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I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK. I recommend it in particular to those who are suffering from influenza or who have a high temperature. During such feverish interludes, normal thought processes take a bracing vacation, much like cart-horses freed from their carts. The liberated quadrupeds canter about the heath, taking a bite from whatever plant they come across, without indulging in further reflection upon the inertial problems of pulling carts.
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Indeed, if you accosted one of the beasts in mid-canter, and accidentally mentioned carts, they would probably rear up in startlement, asking, "Cart? What cart?"
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This is what we mean by delirium.
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My impression is that if one asked Robert Sheckley about reality, he would most likely rear up like a startled cart-horse and ask, "Reality? What reality?"
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It has been his endeavour in this book to get as far from reality as it is possible to go without emerging through a complete circle and entering ones own private ward. As far as one can see, Sheckley is the major exponent of the Extremely Unlikely. He has pursued to the polar limit Philip K. Dick's dictum that science fiction should be about, not "What if...?", but "My God, what if...?', three dots and all.
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Whereas most writers of this kind of futuristic fairy tale will go to great lengths, by deploying ordinary language, and by methods of realism adapted from the mundane or everyday novel, to reassure us that their feet are on the ground, even if their heads are in galactic space, Sheckley's heart is with the Unbelievable. His main target is the Incredible. With one swing of his computer he hacks through the string which suspends our disbelief. It would crash down, were it not for the fact that there is no gravity in Sheckley's space. Mindswap is the Realm of the Absurd. Or, inMindswap's own parlance, Beyond the Humoristic Philologicality Threshold. It's what he does.
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Robert Sheckley came to prominence in the 1950's. His hay day was possibly in the 1960's where he was one of the stars of "Galaxy Science Fiction", together with other satirists of similar ilk, the expert exponents of the "wacky", such as Cyril Kornbluth, Damon Knight and the brilliant William Tenn. Sheckley's impossible plots, his leaky spaceships, were then one of the delights to which one turned first.
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However, it is noticeable that these satirists were most successful in short takes. Their novels are few and far between and lack the bite of their shorter material. This reservation applies in particular to Sheckley, whose 'novels' are generally episodic, much as if a few short stories have been tacked together.
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While this also applies to Mindswap, the premise of the story almost demands episodic treatment, thus evading to some extent criticism of what can be seen as a weakness. The story-premise is that mind can be separated from body, and therefore exchanged, to fit into other bodies: not only other human bodies but bodies of the weird life forms with which Sheckley's paper galaxies are habitually populated.
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The explanation of this non-scientific achievement is given to a chatty encyclopaedia, which has this to say:
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"So let's just consider Mind as a sorta electroform or maybe even a subelectroform entity. You pro'lly remember from our previous talk that Mind is thought to have begun as a projection of our bodily processes, and to have evolved into a quasi-independent entity. You know what that means, fellas. It means it's like you got a little Man in your head - but not quite. Isn't that quazi?"
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We are talking impossibilities here. And impossibilities are often delivered in some form of weird vernacular, such as the semi-gadzookery we confront in Chapter 24: "Me likes not the sound oft; for braggarts steel is ever pliable tin, shiny to the eye yet damnably maleable to the touch."
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Fractured idiolects suit the dreadful run-down planets to which the central character, Marvin Flynn, is driven, after renting - or trying to rent - the body of a
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Martian called Ze Kraggash. When his mind gets to Mars, it is only to find his designated body has already been rented to Aigeler Thrus, a being from Achelses V. From then on, Flynn is driven by circumstance, and forced to search for ganzer eggs. Flynn is a figment to whom events happen, like many another Sheckley 'hero'. Even the ganzer eggs are against him.
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Fortunately, the events are amusing, and from them many aphorisms fly. "It is strange how the human mind is forever unwilling to accept the unacceptable"; of a prostitute, "Those who sell pleasure must portray enjoyment"; "When you accept help, you must be prepared to take what one is capable of giving, not what you would like to receive", and so forth.
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We meet the strange prince who was unpopular. "Nor did he win favour among the burgers of Gint-Loseine, whose proud city he ordered buried under twenty feet of earth, "as a gift to future archaeologists." The story is packed with cod histories and strange personages who often propound strange theories, the most intriguing of which is possibly the Theory of Searches. This is explained and acted upon by Valdez when Flynn falls in love with Cathy. The conversation takes on an Alice in Wonderland complexion.
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"Marvin searches for Cathy". That seems fairly to describe our situation, does it not?"
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"I think it does."
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"Well then, what does the statement imply?"
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"It implies - it implies that I search for Cathy."
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Valdez shook his nut-brown head in annoyance. "Look deeper, my impatient young friend! Identity is not inference! The statement expresses the activity of your quest, and therefore implies the passivity of Cathy's state-of-being-lost. But this cannot be true. Her passivity is unacceptable, since ultimately one searches for oneself, and no one is exempt from that search. We must accept Cathy's search for you (herself), just as we accept your search for her (yourself). Thus we achieve our primary permutation: "Marvin searches for Cathy who searches for Marvin....
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"I never thought of that," Marvin said....
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"Now, to ensure our success, we must decide upon the optimum form of Search. Obviously, if both of you are actively questing, your chances of finding each other are considerably lessened... The mathematics are a little intricate, so you will just have to take my word for it... Therefore, you must fight down your instincts and wait, thereby allowing her to find you."
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And indeed, after this sophistry, many people do find Flynn, including his Uncle Max and his Mother.
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Thus, the Confusion Principle of Alternative Logic brings us to a conclusion. It is only just and right that this conclusion should rest upon misapplication miscegenating with paradox, so that Marvin Flynn is at once unutterably lost and perfectly at home. We are always pleased when endings fell us with a fairy master-stoke of genius.
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Mindswap remains the most satisfying (and highest) of Sheckley's tall stories. Although it hardly qualifies for the label of novel, it has about it a charm of innocent mischief which takes us a long way into that inaccessible land claimed by the likes of Jorge Luis Borges and Lewis Carroll.
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