The Status Civilization - Mindswap

The Status Civilization - Mindswap is a collection of two science fiction stories by Robert Sheckley.

This book contains two stories of about a hundred and fifty pages each. The stories are very different, so I'll review them as separate stories.

The Status Civilization.
Most of this story read as your average "earth exports criminals to prison planet – prison planet is ruled on a survival of the fittest principle". Then it suddenly changes and becomes something else – unfortunately I can't really tell you anything about it as it that would spoil the surprise. It's a fun and action packed read and the twist at the end is quite nice (even if I found the morale of the story a bit to American).

Mindswap.
And now to something completely different! Mindswap is the craziest story that I can remember ever having read. It's like Monty Python multiplied with Hitchhikers and divided by Hawkins and then again it's not. It starts of with this nice fellow called Marvin who wants to travel and as his funds are limited he decides to trade minds with a Martian – something goes wrong and he has to leave the Martians mind, unfortunately he can't return to his own mind, so he has to find a new one and he only has six hours to do it in. That's just the beginning.

The story goes from crazy to absolute lunacy, while it takes us through planets, minds, times and writing styles, like nothing I've seen before. Moreover, it has the best description of what it's like to be in love that I've ever read, thrown in for good measure. Great fun!

P.S. This book may be a bit hard to find, but it's well worth the trouble if you can find it.