Two novels about the education of a young machine: "In a properly run universe Sladek's Roderick would be considered a major American novel. Which it is." —Michael Dirda, The Washington PostRoderick is a robot who learns. He begins life looking like a toy tank, thinking like a child, and knowing nothing about human ways. But as he will discover, growing up and becoming fully human is no easy task in a world where many people seem to have little tro...

From the vaults of The SF Gateway, the most comprehensive digital library of classic SFF titles ever assembled, comes an ideal introduction to the razor-sharp wit of John Sladek.An important voice in the New Wave movement, Sladek had stories published in Harlan Ellison's seminal anthology, DANGEROUS VISIONS, as well as in Michael Moorcock's ground-breaking NEW WORLDS magazine. Perhaps best known for the ambitious robot tales RODERICK and RODERICK AT RANDOM, he is now recognized as ...

Maps is the definitive collection of John Sladek's uncollected work put together by his friend, fellow writer and critic David Langford who also provides an introduction. It includes all the solo stories - science fiction, detective puzzles, mainstream, "non-fact" pieces - as well as poems, playlets, pseudonymous fiction, all the short collaborations with Thomas M. Disch (including three never previously published) and some witty autobiographical essays.Sladek, was as good a writer...

John Sladek wrote some of the best science fiction stories of the 20th-century and his parodies of famous s/f authors are uproariously "right-on". His talent went under-appreciated except by a few devoted followers, even though his satirical writing was on a par with the early Kurt Vonnegut.Keep The Giraffe Burning is Sladek's second short story collection (of four published during his life-time) and contains seventeen stories originally published in (mostly) various SF magazines b...

Wholly Smokes was the last book completed by one of the most original, brilliant and under-rated American writers of the 20th century. Like so many of John Sladek's earlier books, this is almost impossible to categorize. It's the non-fiction or non-fact history of General Snuff and Tobacco, a very American tobacco company which seems to have been present at, or had bizarre influence on, many great and not-so-great moments of history.John Sladek provides his own indescribable clip-a...

John Sladek's first short story collection. Sladek wrote some of the best science fiction stories of the 20th-century and his parodies of famous s/f authors are uproariously "right-on". His talent went under-appreciated except by a few devoted followers, even though his satirical writing was on a par with the early Kurt Vonnegut.

'A Robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm'.That's Asimov's celebrated First Law of Robotics. And in the 21st century, all domestic robots are programmed according to that Law.But something had gone terribly wrong with Tik-Tok's 'asimov circuits', and he sets out to injure as many people as possible - preferably fatally - while maintaining the exterior of a mild-mannered artist and a sincere campaigner for robot rights. ...

John Sladek explains the theme of the darkly comic stories in this wonderful collection:"The aliens here are human. This book contains no giant flyingsnails or telepathic octopods, no Ganymedean cat-womendressed in silver, no aggressive dugong chiefs roaming thegalaxy in their pulsar-powered yo-yo ships. The aliens here arehuman aliens. Most of them work in ordinary offices, and theydo not commute to work from Proximo Centauri, either. Yet these

This comic novel about an Englishman lost in the surreal high-tech computer country of America's mid-west describes how the hero Fred Jones goes to America to seek his fortune and ends up with his private life out of control, working for the KGB and people wanting to murder him.

Wompler's Walking Babies once put Millford, Utah, on the map. But they aren't selling like they used to. In fact, they aren't selling at all and the only alternative to winding the company up is to tap the government for a research grant. And so Wompler Research Laboratories and Project 32 come into being. The plan is to produce self-replicating mechanisms; identical cells equipped to repair intracellular breakdowns, convert power from their environment and create new cells. But suddenly t...

A collection of John Sladek's hilarious SF satires, including:The Last of the WhaleburgersGreat Mysteries Explained!Red NoiseGuestingAbsent FriendsAfter FlaubertThe Brass MonkeyWhite HatThe Island of Dr CirceAnswersBreakfast with the MurgatroydsThe Next DwarfAn Explanation for the Disappearance of the MoonHow to Make Major Scientific Discoveries at Home in Your Spare TimeThe Kindly Ones...

This novel is about the first truly modern man.His name's Bob Shairp, and he gets completely turned into data and stored on computer tape. (How modern can you get?)Actually, there are quite a few other modern characters (though none so modern as Bob) in this book. There's Wes Davis, who knows the U.S. Army is part of a Black Conspiracy. And Billy Koch, the great faith-healing evangelist who orders a robot replica of himself to share the burden of crusading. And Glen Dale, e...