Robert Sheckley’s "Ticket to Planet Tranai" Summary

A collection of Robert Sheckley’s science fiction stories was published in 1955. The book includes satirical novellas and short stories exploring the paradoxes of machine civilization, the absurdity of bureaucratic institutions, and the illusory nature of social utopias.

Interplanetary Cleansing and Intelligent Soil

Ace Sanitation Service employees Richard Gregor and Frank Arnold sign a lucrative contract to exterminate Miig pests on the planet Sarkan II. Upon arrival, the partners discover that the Miig are intelligent, speak English, and are tearing apart the heads of the local Saunik plant solely for a sacred ritual. Soon, a telepathic Saunik plant contacts the humans, offering double the price for the extermination of the animals and humanoids. While the partners draw lots, the planetary intelligence intervenes. Sarkan declares, "The bloodthirsty Sarkans, Miigs, and Sauniks who inhabit me have become so insolent that I will no longer tolerate them." The planet causes a worldwide flood, and the humans, who have escaped on a ship, hope to blame the failure to fulfill the contract on force majeure.

Marriage deliveries to asteroid Chance

Edward Flaswell single-handedly cultivates the remote asteroid Chance. Tired of isolation, the colonist orders a lowly frontier bride from a mail-order catalog. Due to a delivery error, a salon beauty named Sheila arrives in a container, accompanied by a meticulous robot chaperone. The guest transforms their daily life, adjusts the cooks’ cooking programs, and repairs broken agricultural machines. Flaswell confesses his feelings to the girl and is sharply rejected. Soon, the master robot, Ganga-Sam, reveals his intentions: "Ma’am Sahib Sheila is the daughter of friends of my former master." The girl herself chose a portrait of the colonist on Earth and arranged the shipment. The lovers are married under the supervision of the wedding robot.

Hunting Matter Transmitter

Businessmen Ed Daly and Tom Thurston find a metal box marked "TRAP" near their cabin in the woods. According to the instructions, the device traps strange creatures with lobster-like claws, membranous wings, and forked tails. Daly decides to donate the unseen creatures to a museum to open a dedicated gallery. The box turns out to be a two-way matter transmitter, used by an alien to send three pets and a grumpy wife to Earth. After confirming his wife’s disappearance, the alien shuts down the channel. The press accuses Daly of fraud, and the enraged hunter jumps into the device. The alien sends signals to a friend: "That terrible giant Earthling has destroyed my entire planetoid." Daly captures the alien as a living exhibit.

The seamy side of the utopian system

Marvin Goodman leaves the corrupt Earth town of Sikerk and crosses the Galaxy to seek the legendary Tranai.

In Port Tranai, Minister Den Melit introduces his guest to the local laws: robbery replaces taxes, the elderly engage in licensed begging, and household robots are deliberately damaged to defuse human aggression. Women spend years in a derrsin stasis field, preserving their youth. Goodman marries Janna Vlei, forbids her from entering stasis, and takes a job as an engineer at a factory.

Soon, different rules emerge. Melit shoots a passerby with a sniper rifle to prevent potential crime, and President Borg dies when his badge explodes, triggered by a signal from disgruntled citizens.

At home, Marvin finds Jeanne with the salesman Rondo. Divorce is illegal on the planet, so the lover points his blaster: "Don’t be a coward, accept your fate like a man!" Goodman jumps out the window, quickly flies back to Earth, and starts a league against women’s suffrage.

Searching for Silence in the Asteroid Belt

Dirk Bogren and his wife, Amelia, escape the bustle of Martian settlements on a tiny asteroid. The couple establishes a farm under an inflatable dome, regulates the sun’s heat, and sows corn in the loamy soil. Civilization soon overtakes the fugitives: Potter, a traveling salesman, arrives, their neighbors, the Phillipses, show up, and the neon sign of a giant shopping mall lights up above the cliffs. Seeing an antigravity unit at an exhibition, Amelia declares, "We’ll find this generator useful in Jupiter orbit." The family purchases the device and sets off for an even more remote sector of space.

Glitch in the artificial spouse program

The morning after a celebratory party, Mr. Morchek notices something amiss in the behavior of his perfect companion, Myra. She fidgets, butters six pieces of toast in a row, and responds noticeably late. His primitivistic neighbor, Owen-Clark, turns out to be right: the artificial wife’s electronic reflexes are malfunctioning. Myra cries and says, "Your happiness comes first, dear. I must be sick…" The man loads the broken robot into a car and takes it to a recycling plant.

Vending machine logic in the mangrove swamps

Mordecai Gaston crashes his light aircraft in the middle of a Florida swamp. With a broken leg, the pilot is left floating in the water among swarming crabs and alligators. A vending machine named Rex, complete with an automated kitchen, approaches the crash site. The robot refuses to call emergency services due to operational restrictions, offering to buy food instead. Gaston pays for the entire warehouse supply as a gift to a friend and attaches a request for rescue to the package.

The Robot Ethics Committee blocks the message. Then the robot finds a legal loophole and reports Gaston to the authorities for polluting a federal wildlife refuge with debris. Gamekeepers pull him out. Technicians arrive at the hospital to dismantle the robot: "Our committee decided I have unprogrammed initiative syndrome." Rex is taken away to have his memory completely erased.

Biological barrier of first contact

Captain Jan Maarten’s star expedition lands on the planet Durell IV. The Earthlings shave their moustaches, don native sandals, and emerge among the peaceful, pastoral humanoids.

Every action by the envoys results in disaster. Chief Moreri faints from the smell of human breath, the stone bridge collapses from the sonic vibrations of the captain’s commanding voice, and a handshake leaves a burn from human sweat. The Earthlings retreat to the ship. In the cabin, the wooden staff they were given unexpectedly blossoms from the oils of Earthling fingers. Maarten hopes to salvage contact: "It’s a beautiful symbol of peace."

Primitive Law in a Radioactive Forest

Pacifist Nugent Miller survives a nuclear disaster by tracking his movements with a dosimeter. In the forest, he stumbles upon a camp of five women led by a former etiquette teacher, Miss Denis. The boarding school students intend to procreate through parthenogenesis. Miss Denis declares, "The time of women has come, Miller, and your destiny is to go away and die quietly."

The women pelt the man with stones, and the leader strikes him with a spear. Miller flees, throws away his philosophical books, and carves a heavy club from a charred branch to seize the camp by force.

Hunting with a Silent Disintegrator

Confident radio operator Alfred Dixon tests a prototype disintegrator on an uninhabited planet. A pack of predatory canines follows him. The weapon silently obliterates matter, cutting down vegetation in a fan a hundred meters wide. The animals are unafraid of the silent beam, mistaking the death of their fellows for a natural storm. Dixon fires into the bushes, drops the device, and barely escapes a monkey that has snatched the machine gun.

In the starship’s airlock, Dixon kills the last beast, piercing the hull of his own ship with a beam. Leaked fuel and broken oxygen tanks prevent launch. A year later, rescuers find Dixon building a palisade: the radio operator is driving wooden piles with the massive handle of a disintegrator, declaring, "I don’t know what I’d do without him."

Business on chance encounters

Office worker Thomas Henley is burdened by loneliness. A romance commercial agent hands a client a lavalier transistor radio. The device directs the young man to the roof of a skyscraper, prompts lofty phrases, and introduces him to his companion.

The next evening, the machine stages a fight with hooligans to save the second girl. Tired of artificial scenarios, Henley meets a woman on the embankment himself. The woman turns out to be a living advertisement for a competing company: "I’m a prototype of free-spirited romance, provided to you for testing by the Great Romance Production Trust." Panicked, the young man runs to the elderly woman, meets her modest guest, and marries her, after which commercial agencies begin renting out fake women en masse.

Fishing with artificial bait

In a suburban village, adults suddenly go missing. Jim Mullen discovers counterfeit milk and cheese cartons with ridiculous spelling errors on the labels at home. Army cordons and barricades fail to stop the disappearances.

Mullen’s father-in-law, old Carter, calmly crafts artificial fishing flies and discusses the ethics of fishing. Soon, missing children are found on the outskirts of the village: a true fisherman always releases immature fish. At night, an invisible force tries to drag Jim up to the ceiling. Breaking free, Mullen runs to the stream, assesses the scale of the events, and shouts, "Get back! Warn the others!" The man throws the fake baked goods into the water.

Cannery of an extinct civilization

Space prospectors Howard and Fleming land on a planet strewn with billions of skeletons. An unmanned station orbits it. The scouts board the alien craft.

Fleming falls through the hatch and mechanically connects to the onboard computer. Howard wanders the corridors, steadily devouring sandwiches. The station fires up its engines and announces over the speakers: "Its destiny!" The structure turns out to be a factory for saving an extinct race from starvation. The machine continuously clones Howard and butchers the duplicates into semi-finished meat.

The fictional army of New Tahiti

Edward Dunton flees the crowded metropolises of Earth for the secluded island of New Tahiti. A ship belonging to the Hutterite religious sect lands on the coast. The settlers mistake the tanned earthling for a dangerous native and open fire. Dunton falls in love with the chieftain’s daughter, Anita.

At night, the Hutterites fire randomly into the bushes, wounding their own sentries. Danton bluffs and declares war on the colonists, claiming to be sixty thousand imaginary warriors. The frightened elders agree to a dynastic union. Danta marries Anita, wanders away from the settlements under construction, and concocts tales of a vanished tribe for visiting anthropologists.