The story starts with a familiar premise : Earth, having
become an enlightened techno-utopia, no longer executes
its criminals. Instead, such deviant elements are dumped
on the surface of a vaguely livable planet called
Omega. For good measure, the convicts' minds are wiped clean
of all past memories. Our protagonist is one of these convicts.

He's been sent up for murder. Problem is, he doesn't want to believe it. Problem with that is that the memories leaking out from "beneath the surface" seem to indicate that he is.

At the beginning, at least, he's got a few more important
things to worry about, like surviving. See, Omega doesn't have nice Earth values concerning the sanctity of life. Instead, a citizen's status is dependent upon how many people he can kill...but only according to the rules.

He narrowly escapes death, but only at the price of killing
in self-defense. This touches off a round of self-doubt, but, at the same time, catapults him into
Omegan society as the proprietor of a poisioners' shop. This gives him time to become acquainted with some of the more quaint Omegan customs, like mandatory substance addiction and the worship of Evil. Later, he finds himself the unhappy subject of a Hunt, and an unwilling participant in In the absence of patriachal authority, our happy band of convicts have developed a uniquely maladaptive society - one in which death is celebrated above all else. No wonder the average lifespan is only three years.

Eventually he uses his remaining morals to drag himself out of the muck and effect an escape. The Earth he finds is superfically a triumph of Utopian central planning : everyone has a job, everyone seems happy, crime and war are unknown, et. al. Robots cater to all humankind's needs. The worship of life and Good are central tenets of civilization. It is, oddly enough, a complete antithesis of Omega. The
people are SO open-hearted that they don't even mind his
presence, despite the fact that he sticks out like a sore
thumb.

Something is wrong. Very wrong. Naturally, finding this
wrong and curing it (and coincidentally coming to terms with
the split images of himself as killer/saviour) ties off
the novel.

I say "ties off" instead of "ends", because that's what it
feels like : a stopping point for a novel that could have
gone on longer. By the end of the book, I had become attached to the nutty, schizoid worlds of Omega and Earth, and curious as to the motives of the robots who are (implicitly) controlling them both.

Omegan life is downright entertaining; like a little boy poring through travel books crossed with the thrill of a police novel. Sheckley manages it all with a sort of deadpan/matter-of-fact narrative that manages to slip events past one so quickly that they're felt rather than seen.

The sheer weight of ideas reminds me of Phillip K. Dick novels. Perhaps this one, like so many of his, was written under a short contract. How else could one get delightful scenes of cowering outside the door to Hell's Congregation in a blizzard, or the twisted dual religions of Evil and Good that dominate Omega and Earth? Make no mistake...Sheckley can more than hold his own in astonishment.

I wanted more...but unless Hollywood picks up and films this one (not likely in the wake of Freejack's flop at the box office)it probably won't be forthcoming. If you can find this for a reasonable price (if you live in the UK, for instance, and have access to paperback reprints), give it a try. I'd be hesitant to pay great amounts for it used, unless I was more of a Sheckley fan...but it's books like this that keep me looking for more.