Book detail for The Status Civilization

Cover tagline

The stunning novel of a future Earth — when one vast and stratified society threatens all who fail to conform

Back cover text

The life expectancy of a new arrival on Omega averaged three Earth years

Barrent had been tried, convicted, and memory-washed on Earth — an Earth strangely altered and stratified by fear of the radical and the non-conformist.

Now he was serving his sentence on Omega — a prison planet walled by a ring of hovering guard-ships from which there was no escape.

Omega was a world of horror, a savage, ruthless way of life. But it was only a momentary ordeal, a prelude to a return to Earth and the subtle terrors of its own status civilization.

Robert Scheckley was born in New York and raised in New Jersey. He joined the Army in 1948, spending most of his enlistment in Korea. After graduation from New York University in 1951, he worked on a variety of jobs before publishing his first story. Now a full-time author with many stories and several novels to his credit, he lives in New York with his wife.

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Interior text

This is the story of Will Barrent, exile from Earth, who is plunged into the nightmare world of Omega.

A planet with its own religion — worship of the Black One...

A planet with its own pleasures — drug-induced hallucinations and sex fantasies at cut-rate prices...

A planet with its own status civilization — only the killer could aspire to wealth and position.

This is a vividly realistic novel of a strange tomorrow — when men create robotic monsters and their own creations, in turn, control mankind.