Tried and true

[threemonkeys]

There is a simple reason why some literary devices are used over and over. It isn't that authors have no imagination, it is simply that those devices work. In Journey beyond Tomorrow, Robert Sheckley uses a couple of these devices to great effect. The use of a naive observer that traverses an absurd world is a satire technique that goes back as least as far as Swift*. Classical scholars can probably trace it back much further. The other technique Sheckley uses is the far future eye. A far future historian with limited information looks at our times and misinterprets the details but still sees truth.

I have not been a fan of Sheckley's longer works, much preferring the sharp bite of his short stories. Perhaps because this book is written as a series of encounters, it retains its focus, its humour and its satirical bite. What really amazes me though is that I had never read it before. I'm glad I corrected that oversight.

*While checking Jonathan Swift in wikipedia, I notice that he started out working for an ancestor of mine - a sort of second cousin about 20 times removed - small(ish) world.

Comments

[lobelet.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, Journey Beyond Tomorrow (aka Journey Of Joenes) is the one Sheckley novel that I simply can't read. I've bounced off it half a dozen times. I've never got more than about a third of the way through before I have to give up.

But I've read and greatly enjoyed his other novels (well, with the exception of the 7th or 10th or whatever victim novels but nobody liked those).

Journey Beyond Tomorrow gets lots of praise from lots of people. So it's probably my fault. But I just can't read it.

Odd, eh?

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

I should say that "not been a fan" was a relative statement. I have happily read other Sheckley novels - I just didn't think they were as good as his short work which I love.

As to bouncing off Journey Beyond Tomorrow, I have found that the far future eye can repel because it screws around with our personal reality base. Its just that this time it works. Of course that may have nothing to do with it at all.