The novel “Mindswap” by Robert Sheckley was published for the first time in 1965 in the magazine “Galaxy” as a novella, later expanded into a novel published as a book in 1966.
Marvin Flynn reads a newspaper ad about a Martian willing to participate in a mind-swap with an Earthling. It seems like the perfect opportunity to escape his boring life, so he signs up to participate.
Everything seems to be going as planned, and Marvin Flynn finds himself on Mars, in the body of a native. He doesn’t even have time to adjust to his surroundings before he discovers he’s been the victim of a scammer who used mind-swapping to escape arrest. He’s ordered to return the Martian’s body, but his own body is still in the scammer’s possession, so he must quickly find another body or die.
“Mindswap” is an example of science fiction with a strong humorous element in which the protagonist finds himself in absurd and surreal situations. The desire to escape boredom and see other planets through the eyes of their native inhabitants becomes a life-threatening nightmare for Marvin Flynn. He gets scammed and his body is stolen by a scammer, forcing him to do what he can to find a body available very quickly. For Marvin, this is his only chance to survive and hope that the scammer in possession of his body is arrested.
The fictional universe in which Marvin Flynn moves is filled with sentient species inhabiting many different planets. Interstellar travel is very expensive, but it’s possible to engage in long-distance mind swaps, a sort of extreme version of home swapping for a vacation that doesn’t require big expenses. It seems common to find over-the-top characters, ranging from detectives who’ve never solved a case to eggs begging not to be picked up.
In a novel that’s very short by today’s standards, the reader must try to quickly understand the situations Marvin Flynn finds himself in, as they change repeatedly. This is a consequence of a fast pace, with twists and surprises that continually follow one another, even when the protagonist isn’t sending his mind into another body on another world. Robert Sheckley seems to seek increasingly surreal situations, including what seems like a parody of melodrama.
Amidst all this absurd surrealism, Robert Sheckley includes various considerations on perception. During his attempts to find his body, Marvin Flynn inhabits the bodies of beings of different species, each of which has specific sensory capabilities, different from those of other species. The protagonist literally changes his way of seeing his surroundings. When he enters what is known as the Twisted World, he finds himself in absolute chaos where literally no logic exists.
In this blend of humor and philosophy, Robert Sheckley seems to have fun in turning certain ideas upside down. It’s a case, not unique to this author, in which humor and parody are also used to offer food for thought. The humorous element generates reactions that are inevitably subjective, but “Mindswap” is considered by many to be one of Sheckley’s best novels also for its food for thought, which sometimes requires rereading it to be fully appreciated. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
