New Releases by John Sladek

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 one of SF''s most brilliant satirists. This omnibus collects novels THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM, THE MULLER-FOKKER EFFECT and BSFA AWARD-winning TIK-TOK. THE REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM: Wompler''s Walking Babies aren''t selling like they used to, so the company develops Project 32, producing self-replicating mechanisms designed to repair inter-cellular breakdowns. But then the metal boxes begin crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on metal and multiplying... THE MULLER-FOKKER EFFECT: Bob Shairp - a writer and dreamer - has agreed to be a guinea-pig in a military experiment to find out if his personality can be turned into data and stored on computer. But a computing error quickly destroys Shairp''s physical body, leaving his mind stranded in an encoded world. Can the process be reversed? TIK-TOK: Something has gone very seriously wrong with Tik-Tok''s ''asimov circuits''. They should keep him on the straight and narrow, following Asimov''s First Law of Robotics: ''a robot shall not injure a human being, or through inaction allow a human being to come to harm.'' But they don''t. While maintaining the outward appearance of a mild-mannered robot, albeit one with artistic tendencies and sympathy for the robot rights movement, Tik-Tok''s real agenda is murderously different. He seems intent on injuring - preferably fatally - as many people as possible. Almost inevitably, a successful career in crime and general mayhem leads to a move into politics and Tik-Tok becomes the first robot candidate for Vice President of the United States.

A collection of John Sladek''s hilarious SF satires, including: The Last of the Whaleburgers Great Mysteries Explained!Red Noise Guesting Absent Friends After Flaubert The Brass Monkey White Hat The Island of Dr Circe Answers Breakfast with the Murgatroyds The Next Dwarf An Explanation for the Disappearance of the Moon How to Make Major Scientific Discoveries at Home in Your Spare Time The Kindly Ones Fables Ursa Minor Calling All Gumdrops!

''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. So, like any self-respecting crook and murderer, he moves into politics, becoming the first robot candidate for Vice-President of the United States. Tik-Tok follows his maniacal progress from humble beginnings to the top of the heap - or almost. Because in his devious cunning, there was one element that Tik-Tok had forgotten... Winner of the BSFA Award for best novel, 1983

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.

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 the nondescript grey metal boxes start crawling about the laboratory, feeding voraciously on any metal... and multiplying at an alarming rate.

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, editor of Stagman magazine and, strangely enough, a virgin. And Wise Bream, god of the Utopi Indians. And others, too numerous to enumerate.

John Sladek explains the theme of the darkly comic stories in this wonderful collection: "The aliens here are human. This book contains no giant flying snails or telepathic octopods, no Ganymedean cat-women dressed in silver, no aggressive dugong chiefs roaming the galaxy in their pulsar-powered yo-yo ships. The aliens here are human aliens. Most of them work in ordinary offices, and they do not commute to work from Proximo Centauri, either. Yet these here humans are aliens. Office life attracts them ..."

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 of satire as Vonnegut, and without the Vonnegut mannerisms. Unfortunately he never received the appropriate credit, except from a small following of devoted readers.

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.

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-art illustrations. As he says in the Introduction: "The story of GST is also the story of the Badcock family, who owned and operated the company throughout its magnificent history. This book follows that history, stopping to explore a few of its more dazzling events. You will meet the Badcock who kidnapped Pocahontas, the Badcock who burned London, the Badcock who started the American Revolution, the Badcock who almost killed a president, the Badcock who delivered the real Gettysburg address, the Badcock who wanted to prolong World War One (because he was doing so well out of it), the Badcock who tried to bribe Roosevelt, the Badcock who tried to kill Fidel Castro, and many others . . ."

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 between 1968 and 1975.

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 Post Roderick 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 trouble giving up their humanity. The Complete Roderick—consisting of the Philip K. Dick Award nominee Roderick and Roderick at Random—is widely considered to be the most ambitious and genius work of a novelist described by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction as "the most formally inventive, the funniest, and very nearly the most melancholy of modern US science fiction writers." "A major comic talent . . . hilarious and serious." — Sunday Times "Superb . . . comparable with early Kurt Vonnegut." — Time Out "To the small band of science-fiction humorists who can actually make you laugh—my own list features, in alphabetical order, Douglas Adams and Robert Sheckley—please add the name of John Sladek." — The New York Times Book Review

Here is the continuing and uproarious saga of Roderick, a robot and "learning machine" growing up in an America in the near future. The mild-mannered robot is confronted with an ever-widening cast of madcap characters who typify the artificial values endemic in modern America.