Sheckley produced across his career as a novelist and screenwriter, working in English throughout.
Sheckley was born on July 16, 1928, in Maplewood. He attended Columbia High School and went on to study at New York University. Those years preceded a writing career that placed him within American science fiction and, alongside that, mystery fiction. He worked as a novelist and screenwriter, and he held citizenship in the United States throughout his life.
Over the course of his career, Sheckley received recognition from within the field. He was named Author Emeritus, an honor he received from the science fiction community. He also received the prix Cyrano, a further award added to his record. These recognitions marked his standing among writers and readers in the genres he worked in.
Sheckley died on December 9, 2005, in Poughkeepsie. The Author Emeritus designation he received remains a concrete indicator of how the science fiction community regarded him and his work by the time of his death.
Quotes by Robert Sheckley
Here she was trying to teach him the Peasant Shuffle. He could not hope to master it all in a night, of course; at the Peasants’ School in Zug they had spent an entire semester on Cringing alone.
Overhead, a Hawk was zeroing in on a watchbird. The armored murder machine had learned a lot in a few days. Its sole function was to kill. At present it was impelled toward a certain type of living organism, metallic like itself. But the Hawk had just discovered that there were other types of living organisms, too – Which had to be murdered.
I don’t finish every story, but I probably write and send out three out of five of them.
All of us live by the employment of countless untested assumptions, the truth of falsehood of which we can determine only through the hazard of our lives. Since most of us value our lives more than the truth, we leave such drastic tests for the fanatics.
When you have a project, do it exactly as you see fit; then fit the facts around the event, not the other way around.
These two races hunted each other, lived and died for each other, and, through ignorance or guile, ignored any relationship between each other. The relationship was utterly symbiotic, but completely unacknowledged by either race. In fact, each race pretended that it alone was a Civilized Intelligence, and that the other was bestial, contemptible, and of no account. And it now occured to both of themthat they were, in equal measure, participants in the general concept of Humanity.
He shared the common human hallmark: he was simultaneously predictable and unfathomable – a routine miracle.