He’s soon informed that he’s a criminal found guilty on the charge of murder (and brain wiped). With legions of others he stumbles, in a sense “reborn” (9), from the bowels of the sterile hospital-like vessel onto the surface of the harsh prison planet Omega. In neoplatonic terms, he’s a man with knowledge of the forms but can recall no particular manifestations of them or make connections between them. His name, his past, are lost somewhere in the mist. Will Barrent wakes up on a spaceship with only a vague recollection of things.
He could no longer analyze the present in terms of the experienced past (6).” He had lost his powers of contrast and comparison. Now nothing reminded him of anything, and things were only like themselves. Once he had been able to say, this is like, or, that reminds me of. At one time he must have had specific memories of birds, trees, friends, family, status, a wife perhaps. He must at one time have had that priceless wealth of recall which now he could only deduce from the limited evidence at his disposal. “He was a man with the recollection of memories. Due to the almost novella length of The Status Civilization do not expect any unnecessary declamations on technology or the nature of the world or government or endless interior character monologues for Sheckley clearly prefers - and revels in - the shorter form. Similar skills were apparent in his masterful collection Store of Infinity(1960) where traditional sci-fi situations such as colonization of alien worlds, robot rebellions, post-apocalyptical wastelands, and time-travel (among other tropes) are imbued with witty wordplay and biting social commentary. Robert Sheckley deftly manipulates - in a mere (but dense) 127 pages - a plot straight from the pulps involving prison planets and gladiatorial fights against terrifying robots into a scathing and artfully constructed work of satire. The Status Civilization was first published as “Omega!” in the August and September 1960 issues of Amazing Science Fiction Stories Magazine.(Richard Powers (?) cover for the 1960 edition) But it must be borne if our hero is to discover the reason for his imprisonment A reason that pits him against himself, and involves the sardonically similar but devoutly different creeds of Omega and Earth. A mysterious girl gives him a weapon that starts him on his path to status, a path that requires constant brutality. He’s listed as a murderer and released into the illicit society as a “peon” the lowest class imaginable. Will Barrent awakes without memories just before being deposited on Omega, a planet for criminals where the average life expectancy is 3 years.
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