Gurevich P.S. Robert Sheckley's Philosophical Plots

Abstract: The predicting power of philosophy is well known. Everyone also knows how immense artistic intuition can be. Rereading such science fiction authors as Ivan Efremov, Stanislav Lem, Arthur Clarke, the Strugatsky brothers, Ray Bradbury, Alfred Harrison, Kurt Vonnegut and others, we can be surprised at how much they predicted. American writer Robert Sheckley has a lot of philosophical plots in his works, too. His imagination has no limits. However, these are not just fruits of imagination as it seems. The writer tried to understand what consequences social transformations and scientific discoveries could have for the human future. In this research Gurevich uses the method of hermeneutical analysis that allows to understand the writer's messages. Using satire the author describes absurd situations created by the technological progress. It is for the first time in the academic literature that Robert Sheckley's stories are being analyzed as philosophical plots. The author of the present research article underlines that being familiar with psychoanalysis and gestalt psychology, Robert Sheckley tried to define the predicting power of those stories. He shows that reality is often just a fragile picture created by our senses, emotions, memory, experience and imagination. The surrounding reality is, in fact, fictitious. It is comprised of a million of details that are rooted in our subconscious and may become evident at every given opportunity.   

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