BESIDE STILL WATERS

Episode #82 · Written by Robert Sheckley · Narrated by Scott Miller

A solitary prospector carves out a fragile life on a lonely asteroid with only a hand-built robot companion to keep the void at bay. But as the stars drift silently overhead, the bond between man and machine deepens toward a quiet reckoning neither was programmed to face.

Mark Rogers has never fit comfortably on Earth. So he leaves it behind, drifting through the asteroid belt in search of rare metals, a quiet place to think, and something like peace. When he settles on a lonely half-mile-thick rock, he names it Martha—after a woman he never met—and builds a life from scrap: an air pump, a shack, a patch of dirt, a few tanks of water, and an off-the-shelf robot. But Mark doesn’t just live with that robot. He builds him.

Little by little, wire by wire, word by word, he rewrites the machine into a companion he calls Charles. The two work, talk, joke, and watch the stars together. Their conversations become a ritual, their routines a kind of fragile normalcy, and their companionship something deeper than either of them fully grasps. Yet space is silent, time is indifferent, and machinery—like men—wears down. As the years stretch on and the air grows thin, the small world they’ve created begins to fail in ways that tests the limits of friendship, memory, and meaning.

Beside Still Waters is Robert Sheckley at his most intimate. Known for satire and humor, here he delivers a quiet, reflective story about companionship in the vast loneliness of space. It’s small in scope and huge in heart—one of those stories that lingers long after it ends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robert Sheckley (1928–2005) stands as one of the most distinctive voices of 20th-century speculative fiction. Born in Brooklyn and raised in New Jersey, he served in the Korean War before turning to writing, where he quickly became one of the genre’s most original thinkers. His work blended humor, philosophy, and farsighted social commentary, all sharpened by an unmistakable sense of irony.

Sheckley’s influence is immense. Filmmakers borrowed from him, futurists quoted him, and science fiction writers across decades studied his ability to twist an idea inside out in just a few pages. He published hundreds of short stories and dozens of novels, earning a reputation for compact brilliance and surprising emotional depth. “Beside Still Waters” is a perfect example—it’s simple, almost gentle, yet profoundly resonant. A reminder that even in the vastness of space, the most important stories are about connection.

LISTEN TO THE STORY

Listen to Beside still Waters by Robert Sheckley — a moving tale of isolation, companionship, and cosmic quiet in classic science fiction style.

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