One of the saddest things to observe in connection with the arts is the fall of great a talent, whose life is stolen paying the bills with sub-standard time-wasters. The immortal Orson Welles selling sherry to raise finance, Sturgeon and Disch doing novelisations. Robert Sheckley's slow disenchantment with SF in the early '80s and his all too few forays into it since. Neglect, a lack of recognition (shame on the Hugos and Nebulas), and a bit of taking time out (a la Silverberg) to recuperate and live, before burn-out. But some of it is monetary. Why else the 'shared-world' entries for 'Babylon 5', and 'Alien'. I know that he has published some fiction in the mags this year but not nearly enough ( how can one forget delightfully bubbly masterpiece 'The Day the Aliens came'). There must surely be more! When volumes of "The Collected Short Stories of Robert Sheckley" are assembled in the decades to come by scholars, will there be any substantial body of work from this century? When with his 'jet-powered' computer there should be producing so much more. My question is this, if SciFiction can re-awaken a giant like Lucius Sheapard to do some of his very best work, could it not also commission, conjole, blackmail or in some other way get some original Sheckley online. To laugh is to know Sheckley. Please retrieve our Voltiare, our Mark Twain, our Marx Brothers, our Ernest Lubitsch- from the blandness of sci-fi and bring him back to sf.