Robert Sheckley

Friday I wrote a column focusing on some of the excellent stories I have read at scifi.com since I got the deeply saddening news that the entire fiction section is going away at the end of the year. I talked about thirteen stories that are particularly wonderful, two by Robert Sheckley.

Last night I visited Neil Gaiman's blog for the first time since I read the news about scifi.com and read that Robert Sheckley had died. I was absolutely stunned and burst into tears.

He was a brilliant and incredibly funny writer. My earliest memory of his work goes back nearly 30 years, to when I was fourteen and got a copy of Can You Feel it When I Do This? and of course most recently I was reading his work this week.

It's a particularly bitter blow because when Chris and I saw Pride and Prejudice a couple of weeks ago he asked "where is the wit Mumsy? Who is writing wit like that?" and I thought and thought and could really only come up with a short list. It's seems terribly unfair that the list is shorter now.

He'll be missed by anyone with a love for clever storytelling.