For example, when Barrent stumbles out of the barracks he’s deposited in he’s immediately hunted by members of the priestly class. Omegan society is designed around two related principles - 1) hidden knowledge (legal, religious, etc) revealed only to those who ascend up the status ladder (as in, it is hidden until you attain a particular status) and 2) all benefits of a particular status, Omega’s central social rituals, and the laws facilitate high mortality. His sentence was exile to Omega where the life expectancy is three years.īut what sort of world has developed from the dregs of Earth? As soon as his “phlegmatic blandness” (11) induced by the memory wipe passes Barrent sets off to find out. He’s soon informed that he’s a criminal found guilty on the charge of murder (and brain wiped). With legions of others he stumbles, in a sense “reborn” (9), from the bowels of the sterile hospital-like vessel onto the surface of the harsh prison planet Omega. In neoplatonic terms, he’s a man with knowledge of the forms but can recall no particular manifestations of them or make connections between them.
His name, his past, are lost somewhere in the mist. Will Barrent wakes up on a spaceship with only a vague recollection of things. He could no longer analyze the present in terms of the experienced past (6).” He had lost his powers of contrast and comparison. Now nothing reminded him of anything, and things were only like themselves. Once he had been able to say, this is like, or, that reminds me of. At one time he must have had specific memories of birds, trees, friends, family, status, a wife perhaps. He must at one time have had that priceless wealth of recall which now he could only deduce from the limited evidence at his disposal. “He was a man with the recollection of memories. Due to the almost novella length of The Status Civilization do not expect any unnecessary declamations on technology or the nature of the world or government or endless interior character monologues for Sheckley clearly prefers - and revels in - the shorter form. Similar skills were apparent in his masterful collection Store of Infinity(1960) where traditional sci-fi situations such as colonization of alien worlds, robot rebellions, post-apocalyptical wastelands, and time-travel (among other tropes) are imbued with witty wordplay and biting social commentary. Robert Sheckley deftly manipulates - in a mere (but dense) 127 pages - a plot straight from the pulps involving prison planets and gladiatorial fights against terrifying robots into a scathing and artfully constructed work of satire. (Richard Powers (?) cover for the 1960 edition)
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