One Man's Poison by Robert Sheckley
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"One Man's Poison" by Robert Sheckley is a science fiction short story published in the early 1950s. This narrative explores themes of alien life and survival in a comical yet suspenseful manner. The story revolves around two space travelers, Hellman and Casker, who find themselves in a predicament as they land on a mysterious planet devoid of food. The plot follows Hellman and Casker, who are struggling to survive after running out
of food during their space journey. Upon landing on a desolate planet, they discover a warehouse filled with various alien substances but face the dilemma of whether to consume them or not. As they engage in humorous discourse over the possibility of alien foods being either edible or poisonous, their encounters escalate into absurd situations, including a sentient liquid and a malfunctioning transport that claims Casker as its prey. Ultimately, they learn that the alien logic regarding food is vastly different from their own, leading to ironic conclusions about survival and the nature of food in alien cultures. The story combines elements of dark humor with speculative fiction, leaving readers to ponder the intricacies of life beyond Earth. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Sheckley, Robert, 1928-2005 |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Emshwiller, Ed, 1925-1990 |
| Title | One Man's Poison |
| Series Title | Produced from Galaxy Science Fiction December 1953. |
| Credits |
Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 86.7 (6th grade). Easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 32041 |
| ISBN (HTML) | 979-8-238-32041-0 |
| Release Date | Apr 18, 2010 |
| Last Update | Sep 22, 2021 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 222 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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