Robert Sheckley 
Status Civilisation 

Robert Sheckley was born in Brooklyn, New York on July 16th, 1928. After attending Columbia High School, and gaining a life-long passion for science fiction, he hitchhiked to California in 1946 where he tried various jobs; landscape gardener, pretzel salesman, barman, milkman, warehouseman, and general laborer "board man" in a hand-painted necktie studio. None of these took him into a career path he wanted. His solution? He joined the US Army for two years. Returning to New York Sheckley enrolled at NYU from where he graduated in 1951 with a degree. Within months he had also married (the first of five) and published his first short story in the pulp magazines. Over his career he wrote and published hundreds of short stories. Some were turned into movies, some to TV and of course many into radio drama. On November 20th he had surgery for a brain aneurysm. Whilst still in hospital in a Poughkeepsie hospital Robert Sheckley died on December 9th, 2005.