Mindswap [Mass Market Paperback]

Robert Sheckley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1967

For the year this book is in "good" condition. Age wear and discoloring. Spine has some wear and creasing on front and back covers. Stamp on inside front cover page and page. No other marks and intact. Ships very quickly and packaged carefully!

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 157 pages
• Publisher: Dell Books; 1st edition (1967)
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000FEUH04
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,553,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the Crazier Douglas Adams; Something Truly Different, October 24, 2002

By 

CodeMaster Talon (Orlando, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mindswap, A Novel (Hardcover)

"MindSwap" is the first book I've read by legendary sci-fi master Robert Sheckley, and a what a great introduction it is. Somewhat forgotten now by all but the hardcore of sci-fi fans, Sheckley has spent the last five decades written gleefully insane social satires, including such classics as "Immortality, Inc.", "Journey Beyond Tommorrow", and his masterpeice, "Dimension of Miracles". "MindSwap", written in 1966, has Sheckley in fine form and is a great place to start if you have never been subjected to his dementia.

The plot starts off simply: In the future, interstellar travel between Earth and the many many known alien worlds is extremely expensive, so in order to see the galaxy some brave souls resort to "MindSwap", a service that switches your consciousness with that of a compatible alien lifeform. You enjoy a new body, new sourroundings and even new skills while still maintaing your own mind and memories, all at a low low cost. This is precisely what Marvin, our hero, sets out to do as the novel begins. He quickly runs into a snag, though, as his actual body (now inhabited by the consciousness of the alien whose body Marvin controls) is unexpectedly stolen. Then Marvin finds out HE is in a stolen body himself, and a judge gives him six hours to locate a spare body, and time is running out....

The plot then truly takes off as Marvin visits one crazy world after another, taking jobs that nobody else wants (often with very good reason) just to have a body to stay alive in. Jeweled Egg hunting (watch out for those Ganzers!), waiting out a ticking bomb (located up his nose), and other adventures quickly cure Marvin of his wanderlust and give Sheckley's sparkling wit a chance to shine. Master of the truly unexpected plot twist, Sheckley is also famous for dreaming up nutty concepts that he manages to explain in borderline convincing ways . The best example of this in "MindSwap" is his "Theory of Searches", which states that if you are searching for someone, they, whether they know it or not, are also searching for you. And if someone is looking for you, you might as well stay in one place and let them find you. And one waiting place, of course, is as good as another, and this is how Marvin finds himself hanging out in a Mexican Cantina, where he does indeed find many people he has lost (unfortunately mostly relatives).

I haven't even mentioned the love interest (the EXTREMELY elusive Cathy), the grueling journey across a frozen wasteland (to get to the Cantina, of course) and, for no apparent reason at all, a twenty page Medieval Battle (complete with full histories of the clans involved). All of this culminates in the most inspired creation of all, the dreaded, nightmare-filled "Twisted World". Darkly hinted at throughout the novel, when we finally get to see it, it is both not what we expected, and if you think about it, far worse than we could of imagined (actually, it kind of reminded me of the DMV). The book ends on a rather strange note, and I found that the only way to be at peace with the ending is either to completely think it through, or not think about it at all. Either way, it may put you off travel for a while.

Fun, funny, insightful and intensely creative, "MindSwap" is a terrific ride that should appeal to fans of absurdist humor, sharply written satire, or just plain great writing. Highly recommended.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sheckley's Craziest Satire, May 29, 2003

By 

E. Martin Olson "Martin Olson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Mindswap, A Novel (Hardcover)

Well, Codemaster Talon above says it all. Give this book to a teenager as his first mind-expander. Sheckley's irreverence, boldness and craziness appeal to kids and his perfectly structured satire and inventive characters appeals to adults.

Rudy Rucker told me this was his favorite Sheckley book, and was one of the books that inspired him to become a writer. In case you don't know, Rucker is a genius. (Although kinda mean.) And Harlan Ellison, also obviously a genius storyteller, is one of Sheckley's biggest fans.

And MINDSWAP is all at once Sheckley at his silliest and his most profound. The section on The Twisted World is evocative of nothing else you'll ever read anywhere. And all of the logical paradoxes and joke reversals and lyrical parodies of writing styles add up to one of the strangest, funniest, stupidest, most brilliant novels I have ever read. I should have put funniest first, because it is extremely witty.

Oh, and you might want to read his two other masterpieces of satire, DIMENSION OF MIRACLES and JOURNEY BEYOND TOMORROW (aka JOURNEY OF JOENES.)

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pointed the way to Hitchhiker's Guide, April 19, 2005

By 

R. Rice (Tokyo) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Mindswap, A Novel (Hardcover)

Way back when -- er, okay, when I was in high school, which was more than two decades ago -- a friend's father used to say, "The world is divided into two kinds of people: those who have read Mindswap, and those who have not." He happened to be a minister in a protestant church, which is interesting to me, but doesn't really matter (I'm agnostic).

Funny that years later, Mindswap is one of the books I keep looking back to. I read it again, or -- more often -- read parts of it again. I remember thinking when I read it that it was the closest LITERARY thing to the Marx brothers I'd ever seen -- but that analogy is flawed, and if you really expect Groucho, Chico, and Harpo you may be disappointed.

But as an antic, irreverant, inanely comic sci-fi read, what a gem! It doesn't surprise me that Douglas Adams referenced Scheckley as one of his inspirations. Adams is more overtly Monty Python, but Sheckley has his own groundbreaking social satire. And... Mindswap is joyous!