Amazing Stories: “Conversation on Mars” in 1,000 Words, by Robert Sheckley (2005)

Thanks to the survival of the global financial system, we were able to purchase Amazing Stories magazine, Issue #609 (March 2005), through the website of Paizo Publishing. What’s inside? “Conversation on Mars,” a 1,000-word piece of fiction by Robert Sheckley.

According to Jeff Spock at Tangent: Short Fiction Review, “I felt
as if I was reading a story written by Kelly Link in response to a challenge worded something like "write a Mars colonization story
with Russian characters and instruments of torture." ... The vignette is both squirm- and smile-provoking, in addition to which it brings
up an unsettlingly timeless question -- will the colonization of space resemble Manifest Destiny, or Botany Bay?”

Robert Sheckley, who once said in an interview with Delos SF that Edgar Rice Burroughs was one of his favorite writers, died in December 2005.