Robert Sheckley mixed satire, science fiction

Published 9:00 pm Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Robert Sheckley, a short-story and novel writer who was among the first to fuse satire with science fiction, creating a sub-genre called “galactic humor,” has died. He was 77.

Sheckley, who had been fighting emphysema, died from complications of a brain aneurysm Dec. 9 at Vassar Hospital in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., said Ziva Kwitney, his former wife.

He wrote more than 15 novels and about 400 short stories, but the exact number is unknown. In the 1950s and 1960s, Sheckley was so productive that magazines required him to use a pseudonym to cut down on the number of times his byline appeared.

Los Angeles Times