In Tolstaya's vaudevillian-dystopian novel, set 200 years after an apocalyptic disaster destroys Russia, a lowly scribe is elevated to a life of privilege and becomes the bibliophile from hell.

Mordant, absurdist, and deadpan, the best of Sheckley's dissident farces represent science fiction's high-water mark as an allegorical clearinghouse for twenty-century angst.