Science fiction writers presented many wonderful insights to humanity. You can recall, for example, Herbert Wells or Jules Verne. But this article is not about them. Our focus is “The Smell of Thought”: a summary of the work. Robert Sheckley creatively created it from nothing.
"Sixth Sense"
A person has five main universally recognized ways to study the outside world: vision, hearing, smell, touch, taste. When talking about the sixth sense, then it is understood as usually a well-developed intuition or telepathy. Are there really those who are able to read minds? It is difficult to say, in Soviet times, for example, for unknown reasons, a lot of attention was paid to this issue, and one of the seemingly genuine psychics was found in the vastness of our Motherland. This, of course, is about Nelly Kulagina.
The rest is “a mystery covered in darkness.” And that is why writers (especially authors who work in the genre of science fiction) are so eager to undertake it. Robert Sheckley could not get around her with his attention.
Wreck
It all starts, as in classical space history. The star postman, plying from one planet to another, suddenly discovers that his ship, already terribly old, heats up with incredible speed. He senses something is amiss and goes to check the fuel tanks. It turns out that the heat spoiled the fuel. Leroy Clivey (pilot) understands that if he does not land on the nearest oxygen-containing planet, then he has no chance of survival. What he informs his boss about the radio, as well as the coordinates of a possible crash. The postmaster reassures the pilot and says that he will send a rescue team after him. Later, the postman makes an emergency landing on the planet Z-M-22.
The "Smell of Thought" begins in an exciting way (a brief summary, we hope to keep the intrigue as long as possible). This will not happen next.
Strange animals
Naturally, when the hero made a forced landing, he did not immediately recover and for a while lost consciousness. I woke up from the fact that a squirrel ran next to him, but the animal looked strange: it had no eyes and ears, and the coat had a greenish tint. A wolf appeared after her. "Gray" did not possess organs of hearing and sight. How animals guided the world is a mystery. Moreover, Clivey watched the hunting scene: the squirrel ran away or hid, and the wolf followed on her heels. For a while, the predator lost its track, although the prey was near him, but he allegedly lost it, then discovered and ate it. But the squirrel clearly could not satisfy the wolf's appetite, and he went to the barely living postman. It’s hard to understand how he smelled it. Clivey didn’t even have time to get worried, as he again lost consciousness. The highlight of Sheckley's story “The Smell of Thought” (a brief summary shows this) is precisely in these mysterious animals.
Panther
Woke up on the evening of the same day. Clivi seemed a dream, not only the wreck of the ship, but also a hunting scene, then he wondered if these animals have neither eyes nor ears, how they track each other.
Someone else on the planet, hiding in the bushes, distracted him from his thoughts, he resembled a panther, but with a certain outward appearance. While Clivey was given an abstract reflection, a big black cat without ears and eyes could not distinguish a person from the general background of the environment, but as soon as he thought about it, the predator immediately showed an interest in him.
And then the hero dawned: "Telepathic beasts, of course!" Then he again made the wild cat an object of reflection, and she again “smelled” it. Realizing that such experiments would not bring to good, he tried to throw a predator from his mental wave. Clivey tried to think about an outsider, but, unfortunately, he could not, constantly returning to the word "Panther". An extremely inventive story was written by Robert Sheckley. The "smell of thought" (a brief summary of it) is considered by us not only with interest, but also with pleasure.
In the end, Leroy came up with the idea: to pretend mentally to a female Panther. The male believed and began courting an imaginary "girl". Then, apparently, he realized that he had been deceived and ran away screaming. Even the brief content of the story “The Smell of Thought” by Robert Sheckley is mesmerizing. The writer expertly builds the plot.
Wolf fight
After an adventure with Panther, Leroy fell asleep. He woke up only in the morning of the next day and found: his aircraft burned completely, but he is alive. He picked up a metal rod - part of the ship, which could still fit in as a weapon. And yet, when the postman understood the basic principle of the planet’s functioning, it became a little easier for him to live, but the most interesting was ahead. After Panther, Clivey was visited by wolves. This is what Robert Sheckley describes. The “Smell of Thought” (this will try to reveal a short summary later) is an extremely dynamic work.
He found food and water. No animals were visible, but only he thought: “Perhaps today I will meet a wolf or wolves,” and they, as if by magic, arose. In other words, thought is material - this is the main idea that is “embedded” in the summary of the work “The Smell of Thought”. Of course, it is quite banal, but the main thing in fiction is performance, and Sheckley is at its best.
The hero did not immediately fight with them, at first he tried to find shelter, but when he did not find him, he also discovered that the vultures were circling over the site of the alleged battle, he realized that there was nothing to do - you had to accept the battle.
She-wolf
At first, he mentally pretended to be a she-wolf, tried to put pressure on the pity of opponents and outwit them. It didn’t work out too much: those predators who faced him seemed to believe in deception, but one wolf came to the hero from the back and rushed, “knocking” him out of the image. By the way, one “gray” Clivey managed to hurt.
Then Leroy left the idea with a she-wolf and turned to images of stronger animals, for example, panthers. He played very well, realistically, but the rivals were not going to retreat so easily. They closed ranks and rushed at him all together (there were four of them).
Panther and snake
He feverishly wondered how he could defeat the wolves, then it dawned on him: “Snake!” Indeed, the animals were scared, but now the postman did not play a role. As soon as the wolves loosened his grip, he fled.
True, not far, he was overtaken by the "orderlies of the forest" and vultures. And he decided to use the experience of the astronaut - he introduced himself as a bird. This confused the hungry wolves, and they lost him. He takes his hero through a successive change of images of R. Sheckley. “The smell of thought” (including a brief summary) turns into an action-packed action movie.
Final battle. Wolves, Panther, Vultures
In the morning, as if he had had little adventure yesterday, Leroy thought of panther and wolves. They did not force themselves to ask twice, immediately arising. Given that the hero did not get enough sleep, he realized that he could not cope with panther and wolves at once. Clivey imagined something so useless and not very tasty for animals. Only the image of a bush occurred to him, and he became one.
For a while this was enough, but then a woodpecker flew in and began to peck a man as if he really hid worms in his womb. Leroy was unlucky again, he had to leave the image and again run away from predators, then when they almost caught up with him, he introduced himself as dead, and this saved him. Realizing what was happening, Clivey began to add age to his corpse, i.e. it smelled strongly of rot. The hero averted panther and wolves from himself, but he attracted vultures, on the contrary. And again it's time to change the shell. Following is a description of the actually final scene of Sheckley's work, she also crowns the summary of the story “The Smell of Thought”.
Fire
And then the space pilot remembered the fire and the fear of almost all living creatures. He imagined himself a torch. The animals fled. And the rescue spaceship arrived just in time. Leroy quietly appeared on board. The chief, who flew after him, said that Clivey was lucky, because he was in the midst of a terrible fire. The crew observed fire on the surface of the planet at the time they landed. True, when Leroy left the planet, the area did not leave any signs of a rampant disaster, the chief did not find any burns on the body of his subordinate.
This was the retelling of Robert Sheckley's work “The Smell of Thought”. A very brief summary is probably not our hobby, but the reader will have a three-dimensional view of the story.
The ordinary fate of an unusual person. Stephen King Dead Seer
And yet, in the end, I want to talk a little about the ambivalence of such an ability as reading thoughts. It is generally accepted that telepathy is good for the wearer, because he gains power, stands out from the crowd.
In fact, the history of real psychics suggests that they did not know much happiness in life. And not even because they read people like an open book, but because they were hunted by special services and ordinary citizens who wanted to use their gift for their own purposes.
Stephen King has a novel The Dead Zone, he is not about telepathy, but about a seer. However, the fate of an extraordinary person is represented in it quite clearly. For his gift, he paid the future a happy family man, perhaps his father. Johnny Smith put everything he had on his altar. At first, he considered the gift of seeing the future, touching people, a curse. That was until the time when Providence pushed him against the one whom he had to stop in order to prevent the second Hitler from coming to power.
And in the end, the hero pays his life for the fulfillment of his mission and mission. In other words, any gift (literary or supernatural) involves not only certain abilities, but also a huge responsibility.