"YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY...AND YOU TAKES YOUR CHANCES 

 At least, that's what you do if your name is Tom Mishkin, and your spaceship is suddenly grounded by a mechanical malfunction, and you are forced to trek across an alien planet to get the needed part for your ship. 

 And you find that the alien planet, Harmonia, is populated by a bizarre and sometimes dangerous collection of creatures...like a robot that looks like a cast-iron tarantula, but with the biggest streak of cynicism (and incompetence) you ever saw on a robot -- or the five-headed man-eating snake, with Mob connections and a dese-dem-dose vocabulary -- or the myriad other odd creatures that inhabit Tom Mishkin's brave new world.  

 Robert Sheckley, one of the brightest talents in the science fiction galaxy, charts Mishkin's zig-zag course, from the improbable to the phantasmagoric and beyond.  Here is a literary tour de force charged with subtle satire, biting social commentary, and trenchant wit...a book that dazzles the reader with its rich imagination and insight into the future -- and the mind -- of a man.  "