The Hyperreal in Select Short Fiction of Kurt Vonnegut and Robert Sheckley

Abstract

This paper proposes an examination of two postmodernists who incorporated many existential questions in their portrayal of other-worldliness: a world torn between humans and sub-humans and other entities. While Vonnegut's larger and more profound works center on the questions of war and humanity faced with destruction, in some of his shorter works he examines other designs meant to confound humanity. Those challenges to humanity include using advanced technological means through which to control pleasure, breach privacy, inhibit thinking, and so on. Sheckley, on the other hand, puts the problems of alienation and identity-formation, or the lack thereof, at the core of his investigation. He offers alternative realities where man gets to flee from the tyranny of being alive in the world that he himself made uninhabitable. While Vonnegut swirls from past to present, or even blends flashbacks with fast-forwards such that there are no certain points from which to begin or at which to stop, Sheckley tends to be more linear, even as he inserts flashbacks here and there. Both authors, in writing short fiction, demonstrate their mastery of the form, but they approach it from different angles, albeit sharing some characteristics. Interestingly, whereas Kurt Vonnegut rose to fame for his mind-boggling visions of a possible future, Robert Sheckley remains lesser known, notwithstanding that he is an excellent futurist.