[b0rsuk]

It all depends on your sense of humor. I can't promise you will like it. If you like Pratchett or Voltaire, there's high probability you will.

Journey Beyond Tomorrow - Robert Sheckley

I'm not going to quote any parts. It would be difficult, as a lot of the humor is situational. It also tastes better if you've been put in a good mood by an earlier part of the book.

It's a vision of (if I remember correctly) year 2010, as imagined back in the day. However, "today", 3000 years later, it's just a collection of folk tales from Polynesian storytellers. Understandably, some details are a little messed up.

Joenes was a bookish young man raised on an island on South Pacific. His parents settled there and were in charge of a power plant. He's a civilized man, although he spent his youth in company of Polynesian natives. One day he decides to venture out into the world.

The book really has a structure similar to, say, the Bible. Chapters are short and isolated. It's a witty and thought-provoking satire. I literally had to make breaks in reading, not because I was worn out, but because (to borrow a phrase from Pratchett) I felt like my hairs are going to burn out from the inside. I literally couldn't sleep after this book.

Some people compare it to Voltaire. As far as I can tell it is true, although the majority of Voltaire's work hasn't made it to our times. He was writing pamphlets and, like many other philosophers, was a genuine troll.

In some parts it might offend more sensitive readers. There's a bit of black humor, and although he very clearly blows thing out of proportion in a big hyperbole, it's those parts that I found mildly disturbing. Not because some topics shouldn't be made fun of. But because I know a lot of what he writes about is, tragically, true (just not on the same scale as in this book, thankfully). I had the same feeling about the ending of Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles.

I mentioned Terry Pratchett earlier. Don't be discouraged ! While Pratchett is very repetitive on many occasions, and very keen to recycle his ideas and characters (with just a name change), and will tell you the Librarian's backstory over and over and over, Sheckley doesn't do this. His style is similar to Pratchett, but more philosophical and much less constrained. Sheckley's books are separate works, and so are his often brilliant short stories. Because he was not afraid to step away from the tried and true, his prose is more varied.