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Keep Your Shape
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20 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1953
About the author
Robert Sheckley
1,425 books698 followersOne of science fiction's great humorists, Sheckley was a prolific short story writer beginning in 1952 with titles including "Specialist", "Pilgrimage to Earth", "Warm", "The Prize of Peril", and "Seventh Victim", collected in volumes from Untouched by Human Hands (1954) to Is That What People Do? (1984) and a five-volume set of Collected Stories (1991). His first novel, Immortality, Inc. (1958), was followed by The Status Civilization (1960), Journey Beyond Tomorrow (1962), Mindswap (1966), and several others. Sheckley served as fiction editor for Omni magazine from January 1980 through September 1981, and was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2001.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
April 30, 2018
Vocational Commitments
Animists believe that animals, plants, and even inert natural objects have souls. And who knows, they could be right. My mother claimed she could speak with the dead. One novel explanation for the existence of a soul-filled nature is provided in Sheckley’s bijou Aesopian fable of shape-adapting alien invaders who are enthralled by the diversity of earth’s species. Overwhelmed by the freedom to exercise their morphological talents, the invaders become trapped by their own ideals in suitable earthly forms.
Animists believe that animals, plants, and even inert natural objects have souls. And who knows, they could be right. My mother claimed she could speak with the dead. One novel explanation for the existence of a soul-filled nature is provided in Sheckley’s bijou Aesopian fable of shape-adapting alien invaders who are enthralled by the diversity of earth’s species. Overwhelmed by the freedom to exercise their morphological talents, the invaders become trapped by their own ideals in suitable earthly forms.
January 8, 2018
“Exotic forms will undoubtedly be called for,” Pid went on. “And for that we have a special dispensation. But remember—any shape not assumed strictly in the line of duty is a foul, lawless device of The Shapeless One!” - Robert Sheckley, Keep Your Shape
Transformation, such an important theme from myths and legions around the world. Two powerful images come to mind. First, from Greek myth – the phoenix rising from the ashes, the legendary bird taking on new life from the death of its predecessor. The second is the following traditional tale from India about mistaken identity: There once was a lion cub raised by sheep. It began acting like a sheep, even began making baa baa baa sounds like a sheep. An adult lion came by and immediately understood what had happened. She grabbed the cub by the fur and carried it to a lake where it could peer into the water and see it wasn’t a sheep at all; it was a lion.
How I wish I knew about Robert Sheckley’s Keep Your Shape in my early teens. I’m sure it would have instantly become my all-time favorite story. Such an action-packed, electrifying tale on the power of transformation. I can see my toehead thirteen year old self reading it over and over, even daydreaming about it, and maybe even committing a few lines to memory.
Sheckley frames his tale thusly: what happened to the twenty previous Grom missions to planet Earth remains a mystery. Pid the Pilot heads mission number twenty-one. Pid has two assistants, Gur the Detector and Ilg the radioman, both chosen for the ingenuity and resourcefulness but, unfortunately for the Grom powers that be, both are among the lower Grom castes prone to shaplessness. Very important for those Grom leaders since every creature on Grom, amorphous by nature, is given a shape prescribed by tradition and enforced by discipline and a sense of duty.
Pid takes great pride in being a pilot, following in the footsteps of his father, gradfather, right on back to beginning of time. After Pid pilots a successful landing on Earth, the crew is now ready to take the first step in fulfilling their mission – prepare for a full Grom military attack by linking the power from one of Earth’s atomic plants to a power source back on Grom.
Quickly the unexpected happens: there exists on Earth something Pid, Gur and Ilg experience for the first time: freedom. More specifically, freedom to change shape. Gur and Ilg take to their new found freedom immediately. What do you expect from the lower classes?! Pid is more conflicted – its tradition and duty versus freedom and joy. One of the most charming science fiction tales ever written. Drats! I wish I read this back as a kid.
KEEP YOUR SHAPE is available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32346
and a lively audio of the story is also available: http://escapepod.org/2014/07/21/ep455...
American science fiction author Robert Sheckley, 1928 - 2005
December 7, 2016
به نظرم یکی از فوقالعادهترین داستانهای شکلیه
عالیه
:)
عالیه
:)
July 12, 2022
“We're a long way from home now. However,” Pid said sternly, “distance is no excuse for promiscuous shapelessness."
An Earth invasion told from the perspective of the alien invaders. Brilliant. Pid, Ilg and Ger make up the invasion force. Obviously numbers are not on their side so we must presume they're packing some serious heat. Actually, we quickly learn that Pid's mission objective is to set up a "displacer" so that the military can step on through. There's the invasion force after all.
After twenty previous exploratory missions had been lost without a trace, Pid is told that his people, the Grom, need this planet desperately.
Grom society uses a caste system which assigns roles to individuals. The higher castes, being more refined, are less prone to idle shapelessness. Shapelessness, the epitomy of Grom immorality. The basic shapes were set in stone by the Ancients some fifty thousand years earlier. But now parts of Grom population are demanding change.
"We Grom need more room. This unrest is caused purely by crowding. All our psychologists say so. Another planet to expand into will cure everything. So we're counting on you, Pid."
Earth's secret menace was easy to guess but this story was still an absolute delight.
"Get from my sight, Shapeless One!" - the Grom version of "get behind me Satan!" Hahaha. I love it. And I highly recommend this splendid short story. I'm giving this five Grom shaped like stars.
An Earth invasion told from the perspective of the alien invaders. Brilliant. Pid, Ilg and Ger make up the invasion force. Obviously numbers are not on their side so we must presume they're packing some serious heat. Actually, we quickly learn that Pid's mission objective is to set up a "displacer" so that the military can step on through. There's the invasion force after all.
After twenty previous exploratory missions had been lost without a trace, Pid is told that his people, the Grom, need this planet desperately.
Grom society uses a caste system which assigns roles to individuals. The higher castes, being more refined, are less prone to idle shapelessness. Shapelessness, the epitomy of Grom immorality. The basic shapes were set in stone by the Ancients some fifty thousand years earlier. But now parts of Grom population are demanding change.
"We Grom need more room. This unrest is caused purely by crowding. All our psychologists say so. Another planet to expand into will cure everything. So we're counting on you, Pid."
Earth's secret menace was easy to guess but this story was still an absolute delight.
"Get from my sight, Shapeless One!" - the Grom version of "get behind me Satan!" Hahaha. I love it. And I highly recommend this splendid short story. I'm giving this five Grom shaped like stars.
November 22, 2020
In brief this is about a race of shapeshifters who are trying to take over Earth. Unfortunately the expeditionary forces keep failing to set up what amounts to a transporter between the two worlds. The latest expedition is the twenty first attempt to set up the link and possibly find out what happened to the others who failed. It is also about indisputable tradition, conformity, social castes, and above all freedom. Audible edition narrated by Gabrielle de Cuir.
May 5, 2018
Conto bem curioso do Sheckley. Uma raça invasora de metamorfos quer invade a Terra, mas se depara com um mundo em que existe uma profusão quase infinita de formas. Tem um subtexto social também. Disponível no projeto Gutenberg.
August 30, 2026
One of Robert Sheckley’s classic, entertaining science-fiction stories, full of gentle irony.
The protagonists belong to an alien race with no fixed physical form. They are “shape-shifters” and regard the ability to change shape at will as the natural, ideal state of existence. For them, being trapped in a single permanent form is considered perverse, obscene, degenerate and, well, ew.
Their race decides to invade Earth for… the 20th or 21st time. They send one reconnaissance party after another to prepare the ground for the conquest, but… the parties disappear and are never heard from again.
The party we follow, upon arriving on Earth, discovers something horrifying about the local culture: human beings have a fixed, immutable form. Ew. Disgusting.
As the aliens interact with the terrestrial environment, they discover that the notion of a fixed form is addictive. Gradually, they become fascinated by the idea of having a particular, permanent shape (a tree, an object, or a human being, for instance). Not quite so ew.
The conquest falls apart
As in most of Sheckley’s work, the story takes a familiar science-fiction trope (the alien invasion) and uses it to satirise human nature, the rigidity of habit, and the ease with which the comfort of stability can constrain freedom. As in Simak’s work, too, the author, under the pretext of dealing with aliens, holds up a mirror to human nature so that we may take a good, hard look at ourselves.
Shape, despite its apparent simplicity, stands out because it turns on its head… (not 360 degrees, as a Greek politician once famously declared, without ever being remotely embarrassed by it) one of the most familiar tropes in science fiction: the idea that the human form and physiology are inferior or vulnerable when confronted with all-powerful, fluid aliens.
Instead of a conventional battle with weapons, or even crowbars (see Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak), or, for that matter… just brains and bare hands (see Arena by Fredric Brown), Sheckley turns the conflict into something philosophical and… existential.
In conventional SF, the ability to change shape is… the Holy Grail of evolution, the ultimate advantage, the supreme trump card, the absolute bloody upper hand — more powerful than even a snake strangling you (OK, I imagine I’ve made myself clear). Sheckley presents the Earth’s fixed, “static” matter not as a weakness, but as an addictive psychological lure that paralyses the invaders, while simultaneously poking fun at humanity’s tendency to regard its own way of existing as the only “normal” one. To the aliens, having a single shape is a disgusting — almost pornographic — perversion, until they discover the comfort that this very stability offers.The old chap in the back row who shouted “junkie and poof were fucked by testing” has been removed from the premises, thank you.
The aliens’ true “enemy” is not the army of Earth, but their own inner tendency towards inertia and habit. Once they experience the security of simply “being one thing” (a stone, a tree, a human being), they lose their drive, curiosity and freedom and — you never would have guessed it… — become that thing themselves.
And Sheckley accomplishes all this in just a few pages, using light, ironic humour without ever becoming preachy or portentous. The story can also be read as a satire of assimilation or cultural imperialism. The invaders are not defeated; they are assimilated. They end up adopting the characteristics of the very culture they set out to conquer. It is a pattern Sheckley returns to frequently: conquest fails not because of superior force, but because the invader’s very categories of thought prove unstable.
The protagonists belong to an alien race with no fixed physical form. They are “shape-shifters” and regard the ability to change shape at will as the natural, ideal state of existence. For them, being trapped in a single permanent form is considered perverse, obscene, degenerate and, well, ew.
Their race decides to invade Earth for… the 20th or 21st time. They send one reconnaissance party after another to prepare the ground for the conquest, but… the parties disappear and are never heard from again.
The party we follow, upon arriving on Earth, discovers something horrifying about the local culture: human beings have a fixed, immutable form. Ew. Disgusting.
As the aliens interact with the terrestrial environment, they discover that the notion of a fixed form is addictive. Gradually, they become fascinated by the idea of having a particular, permanent shape (a tree, an object, or a human being, for instance). Not quite so ew.
The conquest falls apart
As in most of Sheckley’s work, the story takes a familiar science-fiction trope (the alien invasion) and uses it to satirise human nature, the rigidity of habit, and the ease with which the comfort of stability can constrain freedom. As in Simak’s work, too, the author, under the pretext of dealing with aliens, holds up a mirror to human nature so that we may take a good, hard look at ourselves.
Shape, despite its apparent simplicity, stands out because it turns on its head… (not 360 degrees, as a Greek politician once famously declared, without ever being remotely embarrassed by it) one of the most familiar tropes in science fiction: the idea that the human form and physiology are inferior or vulnerable when confronted with all-powerful, fluid aliens.
Instead of a conventional battle with weapons, or even crowbars (see Skirmish by Clifford D. Simak), or, for that matter… just brains and bare hands (see Arena by Fredric Brown), Sheckley turns the conflict into something philosophical and… existential.
In conventional SF, the ability to change shape is… the Holy Grail of evolution, the ultimate advantage, the supreme trump card, the absolute bloody upper hand — more powerful than even a snake strangling you (OK, I imagine I’ve made myself clear). Sheckley presents the Earth’s fixed, “static” matter not as a weakness, but as an addictive psychological lure that paralyses the invaders, while simultaneously poking fun at humanity’s tendency to regard its own way of existing as the only “normal” one. To the aliens, having a single shape is a disgusting — almost pornographic — perversion, until they discover the comfort that this very stability offers.
The aliens’ true “enemy” is not the army of Earth, but their own inner tendency towards inertia and habit. Once they experience the security of simply “being one thing” (a stone, a tree, a human being), they lose their drive, curiosity and freedom and — you never would have guessed it… — become that thing themselves.
And Sheckley accomplishes all this in just a few pages, using light, ironic humour without ever becoming preachy or portentous. The story can also be read as a satire of assimilation or cultural imperialism. The invaders are not defeated; they are assimilated. They end up adopting the characteristics of the very culture they set out to conquer. It is a pattern Sheckley returns to frequently: conquest fails not because of superior force, but because the invader’s very categories of thought prove unstable.
July 19, 2020
"Keep Your Shape" by Robert Sheckley receives four stars from me. The short short's theme is rich.
Regarding this text: One can find this on the web for free easily. It might be under the title "Shape". Additionally, there is a Sci-Fi radio play based on this that is good, but I think some of the recording is hard to hear. I think "Keep Your Shape" is the better title.
Let's discuss a bit in order to understand the theme some. The Story is about these three aliens who've come to earth to create a passage way for their home planet to invade the earth. These aliens are Shapshifters. What is interesting is that even though they are shapeshifters they are only allowed to be in the shapes determined by tradition and rules that align with their professions, which they did not choose for themselves. The aliens question this premise that they should be something they are not interested in being.
The overtones of religion are clear--references to tradition, to this is how it has been for thousands of years; word play on godlessness (here shapelessness, and the Shapeless One). The creation of evil in the idea of the Shapeless One is dead on for overtones of religion; a caste system where individuals should be happy to be in the caste they are born in and never aspire to be anything else.
Recommended: yes. If you have a teen who has to write a paper on a short story of their choosing, this would be a good one to use. It isn't very long, but there is lots to uncover and explain.
Regarding this text: One can find this on the web for free easily. It might be under the title "Shape". Additionally, there is a Sci-Fi radio play based on this that is good, but I think some of the recording is hard to hear. I think "Keep Your Shape" is the better title.
Let's discuss a bit in order to understand the theme some. The Story is about these three aliens who've come to earth to create a passage way for their home planet to invade the earth. These aliens are Shapshifters. What is interesting is that even though they are shapeshifters they are only allowed to be in the shapes determined by tradition and rules that align with their professions, which they did not choose for themselves. The aliens question this premise that they should be something they are not interested in being.
The overtones of religion are clear--references to tradition, to this is how it has been for thousands of years; word play on godlessness (here shapelessness, and the Shapeless One). The creation of evil in the idea of the Shapeless One is dead on for overtones of religion; a caste system where individuals should be happy to be in the caste they are born in and never aspire to be anything else.
Recommended: yes. If you have a teen who has to write a paper on a short story of their choosing, this would be a good one to use. It isn't very long, but there is lots to uncover and explain.
February 13, 2026
✒️ Wild short story about the curious potential of the alteration of beings.
📕Published —Galaxy Science Fiction, Vol. 7, No. 2, November 1953 . In the public domain.
જ⁀🍋 Read e-book version on Project Gutenberg. 🟡
જ⁀🍇 Read e-book version on Kindle. 🟣
✴︎🚀✴︎💫✴︎🚀✴︎
📕Published —Galaxy Science Fiction, Vol. 7, No. 2, November 1953 . In the public domain.
જ⁀🍋 Read e-book version on Project Gutenberg. 🟡
જ⁀🍇 Read e-book version on Kindle. 🟣
✴︎🚀✴︎💫✴︎🚀✴︎
August 11, 2020
Another masterpiece of the legendary author. The summary of the story can be as follows: a detachment of aliens arrives on Earth in order to prepare a springboard for the subsequent invasion of their race on our planet. All their previous attempts have failed, and all their previous reconnaissance detachments have disappeared... All the most interesting awaits the reader ahead in this short story.
July 21, 2018
Good strong story abt casts and shape shifters.
February 3, 2020
Hilarious, another space farce from the master of imagination.
August 19, 2020
I enjoyed this story. It reminded me of the Changelings from Star Trek DS9, though the mythology and caste system here was perhaps more interesting.
September 8, 2020
Fun little Sci Fi short story. Very imaginative plot, the story flowed nicely, and I enjoyed it.
May 12, 2023
lovely
May 9, 2024
I read this years ago and woke up this morning thinking about it. Will have to reread, but my memory of it pulled me out of a ecological depression spiral.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 15, 2024
-Я тут думав ….
- Думав?! Це як мислив?
- Вашій касті це заборонено!
- Думав?! Це як мислив?
- Вашій касті це заборонено!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 28, 2025
Grom gives you wiiings! I'd become a slime mould... "That millennia had evolved into birds." keep your religion out of my reading! Minus 1 ⭐️.
April 7, 2026
Scifi short story by a master, aliens, well done!!
July 19, 2026
rigid beings get
taste of sweet amorphous life
ready to take flight
taste of sweet amorphous life
ready to take flight
October 30, 2019
Funny science fiction story and anti-socialist allegory.
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews