{"id":260,"date":"2021-01-10T22:24:23","date_gmt":"2021-01-10T22:24:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=260"},"modified":"2021-01-29T14:15:48","modified_gmt":"2021-01-29T14:15:48","slug":"the-day-the-aliens-came-by-robert-sheckley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=260","title":{"rendered":"The Day the Aliens Came by Robert Sheckley"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Day the Aliens Came<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Sheckley (New Legends<\/em>, edited by Greg Bear & Martin H. Greenberg, 1995) gets off to a quirky start when an alien Synestrian (they appear similar to humans but have faces that look as if they have melted) comes to the writer\u2019s door wanting to buy a story. They come to a deal and, when the writer finishes the story, he takes it to the alien and gets the latter\u2019s notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[The] Synester said, \u201cthis character you have in here, Alice.\u201d
\u201cYes, Alice,\u201d I said, though I couldn\u2019t quite remember writing an Alice into the story. Could he be referring to Alsace, the province in France? I decided not to question him. No sense appearing dumb on my own story.
\u201cNow, this Alice,\u201d he said, \u201cshe\u2019s the size of a small country, isn\u2019t she?\u201d
He was definitely referring to Alsace, the province in France, and I had lost the moment when I could correct him. \u201cYes,\u201d I said, \u201cthat\u2019s right, just about the size of a small country.\u201d
\u201cWell, then,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy don\u2019t you have Alice fall in love with a bigger country in the shape of a pretzel?\u201d
\u201cA what?\u201d I said.
\u201cPretzel,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s a frequently used image in Synestrian popular literature. Synestrians like to read that sort of thing.\u201d
\u201cDo they?\u201d I said.
\u201cYes,\u201d he said. \u201cSynestrians like to imagine people in the shape of pretzels. You stick that in, it\u2019ll make it more visual.\u201d
\u201cVisual,\u201d I said, my mind a blank.
\u201cYes,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause we gotta consider the movie possibilities.\u201d
\u201cYes, of course,\u201d I said, remembering that I got sixty percent [of the movie rights].  p. 356 (Year\u2019s Best SF<\/em>, edited by David Hartwell)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This extract pretty much sums up the quirky, offbeat tone of the story. Unfortunately the following scenes are equally as odd: we learn that his wife is also an alien; a family of Capellans turn up in their house as uninvited guests; the writer\u2019s home is burgled when they are out but the Capellans just watch; the Capellan\u2019s baby is kidnapped and they don\u2019t seem to care; the couple watch a show where a man eats small aliens that congregate on his plate; the couple\u2019s baby arrives before the wife goes into labour; etc.)
This just seems like random, pointless nonsense, and seems typical of what I\u2019ve read of Sheckley\u2019s late period work. I don\u2019t know if he forgot how to write normal stories, or whether he was attempting to write some kind of modernist or post-modernist humour but, either way, it\u2019s not worth your time.
– (Awful). 3,800 words.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Day the Aliens Came by Robert Sheckley (New Legends, edited by Greg Bear & Martin H. Greenberg, 1995) gets off to a quirky start when an alien Synestrian (they appear similar to humans but have faces that look as if they have melted) comes to the writer\u2019s door wanting to buy a story. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[80],"tags":[79,5,78,77,12],"class_list":["post-260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-robert-sheckley","tag-5","tag-new-legends","tag-robert-sheckley","tag-short-story"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":457,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions\/457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}