THE TROUBLE WITH TYCHO (1976)
Acrylic on Illustration Board

While excavating on the Moon, an astronaut bites the dust (I couldn’t resist) and another fights vainly against a malevolent alien energy. 1/3

#sciencefiction #illustration #clifforddsimak #acebooks

oggi, 15 luglio, alle ore 14 su radio onda rossa: sei racconti di clifford simak

Tutta Scena Teatro ★ Radio Onda Rossa 87.9 fm
oggi, martedì 15 luglio 2025, ore 14

● riduzione di
ANNI SENZA FINE (CITY)
6 racconti
di Clifford D. Simak

un progetto di lacasadargilla / Lisa Ferlazzo Natoli, Alice Palazzi, Maddalena Parise, con la collaborazione di Alessandro Ferroni, Tania Garribba, Fortunato Leccese, Diego Sepe, Roberta Zanardo

adattamento a cura di Silvana Natoli

voci registrate e attori: Simone Càstano, Lorenzo Frediani, Tania Garribba, Silvio Impegnoso, Fortunato Leccese, Anna Mallamaci, Alice Palazzi, Diego Sepe, Roberta Zanardo

realizzazione per strumenti a tastiera del canone enigmatico a 4 voci ‘1074’ di J. S. Bach: Gianluca Ruggeri

esecuzione dal vivo: Ivano Guagnelli

allestimento: Camilla Carè e Maddalena Parise

regia del suono: Alessandro Ferroni

Umani, mutanti, robot e cani. Il mondo immaginato da Simak racconta il lento e misterioso declino della civiltà umana e sono i Cani, intorno a fuochi notturni, a raccontarne la storia.

https://archive.org/details/city.1.6 (1h 26′)

#AlessandroFerroni #AlicePalazzi #AnnaMallamaci #AnniSenzaFine #Bach #CamillaCarè #cani #City #CliffordDSimak #CliffordSimak #DiegoSepe #fantascienza #FortunatoLeccese #GianlucaRuggeri #IvanoGuagnelli #JSBach #lacasadargilla #LisaFerlazzoNatoli #LorenzoFrediani #MaddalenaParise #mutanti #racconti #radio #RadioOndaRossa #riduzione #RobertaZanardo #robot #ROR #RORRadioOndaRossa #SilvanaNatoli #SilvioImpegnoso #SimoneCàstano #TaniaGarribba #TuttaScenaTeatro #umani

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950) (Brown, Asimov, Boucher, Leiber, Knight, Simak)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it remain complete unknowns.

See my inaugural post in this series for my reasoning behind selecting Galaxy under H. L. Gold.

Previously: the October 1950 issue.

Up Next: the December 1950 issue.

Let’s get to the stories. We have the first Galaxy masterpiece!

• Don Sibley’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (November 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Fredric Brown’s “Honeymoon in Hell” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The year is 1962. The Cold War heats up. The race for a permanent presence on the Moon takes center stage. Each side “had landed a few men” and claimed it as their own (4). Each side races to construct a space station in orbit to facilitate the construction of a permanent base on the moon. But there’s another worrying world-wide trend–a massive gender imbalance in new births! Not enough boys! Riots. Cults. What’s the plan?

Capt. Raymond F. Carmody, retired from the space service (at age 27) after a successful flight to the Moon, steps into the ring. Resisting an administrative role in the service, he’d chosen a new career: cybernetics, “the science of electronic calculating machines” (9). In his new position, he had access to a powerful computer called Junior, built in 1958, tasked with issues of national security. Alone with the machine, he feeds Junior the data. Junior doesn’t have an answer. But Junior does offer a rare extrapolation that Carmody will be married on the morrow.

And a meeting with the President reveals the nature of the plan to birth a male child on the moon to avoid whatever on Earth is causing the problem! He’ll be legally married before they head to the moon and divorced if the pairing doesn’t work out. The catch? His wife will be Russian and their honeymoon will be Hell Crater.1 The “lucky” woman? Anna Borisovna is also a pilot of “experimental rockets on short-range flights” (16). Alcohol included as “icebreaker” for a “happy honeymoon” (19). The twelve day stay will be “plenty of time to get off before the Lunar night” (18) (Brown certainly intends the pun). And then the story morphs, abruptly, into a first contact story. Or does it?

This is an odd story. At its core it’s about a man and a woman (and mortal enemies) who go to the moon to have sex. But it’s the 50s. They need to be married! And all the references to the act are double entendres. As the ridiculousness fades, Brown settles on a rather enlightened position considering the Cold War terror of the moment–détente with the Soviets, politics and all, remains possible (under some circumstances). The story implies that Carmody falls head-over-heels for Anna due to the similarities of their careers and status as intellectual equals despite their divergent politics. Don Sibley’s issue cover shows her abilities under stressful circumstances. Carmody’s even willing to head to the Soviet Union to be with her! Love trumps all message aside, I am not convinced by the reading experience. Brown relays the strange events that transpire on Mars, and almost all of Carmody and Anna’s interactions, after they occur. It weakens the effect.

Somewhat recommended.

Isaac Asimov’s “Misbegotten Missionary” (variant title: “Green Patches”) (1950), 3/5 (Average): “Misbegotten Missionary” begins from the perspective of an alien entity that slipped onboard a human ship after its barrier faltered for a moment. The alien utterly believes that it is a superior “unified organism” (34) over the “life fragments” that populate the ship (34). Fanatical in its mindset, the shape-shifting alien wants to convert the entire vessel to its ways–without their consent. Slowly the nature of its own world, the purpose of the human vessel, and the fate of a past voyage become clear.

While not a miserable entry in his canon, I am starting to dread the Asimov stories in Galaxy and struggle to write coherently about them. And there’s a serialized novel on the horizon that I haven’t read yet and thus cannot skip– The Stars, Like Dust (1951). While far superior to “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), “Misbegotten Missionary” defeats its initial success with a laborious exposition of what happened before. I appreciated the Asimov’s attempt to convey alienness of the entity’s perspective. Maybe if you’re interested in the evolution of Asimov’s attempts to write about entire planets as alien consciousness this is worth tracking down.

I reviewed this in 2021 and completely forgot. I was even more cruel in the earlier review!

Anthony Boucher’s “Transfer Point” (1950), 3/5 (Average): Three survivors retreat beneath the Earth’s surface after two apocalyptic events–the release of a new element (agnoton) and an attack by mysterious “yellow bands” (are they light-like? It’s not entirely clear. It’s pulpy on purpose). The scientist Kirth-Labbery constructed the self-sufficient retreat due to his allergies (!). His daughter Lavra spends her time eating fruit grown in the hydroponics bay. And Vyrko, a self-described intellectual poet, observes and writes about the end of the world, pines after his lost love, and reads historical pulp science fiction –including Damon Knight’s “Not with a Bang” (1950) and Robert A. Heinlein’s “By His Bootstraps” (1941). He notices that only one author seems to predict correctly what will happen. And also strange narrative parallels with himself…

I’m a sucker for metafictional science fiction that contains references and quotations from other authors both real and invented. Boucher’s “Transfer Point” serves as a recursive commentary on the nature of genre and its favorite tropes (last man and woman as Adam and Eve, time travel, etc.). Behind the tale’s ultra-pulpy exterior and sappy silliness, Boucher jabs (gently and with a smile) at science fiction’s Campbellian delusion of future prediction. Despite its moments, Boucher can’t approach the heights of Richard Matheson’s “Patterns of Survival” (1955), a far more complex commentary on the power of science fiction.

Somewhat recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), 5/5 (Masterpiece): I reviewed this story in 2013. I’ve decided to reread it and modify my earlier review.

In Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.’s influential The Vital Center: The Politics of Freedom (1949), a blueprint of the “new liberal self-image,” he describes the post-WWII period as an “age of anxiety” in which “Western man” is “tense, uncertain, adrift.”2 Channeling this sentiment, branded as an “American brand of misery” (83), Leiber imagines an America transformed after a limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

The physical landscape mirrors the psychological scars of New York’s inhabitants. “H-Bomb scars” tunnel faces (78). The Empire State Building thrusts out of “Inferno like a mangled finger” (77). In a disturbed attempt to maintain control, a new “puritanical morality” (80) replete with “anti-sex songs” (78) and required masks to cover female faces takes hold. A sinister media landscape manifests the corruption within. Billboards promote “hysterical slogans” in which “the very letters of the advertiser’s alphabet have begin to crawl with sex” (78). New TV gadgets facilitate touch and pseudo-connection (80). Perverse new forms of TV entertainment, in particular male wrestlers pitted against masked women, transfix all audiences.

Wysten Turner, the British narrator, gets caught up in the disturbing changes that have swept the US. He rescues a masked woman from a car driven by youths replete with hooks designed to snag the dresses of passing women.  She embodies loneliness and despair. And he wants to help. Soon he finds himself unable to identify the new erotic and violent rituals of control and release. The games layer on themselves. Our narrator, also manipulated, flees in shame when the bizarre tableau’s true nature is unmasked.

Leiber doles out fascinating and punchy commentary on the anxieties of the modern world. A disturbed, erotic, creepy, and hyper-violent exploration of that reflexive Cold War tendency to equate the inability to control and triumph abroad as caused by internal crisis within society as a whole. A brilliant satire of late 40s/early 50s American Cold War culture.

Highly recommended.

Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I reviewed this story in 2023. I decided not to reread it. I’ve reproduced the review below.

The Kanamit, pig-like humanoid aliens, arrive on Earth with a promise to assist humanity that appears to have zero caveats. Their similarity to a human food animal creates a disquieting horror: “when a think with the countenance of a fiend comes from the stars and offers a gift, you are disinclined to accept” (91). The Kanama proclaim that they want “to bring you the peace and plenty which we ourselves enjoy, and which we have in the past brought to other races throughout the galaxy” (92). They introduce fantastic power sources, anti-nuclear explosion shields, and technology to exponentially enhance agricultural productivity. Soon there are no “more standing armies, no more shortages, and no unemployment” (98). But no one can decode their language. And when someone finally figures it out, it will be too late.

I don’t completely understand why “To Serve Man” is one of Knight’s best-known short fictions. It won the 2001 Retro Hugo Award for Best Short Story. I would have voted for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950) from the list of nominees! That said, “To Serve Man” is an effective twist-ending story that plays with our expectations but doesn’t have the reflective or incisive impact of Knight’s best — for example “The Enemy” (1958), “You’re Another” (1955), or even “Time Enough” (1960) in Far Out (1961). I’m probably in the minority in this view. 

Somewhat recommended.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Notes

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #avantGarde #bookReviews #books #CliffordDSimak #DamonKnight #FredricBrown #fritzLeiber #HLGold #IsaacAsimov #sciFi #scienceFiction #ShortStories

Magazine Review: Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950) (Simak, Sturgeon, MacLean, Matheson, Leiber, Brown, Asimov)

Preliminary Note: I plan on reading all 116 issues of the influential, and iconic, SF magazine Galaxy under H. L. Gold’s editorship (October 1950-October 1961) in chronological order. How long this project will take or how seriously/systematically I will take it are complete unknowns. I am a reader of whim. I will choose whether to reread certain stories that I’ve previously covered. Serialized novels will only be reviewed after I complete the entire work and posted as separate reviews. Why Galaxy, you might ask?

First, I can’t escape the pull of 1950s science fiction focused on social commentary and soft science. Second, I am obsessed with 50s American politics during a time of affluence, the rise of TV and mass culture, and the looming terror of the Cold War. Third, there are a legion of well-known 50s authors I’ve yet to address in any substantial manner on the site who appeared behinds its illustrious covers. Fourth, H. L. Gold was interested in all different types of stories.

As SF Encyclopedia explains, Galaxy was an “immediate success” in part because “Astounding was at this time following John W Campbell Jr’s new-found obsession with Dianetics and was otherwise more oriented towards technology.” Gold’s interests, on the other hand, “were comparatively free-ranging: he was interested in psychology, sociology and satire and other humor, and the magazine reflected this.”

I hope you enjoy this series! Feel free to join.

Up Next: the November 1950 issue.

• David Stone’s cover for Galaxy Science Fiction, ed. H. L. Gold (October 1950)

You can read the entire issue here.

Clifford D. Simak’s Time Quarry (variant title: Time and Again) (1950). Serialized over three issues. I will post an individual review after I complete the serialization.

Richard Matheson’s “Third From the Sun” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): Previously reviewed a decade ago here. As I’ve enjoyed a lot of Matheson I’ve covered as of late, I decided to reread this one.

A brief distillation of dread, a “normal” American family (father, wife, children) and their neighbors plot radical action. Told with crisp lines of dialogue–“‘What time is it?’ she asked, ‘About five.’ ‘We’d better get ready.’ ‘Yes, we’d better.’ They made no move” (61)–Matheson embodies the existential anguish of looming annihilation. While the exact nature isn’t spelled out, it’s not hard to infer the following passage is a reference to nuclear war: “In a few years […] the whole planet would go up with a blinding flash. This was the only way out. Escaping, starting all over again” (62). As the family gets ready and interacts with their co-conspirators on the day of action, Matheson conveys the strangeness of it all by making everyday behaviors points of epistemological immensity. For example, as the family leaves their house and pauses on the porch for the final time, the husband asks “should we lock the door?” (64). She can only respond by smiling “helplessly” and running her hand through her hair, “Does it matter”?” (64).

Unfortunately, the twist is spelled out in the title. But unlike other twist stories, Matheson creates real import with the suggestions that this has all happened before. Despite its tantalizing allure and well-crafted moments, I’d still rank this among Matheson’s middling works. It’s no “Pattern for Survival” (1955) or “Dance of the Dead” (1955).

It’s the second best short fiction in the magazine. Recommended. But then again, I’m a complete sucker for nuclear dread short stories!

Theodore Sturgeon’s “The Stars Are the Styx” (1950), 4/5 (Good): A preliminary thought: was Frederik Pohl thinking of this story when he wrote Gateway (1975)? Pohl was a religious reader of SF and took over Galaxy after Gold’s tenure.

The premise: Humans created Curbstone, an artificial satellite around Earth, to facilitate the ultimate scientific achievement–near instantaneous transportation across the galaxy. How? Individual spaceships, with a solitary crew person or couple, will be hurled out from Curbstone at various points across the space time continuum. They will “appear” in 6000 years and connect to each other (and back to Earth) via a web of “force-beams in the form of a tremendous sphere” by which, like “the synaptic paths of a giant brain, “matter will be transmitted instantly” (74). There’s a catch. Only 54% of the crews will survive the voyage. Some will “appear” in conjunction with other pieces of matter and explode, others will be unable to connect force-beams, some crewmen might go insane before the process completes, etc.

The story revolves around the aging (and rotund) Senior Release Officer on Curbstone, who certifies, counsels, and guides the strange collection of humans who gather at the station willing to take such a risk. Like Charon guiding the boat across the River Styx taking the dead to the “Other Side” (72), he passes humans along the voyage–unable to take it himself. He’s caught in-between both worlds. Unable to return home. Unable to climb into the spacecraft and make the dash for greatness across the universe. He wants to make connections with those on the stations. But he knows that he might be sending them to their deaths. He watches young love, unable to participate, yearning for a touch. The story transpires within the interior thoughts of everyone involved: those taking the steps towards certification, others trying to make a final decision to head off or return to earth, or those who would make the decision if they found someone to make it with them. You could easily imagine this story shorn of its 50s descriptors and redrafted for the New Wave.

Often stories that touch on the longue durée suggest that a moment of far future technological triumph, think a generation ship story in which arrival is hundreds of years away, will trap society in stasis. Sturgeon follows this pattern: “And all Earth is in a state of arrested development because of Curbstone. Everything is held in check” (85). I don’t buy it. 6000 years is an inconceivable length of time! I imagine that humans will more likely ignore something that seems too distant to be relevant (I mean, we’re experiencing Global Warming now but….). Rather than a “realistic” imagining of future tech, “The Stars Are the Styx” operates best as a rumination on the drive to escape, to achieve, to control, to transcend death, and the struggling souls navigating those contingencies. And here Sturgeon triumphs.

This would be a masterpiece if Sturgeon tightened it up a bit. Recommended.

Fritz Leiber’s “Later Than You Think” (1950), 3/5 (Average): The Explorer, returning from a voyage to space, rushes to discuss a recent discovery on Earth with the Archeologist. But this is a very different Earth. Everything gleams with “radiation from some luminous material impregnating the walls and floors” (108). The Archaeologist discovered a time-capsule of artifacts from an earlier civilization that possibly destroyed itself with “atomic energy, out of control” (111). At the revelation, the Explorer’s excitement turns to anguish. He wanted to learn about a species that succeeded! One that successfully survived and strived and aspired and wasn’t prone to the misuse of technology that “outstripped their psychology” (112). Instead, both the present and the past seem obsessed with the idea that “others, greater than themselves, had prospered before them and then died, leaving them to rebuilt a civilization from ruins” (112). The past seems too similar to the present.

Like the Matheson and Asimov in the same issue, Leiber attempts to speculate on the “metaphoric aftershocks” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the global mind. The twist, silly perhaps, is designed to make us think about the impact of the Cold War decisions–that could be apocalyptic–we might make. But Leiber seems to suggest there’s a destructive heart beating within all highly sentient beings that we cannot escape. Devolution will occur. We will make a fatal error.

Minor Leiber. It’s not bad. It’s not good.

Katherine MacLean’s “Contagion” (1950), 3.5/5 (Good): I’ve read three of MacLean’s fictions–  Missing Man (1975), “Echo” (1970), and  “Interbalance” (1960)–and enjoyed elements of each. A bunch of her short stories–either ghost-written for her husband or under her own name–appeared in Galaxy under Gold’s stewardship. I look forward to this project as an excuse to finally read them!

“Contagion” (1950) is a contact with an alien planet tale that’s legitimately odd. A hunting party looking for specimens of alien life in order to dissect, sets off from the spaceship Explorer across an alien planet called Minos. Reasonably, the crew is obsessed with a minute medical analysis of flora and fauna. There’s good reason: “the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat” (116). The galaxy seems strewn with vanished colonies and the “corpses of ships” which had “touched on some plague planet” (116).

Unlike other contact stories, the MacLean focuses in extra-ordinary detail on the nature of the medical contraptions, medications and medication dispensaries, and decontamination systems that seem to fill-up all available space within the Explorer. The hunting party encounters a majestically shaped human who spins a crazy tale of adaptation and disease. He’s put through the gamut of medical analysis and invited to visit with the crew. The women, in particular, are obsessed with his physique and pioneer spirit. But there’s a catch, obviously.

If you’re writing about the male gaze re-imagined and critiqued by female authors, put this one on your list. If you’re interested in medical SF, put this one on your list. It’s almost surreal in the strange crisis that transfix the psyche and body–male and female–as the nature of the titular contagion becomes apparent.

Fredric Brown’s “The Last Martian” (1950), 2.75/5 (Below Average): Brown ranks among the authors I mentioned above that I have yet to address in a substantial manner. I’ve only read and reviewed The Light in the Sky Are Stars (1953), a slick 1950s vision of the fanatical men and women who take America by the scruff of the neck and yank it, without letting the law get in the way, towards space and the deep beyond.

A newspaperman learns about a potential story: There’s a guy down in a nearby bar “who claims to be from Mars” (145). He heads over to investigate! Maybe he’ll need to call the police. Over the course of far too many beers, the man reveals incredibly specific details about life on Mars and a catastrophe that ravished society. He simultaneously remembers the life of the man whose body he supposedly inhabits. Is he insane? Did he catch some fragment of Martian intelligence? There’s a twist of course.

“The Last Martian” is polished but doesn’t register as more than minor and forgettable magazine filler.

Isaac Asimov’s “Darwinian Pool Room” (1950), 2/5 (Bad): Mercifully the shortest story in the magazine, Asimov’s “Darwinian Pool Room” imagines a group of academics in Dr. Trotter’s laboratory ruminating on the nature of evolution. The state of a pool table after a game finishes–balls in pockets–and the challenges recreating the game from its ending state serves as the dominate metaphor around which the discusses revolves.

Asimov seems to want to say something about rapid evolutionary transformation/extinction as connected human discoveries in hydrogen weapons and computing. Instead, I couldn’t help but imagine the story as a clichéd manifestation of bored, mostly drunk, graduate students babbling about a vast range of topics all dolled up with pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo. I would know, I remember those conversations with a combination of cringe, intellectual jealousy, and growing nostalgia (how I want to be a graduate student early in my degree again!). Regardless, it fits Gold’s remit to focus on idea-heavy stories that don’t always defer to action.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1950s #avantGarde #bookReviews #books #CliffordDSimak #fantasy #fiction #fritzLeiber #IsaacAsimov #KatherineMacLean #sciFi #scienceFiction #TheodoreSturgeon #writing

Exploration Log 9: Three More Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)

• Graphic created by my father

Back in July 2024, I posted six interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988). Since then I’ve tracked down three more. As in that post, I’ll provide a rundown of each interview and provide quotes of interesting passages. In the interviews, Simak comes across as an author deeply suspicious of rigorous generic distinctions, passionate about all life, and open to science fiction as an ever-changing and evolving entity.

As readers of the site know, I have a substantial interest in Simak’s SF that culminated last year in my September article “‘We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life’: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak” (2024) in Journey Planet #84. Since then I’ve posted an Exploration Log on his 1971 Worldcon speech, reviewed Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (1957), and contributed to a podcast on “The Huddling Place” (1944) (the second City story).

Enjoy! And if you know of more interviews (or are able to update the Internet Speculative Fiction Database entry as it only includes five of the nine interviews I’ve covered) let me know.

THE INTERVIEWS

• Jim Odbert’s cover for Rune # 43 (May 1975)

1. Jim Young interviews Simak in Rune # 43 (May 1975). You can read it online here. The review was conducted at his home in Minnetonka, Minnesota in May, 1973. Rune was the fanzine for The Minnesota Science Fiction Society.

Young’s interview, titled “Science Fiction and Meaningful Existence,” starts with a summary of Simak’s achievements and impressions of the “kind, fatherly” man. The meat of the interview begins with a rumination on the concept of “mainstream fiction.” Simak posits that “there is no such thing as mainstream fiction, there is simply fiction.” As with many other interviews, he argues that part of the problem with defining science fiction is our inability to recognize it as “fantasy.” He, personally, has no special guidelines when writing.

Conversation shifts to favorite authors (Steinbeck, Faulkner, Proust, etc.). Simak states he reads Grapes of Wrath “almost once a year.” In other interviews, Simak seems reluctant to identify specific SF works that he admires–he often mentions authors instead. Here is an exception: “I think that one of the finest books ever written in science fiction is Walter Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (fix-up 1959). He also, surprisingly (at least to me), identifies Larry Niven as a favorite.

Conversation shifts to the New Wave movement. While Simak is open to experimentation (see his WorldCon speech), he states his personal preferences that a story should still be present in SF — “I’d hate to see us lose that.” Young does not ask for examples. Young presses him on whether SF should “try to warn people about problems that might come up in the future.” Simak, confusingly, suggests in response that contemporary SF is somehow losing its “universality.” He suggests stories on life post-nuclear war are the most successful SF has been exploring a future potentiality. Other than warnings about the “atomic threat,” Simak does not believe SF has been very effective at “placing ourselves in the position of pamphleteers rather than writers.”

Simak moves into a moment of speculation that echoes and interacts with a lot of his own writing. He imagines two futures for humanity (if it survives): 1) humanity continues to be a “great technological race, and we will go out into space and probably the stars — despite the limitations of the speed of light” or 2) once they have gone so far in that direction, they will drop technology, and they will no longer have these technological triumphs — it won’t mean anything to them any longer.” His work almost systematically explores these two paths. See for example A Choice of Gods (1971) (ignore my rating — I imagine I would enjoy this one more now) and my article of his 40s and 50s stories. Simak brings up the Counterculture as an example of people who are not talking about technology or worldly success but instead “meaningful existence.” He acknowledges that this particular movement might not exist for long but another future version might position them as the “forerunners of the future.”

The conversations flows into a discussion of ESP. Simak comes off as a true believer who does not buy current scientific views discounting its existence: “we either don’t have the instruments to measure it, or it may not be measurable.” He returns to his desire that “we’ll probably try to simplify our lives in another hundred years, and possibly to use less energy” with more focus on “happiness.” I’m with you Simak on these two points! On ESP? nah. He concludes the interview with a proclamation of his love of history (despite claiming that he does not use it as background in his stories).

Ultimately this interview treads familiar ground with the other six surveyed. Simak is a bit less diplomatic than he can be on the New Wave.

• Ed Valigursky’s cover for the 1958 edition of Clifford D. Simak’s City (1952)

2. Dave Truesdale and Paul McGuire interview Simak in Tangent # 2 (May 1975). You can read it online here. The link also contains an audio file with some short commentary “erroneously omitted from the 1975 print interview.” This was not a planned interview but rather a brief, unprepared, discussion after a panel at Minicon 10 in April 1975.

The first questions cover Simak’s writing habits (planning plots, polishing, having fun while writing), current projects, and the personal and thematic evolution of his work. On the later point Simak reiterates a comment claim he makes that “the Golden Age is right now” (he’s explained in other interviews that early SF was often quite poor and anyone could get published as there were so few authors). He points out that even his masterpiece City (fix-up 1959) contains writing that is somewhat “crude and juvenile” that he has moved on from. He puts contemporary claims that the 30s were a “Golden Age” to nostalgic: “you’re young, and this is a new experience, and you think, how wonderful it is.”

Dave and Paul bring up Richard (Dick) Geis, who “seems to only like one certain type of science fiction,” and his claims about genre. Simak takes issue with Geis’ view: “Dick has created a pedestal on which he stands and screams to the high heavens that there’s only one kind of fiction.” Simak, on the other hand, believes “that’s not fact. The strength of science fiction lies in its diversity today.”

He concludes the interview emphasizing praising new voices like Joe Haldeman–“he’s beautiful.” And he knows that in the future SF will evolve further: “there will be kids starting out who are writing kind of, uh, punk stories.” He feels that this range and evolution is part of SF’s strength and we shouldn’t get “faddish” and write only one kind of story.

• Kathy Marschall’s cover for Lan’s Lantern # 11 (July 1981)

3. George J. Laskowski, Jr. (Lan) and Maia interview Simak in Lan’s Lantern # 11 (July 1981). You can read it online here. The interview was conducted at Minicon, 1980 in Minneapolis. The issue is a “Cliff Simak Special” with art inspired by his work and various remembrances by George R. R. Martin, Jack Williamson, Algis J. Budrys, James E. Gunn, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova, and many others, etc.

The interview starts with a discussion of Simak’s earliest SF stories and his early desire to write. He mentions that he only knew that “The Cubes of Ganymede” had been published when he saw a news release in a fanzine that he had been accepted (by that point he had published numerous other stories)! However, as T. O’Conner Sloane was a notoriously slow editor, he received his copy of the story back three years later with a note saying that he could no longer publish it as it had “become outdated.” Simak confesses that the story was terrible anyway. Lan points out that Simak’s first published short story (1931’s “The World of the Red Sun”) contains an early, if not the first, example of psychology used as a weapon. Unlike E. E. “Doc” Smith, Simak points out that you can’t rely on “mass technology” and power lies “within the mind.” This becomes a central tenet of his SF. He also indicates his “quarrel” with the argument that SF should end happily. We might not win against aliens or gain intelligence — our “egocentrism” might get in the way.

Unlike some of the other more surface and predictable interviews, Lan and Maia quickly dive into a meaty discussion of Simak’s robots (while they don’t mention it by name, they clearly discuss the 1960 story “All the Traps of Earth” in addition to the robots in the 1959 fix-up City). He mentions that he treats robots in his stories as “surrogate humans”–humanity will make robots “so much like himself” even if there’s the possibility that they have “no soul.” Regardless, Simak believes we will make robots as “tools” even if they have names. Simak’s penchant for weird-looking aliens comes up next: “while it may be repulsive to us, we may be just as repulsive to it. If you strip off that repulsive outer cover of both of us, and try to get at what’s inside, there will certainly be, I think, some coming basis for understanding, or if not understand, at least sympathy.” A lengthy tangent begins in which Simak returns to his idea that perhaps in the far future something “greater than intelligence” and the use of tools will become important to future humans.

The Hugo-winning Way Station comes up next. Simak calls it “one of my three best novels.” He points out what he would rewrite if he could. “The Big Front Yard” (1958) and Mastodonia (1978)” come up next and the interaction between the two. The conversation moves to the issue of “faith-inspired” and “faith-inhibited” as concepts. Simak has a “theory that we might become a better race if we didn’t cling so closely to this faith” that he knows of towns in which inhabitants won’t go to stores run by members of another congregation (or religion). This is a more stridently critical stance towards religion than earlier interviews. In connection to dogmatism, they move on to discuss other dogmatic stances towards left-handedness and people who might not be viewed as traditionally productive members of society. Simak comes of, as is often the case, as open to diversity in all its forms.’

Simak discusses old age and the impact of illness on the elderly. His story “Shotgun Cure” (1961) comes up in which a price is given for an alien cure-all. Simak argues the story reiterates that “technology itself was a disease, and it was perhaps the greatest disease of all which will be cured. Well, not necessarily technology itself, but this rat-race, this high-pressured society we live in, which can be tied directly to technology.” Naturally the interview moves to Simak in retirement and why he waited until 72 to retired (something about Social Security and having a small income from writing).

Other topics briefly discussed in the rather unfocused end to the discussion: technological obsolescence, “Dusty Zebra” (1954), oddities like “Mr. Meek Plays Polo” (1944) in Planet Stories, his two collaborations, Time is the Simplest Thing (1961), “Lulu” (1957) (mysteriously “one of his favorites”), Project Pope (1981), Cosmic Engineers (1950), The Visitors (1980), and City (fix-up 1952).

I highly recommend this interview due to the preparation of the interviewers and the specific short stories and novels that come up beyond the predictable handful.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#11 #1970s #1980s #2 #43 #84 #bookReviews #CliffordDSimak #sciFi #scienceFiction #technology

Cached US Kindle giveaway on bsky: 10 copies of Clifford D. Simak's They Walked Like Men, over at https://bsky.app/profile/kithrup.bsky.social/post/3lkgnvgdluk2y

#KindleBookGiveaway #CliffordDSimak #TheyWalkedLikeMen

Cached US Kindle giveaway on bsky: 10 copies of Good Night, Mr. James: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 8), over at https://bsky.app/profile/kithrup.bsky.social/post/3lhovg7zehc26

#KindleBookGiveaway #CliffordDSimak #GoodNightMrJamesAndOtherStories

Exploration Log 6: Clifford D. Simak’s 1971 Worldcon Guest of Honor Speech

• Graphic created by my father

In an August 1967 editorial in Galaxy titled “S.F. as a Stepping Stone”, Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) voiced his extreme disapproval of the New Wave movement as “‘mainstream’ with just enough of a tang of the not-quite-now and the not-quite-here to qualify it for inclusion in the genre” (4). He concludes: “I hope that when the New Wave has deposited its forth and receded, the vast and solid shore of science fiction will appear once more and continue to serve the good of humanity” (6). The implication is clear: there is an Platonic science fiction form that exists (and that he writes) that must be rediscovered.

Fellow “classic” author Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) offered a different, and far more inclusive, take at his Guest of Honor speech at Norescon 1 (Worldcon 1971). In a environment of “shrill” disagreement between various New Wave and anti-New Wave camps, Simak celebrated science fiction as a “forum of ideas” open to all voices (148).

Preliminary note: I read the speech in Worldcon Guest of Honor Speeches, ed. Mike Resnick and Joe Siclari (2006). You can listen to the speech (at the 28:00 min. mark) here. For a wonderful range of photographs of Simak at the convention, check out this indispensable photo archive.

As I did with six Simak interviews earlier this year, I will paraphrase his main points and offer a few thoughts of my own.

Let’s get to the speech!

• Jay Kay Klein’s photograph of Robert Silverberg, Clifford D. Simak, and Isaac Asimov at the 1971 Worldcon

After introducing his family (his son and daughter attended the convention), Clifford D. Simak surveys the general complains made against New Wave science fiction: “I have heard it said that science fiction has lost its sense of wonder; that too many bad stories are being written; that much of it is unreadable” (147). While confessing that he does not understand all the stories published in that moment, he points out that there has always been awful SF — including stories that he wrote himself (147). He wagers that “if a panel of competent critics were to make a survey of science fiction through the years, they would find more praiseworthy pieces of fiction writing in the last few years than in any previous period,” including the “so-called” Golden Age (146).

The speech shifts to the “hopeful signs” represented by the current New Wave environment (148). He argues that the “old tradition” forged in the “thirties and forties” will be “enriched and strengthened” by new voices (148). He suggests the diversity of viewpoints shows that there “must be something viable and vital in the field to attract such talent” (148). In his most poignant and quotable moment, Simak argues that in order for science fiction to be a “forum for ideas,” it is essential that “it attract new talent” (148). He approves of the growing critical study of the genre.

In the following section he finally addresses the New Wave by its name and the controversy it has engendered. He argues that the movement “has become, or is in the process of becoming, a very important part of science fiction” (148). And that different interpretations of science fiction existing at the same time does not invalidate the other view: “we were faced by change and accepted it and made it part of us” (148). Science fiction’s great appeal has been its flexibility to engage with the new and controversy representing many points of view “is a healthy thing” as it shows the refusal to be complacent and demonstrates a deep care about the field (149). He bemoans the “shrillness of some of the controversy” emphasizes the big-tent mentality that there is room for all (149).

As Robert J. Ewald, in When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is From the North: The Pastoral Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak (2006), suggests, I think it might be worth interrogating Simak’s writing in the late 60s and 70s as a product (or a thread) of the amorphous New Wave. His novels, and interviews, would increasingly question the generic divisions between fantasy and science fiction. In the more permissive publishing environment of the New Wave moment, he would publish his own genre-breaking experiments such as The Goblin Reservation (1968), Destiny Doll (1971), and Out of Their Minds (1970). Ironically, the New Wave critic Asimov applauded Simak’s speech (see photo above).

I found Simak’s speech a refreshing a inclusive message. Here an author of the older generation who started writing in the 1930s steps up and defends the new as equally part of the multi-various generic edifice he helped construct. And in his own way, Simak would also participate in creating the new. Science fiction should, and must, be a forum for diverse ideas.

My other recent posts on Simak

Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford D. Simak (1967)

Exploration Log 5: “We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life”: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak

Exploration Log 4: Six Interviews with Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988)

#1960s #1970s #books #CliffordDSimak #fiction #paperbacks #sciFi #scienceFiction #writing

WHERE THE EVIL DWELLS (1982)
Mixed Media - 29 ½" x 18 ½"

Early in my career, Ace Books commissioned me to illustrate new covers for classics by grandmaster Clifford D. Simak: CITY, TIME AND AGAIN, and THE TROUBLE WITH TYCHO.
1/4

#fantasy #fantasyart #sff #illustration #clifforddsimak @delreybooks

Exploration Log 5: “We Must Start Over Again and Find Some Other Way of Life”: The Role of Organized Labor in the 1940s and ’50s Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak

• Cover art by Atun Purser

My article on organized labor in the 1940s and ’50s science fiction of Clifford D. Simak went live! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I’ve spent the last half year researching and reading religiously for this project–from topics such as Minnesota’s unique brand of radical politics to the work of contemporary intellectuals like C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) whom Simak most likely read.

Please check out the complete issue edited by Olav Rokne and Amanda Wakaruk over at Journey Planet. I have also embedded the PDF below.

The issue contains great work on the depiction of labor rights in a vast variety of other SF mediums. There are four articles that touch on vintage SF. The first two listed are by wonderful community members and official “Friends of the Site.”

Here is my article if it’s easier to read on the site. Click each image to enlarge.

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX

#1940s #1950s #bookReviews #CliffordDSimak #sciFi #scienceFiction