First appeared in Magazine, 1957/7.A part of collection of science fiction short stories by Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1960 by Bantam Books.
This time the humans are taking the offensive! Stan Myakovsky is a once-famous scientist fallen on hard times. Now he dodges spaceship repo men and dreams of the marketability of his cybernetic ant. Then a woman named Julie Lish walks into his life. She is beautiful, mysterious, and totally amoral. She is also skilled in the arts of thievery and Oriental self-defense. What's more, she has a plan so outrageous there might be one chance in a million to pull it off.Together Stan and Julie become the most unlikely pair of pirates in the universe. With a hijacked spaceship and a crew of hardcase misfits, they’re searching for the ultimate pot of gold at the end of a bloody intergalactic rainbow: royal jelly from an alien hive. The only problem is that the fortune lies on the universe’s most godforsaken planet. And once they get their hands on it, they’ll have to fight their way past the aliens to get off the planet alive.
It's well established now that the way you put a question often determines not only the answer you'll get, but the type of answer possible. So ... a mechanical answerer, geared to produce the ultimate revelations in reference to anything you want to know, might have unsuspected limitations.
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot.
Citizen in Space is a collection of science fiction short stories by Robert Sheckley. It was first published in 1955 by Ballantine Books (catalogue number 126). It includes the following stories (magazines in which the stories originally appeared given in parentheses):1. "The Mountain Without a Name" (1955)2. "The Accountant" (F&SF 1954/7)3. "Hunting Problem" (Galaxy 1955/9)4. "A Thief in Time" (Galaxy 1954/7)5. "The Luckiest Man in the World" (Fantastic Universe 1955/2; also known as "Fortunate Person")6. "Hands Off" (Galaxy 1954/4)7. "Something for Nothing" (Galaxy 1954/6)8. "A Ticket to Tranai" (Galaxy 1955/10)9. "The Battle" (If 1954/9)10. "Skulking Permit" (Galaxy 1954/12)11. "Citizen in Space" (Playboy 1955/9; also known as "Spy Story")12. "Ask a Foolish Question" (Science Fiction Stories No. 1, 1953)
