ROBERT SHECKLEY

UPSTATE NEW YORK: APRIL 8
I feel the Hudson river as a frontier between old and new, between the United States that is foreign to me and the United States with historic and cultural ties to Europe. I take the correct road round town to the Hudson River bridge. I am home East of the river. Anya and I have toured every lane, visited each small town - Rhinebeck, Red Hook, Millerton - stopped for coffee here, shopped there, visited Anya's doctor, browsed the bookshops, collected a cat from the vet, ordered a Chinese takeaway.
Anya's genetic father, science fiction writer Robert Sheckley, passed his final years in Rhinebeck. He is buried in the artists' corner of Woodstock cemetery. Anya and I visited his grave at Christmas. Snow covered the cemetery. We parked and watched as two deer broke out of the trees and bounded uphill across the gravestones.
I am indebted to Bob for his teaching. He was a fine writer and a great teacher of writing. Largely forgotten in his own country, Sheckley remains a hero to those who live in what was the USSR. Soviet censers failed to recognize dangers in Sheckley's anarchist take on society; collections of his short stories sold in millions. To quote a leading literary critic in the Ukraine: "We were safe in a sort of intellectual stupor. Bob kicked our minds out of neutral".

ROBERT SHECKLEY

deer well camouflaged


WOODSTOCK, NEW YORK:
I am Anya's adopted father. The writer, Robert Sheckley, was Anya's genetic father. I am honoured to have been one of Bob's friends. English-language critics pigeon-holed Bob as a writer of science fiction. He was judged differently in Europe and in those countries that were part of the old USSR. He was read for his ideas and his wit and his take on the human condition and he was admired as a master craftsman of the short story.
Anya and I drove up to Woodstock yesterday to visit Bob's grave. Anya parked below the cemetery and a herd of deer broke out of the trees. Most bolted up across the graves. Two hesitated and looked back. They were at the corner of the hedge that demarks the artists' corner - the direction we were headed. I took their photograph. Then Anya and I walked up the track. Bob's grave was under snow. Anya and I will visit again when I finish my ride in the Spring. We will have Anya and Michael's baby son with us.