Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) published science fiction steadily between 1931 and his death in the late 80s. His work–from City (1952) to the Hugo-winning Way Station (1963)–often demonstrates a fascination with the rural environment and the lives of “ordinary” people confronted with the alien. As I am currently working on a mini-project related to Simak,¹ I thought I’d give a rundown of six of the seven interviews I’ve found reference to. I’ll also provide quotes of interesting passages, and a scanned version of one that isn’t available online. 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.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists five interviews on science fiction conducted with Clifford D. Simak–all published between 1975-1980. Muriel R. Becker’s indispensable Clifford D. Simak: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (1980) includes two more: a video interview from 1971 and another from 1976 in the Minneapolis Tribune.² I cannot find a copy of the latter. I provide links to the others in the post.

Obviously, which interview you want to read depends on your interests or questions you have about Simak. That said, I found Paul Walker’s the most fascinating (and frequently references in the little scholarship on the grandmaster).

I hope this is a helpful resource for anyone interesting in learning about or researching Simak!

EDIT: I’ve identified another Simak interview in Tangent No. 2 (May 1975). You can read it online here. I might include it in a follow-up post at some later point.

Check out my previous Exploration Log post: an interview with Adam Rowe, author of Worlds Beyond Time: Sci-Fi Art of the 1970s (2023).

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THE INTERVIEWS

1. Scholar and author James E. Gunn recorded a video interview with Clifford D. Simak in 1971 at World Science Fiction Convention in Boston.

Simak charts his earliest writing efforts, including his lost first manuscript, and his first experiences reading science fiction. He read Haggard, H. G. Wells, and Poe. And then in high school he picked up an early issue of Amazing felt a thrill that such a magazine existed. Soon he realized that he too could write for the magazines:at that time “there wasn’t too much competition and if a man could write anywhere near complementary [to what was in the magazine] you could sell.” He compares the early scene to the present in which “it’s much harder for a young writer to break in.”

He traces his early career across Midwest–North Dakota, Minnesota, etc.–as a newspaperman. His perambulatory existence prevented him from continuing his SF writing as “there’s no such thing as an eight-hour day or a 40-hour week” at the smaller newspapers. A more stable newspaper job in Minneapolis allowed him to return to science fiction. He discusses his influential letter exchange with a young Asimov, his early pulp work, and the restrictions that knowing too much about a topic places on the imagination. Simak conveys pride that his stories for John Campbell, Jr. placed “ordinary characters” in strange science fictional situations.

As he gained confidence as a writer, he attempted to write stories that has something substantial to say. He highlights Time and Again (variant title: Time Quarry (1950)–with its theme “that all living creatures are brothers” — as one of his earliest attempts at something meaty. Simak places City (fix-up 1952) as a product of the WWII era in which he was “terribly disillusioned” with what the “human race was doing to itself” and how he was upset that “we could continue to use war as a matter of national policy.” In addition, news of Dachau and other concentration camps inspired him to think of a world that he wanted to live in that served as a “plea” for “intellectual honesty and for some kindness and for some brotherhood.”

The interview shifts to the 1960s and his attempt to tie fantasy and science fiction together (this issue will be brought up in many of the other interviews in more detail). He emphasizes how the contemporary scene allows for “more and greater flexibility” to write more experimental works. The experimentation of others gives encouragement for one’s own visions (he mentions Delany, Heinlein, and Zelazny). As with the other interviews, Simak positions A Choice of Gods (1971) as the work he’s super proud of and he “hopes people will like it.”

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2. Simak’s second interview, conducted by Paul Walker, appeared in the fanzine Luna Monthly, #57 (Spring 1975). You can access the issue via this index. It later appeared in a fascinating collection of interviews Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews (1978) online here if you have an Internet Archive account.

Walker conducted the interview between January and June 1972.

As with the interview in Janus below, Walker attempts to understand the strange shift towards fantasy in Simak’s writing that occurred in the 60s and early 70s, in particular, the bizarre The Goblin Reservation (1968), The Werewolf Principle (1967), and The Destiny Doll (1971). Simak disavows stringent generic distinctions between fantasy and science fiction: “I think I would be inclined to call all imaginative stories fantasy and let it go at that” (1). He sees science fiction’s creation of a new mythology (robots, aliens, etc.) little different than the old mythology (goblins, ghosts, etc.) — hence the admixture in works like Goblin Reservation. While he does not think all authors should combine such elements, he does not want “hide-bound, self-imposed tradition” to prevent anyone from doing so (2).

The second meaty issue Walker poses is the characterization of Simak as a mystical writer due to his fixation with the nature of intelligence, the inevitability of death, and other basic factors of human existence. Simak declines the “honor” of such a designation. He argues that his fiction posits the “intellectual capacity” of humanity is “a tool designed, in some distant day, to bring about a complete understanding of the universe” (2). He is drawn to science fiction because it allows such questions to be asked. He argues that he “cannot bring myself to believe that life is purposefulness” (3). Intelligence instead must be the “forerunner to some other factor that will achieve the purpose of life” (3).

Walker interrogates the Simak’s views on technology in his fiction. Walker reads technology in Simak’s work as “not worth the price of anxiety, greed, and nuclear terror” and a menace that serves as “an obstacle to human self-realization, to simple peace of mind” (2). Simak disagrees: “there is nothing wrong with technology” (3). The problem is with its implementation and control: “technology should be used for the betterment of mankind and to make life more meaningful” (3). Instead, technology has been used “to advance the cause of our commercial-industrial society, which is not the same thing as the betterment of mankind” (3). The blame, according to Simak, “likes in us, not in our machines” (3).

“I persist in the believe that so magical a thing as life cannot all have been for naught” (5)

What about Simak’s religion? Walker initially thinks he’s “agnostic” despite the Christian feel of some of his work. Again, Simak disagrees: “Agnostic? Atheistic? I have never suggested that I was either an agnostic or an atheist” (4). Instead, Simak sees himself as “religious” as he cannot believe “the universe came into being by pure chance” (4). That said, he does not “accept God as a kindly old gentleman with a long, flowing bear and I would rather not accept Him as a cold First Principle that is concerned only with the precision and orderliness of the universe” (4). He feels that there is a “concerned, perhaps compassionate” mystery in the universe (4).

Simak is often described as a “regionalist” with a fixation on the rural countryside of his childhood home in Wisconsin. He disagrees with the designation. He emphasizes how his childhood nostalgia, “there was a peace and an understand there I have found nowhere else” (5), clashes with his current views: “when I go back now I find myself faintly disappointed and slightly alien, for reality is not quite the same as the picture built up in my mind” (5). While he “cannot abide a city” (5), his stories take place within the fantasy that he has created around his rural childhood. He still feels the irresistible “pull of the land,” the feel of the soil, and a “mystic experience” growing vegetables in his small garden (5).

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3. Bill Brohaugh interviewed Simak in the fanzine Janus, ed. Janice Bogstad and Jeanne Gomoll’s (June 1976). You can access the issue via this index.

“My aliens, and I suppose the aliens of quite a number of other writers, are based on a very deep respect for all kinds of life” (11).

Brohaugh’s interview is a bit scattershot. I have summarized only a few responses. Brohaugh dives straight into the heady topic of genre. Simak disavows clearcut differences between fantasy and science fiction: “I have always felt that we were a little narrow-minded in insisting that what we are writing is sf, because that’s a bastard term at best. What we are writing is fantasy. It may be fantasy based on physical sciences, it may be fantasy based on old mythologies which we use as patterns to develop new mythologies, it may be fantasy based on social sciences or political sciences, but what we’re writing is fantasy” (11).

Simak briefly discusses his deep respect for life, even imaginary alien life. And the fact that both humans and aliens are alive will be “common ground on which we can stand” (11). He immediately shifts from the alien inward: “if we’re going to have any understand of the universe at all, we must have a deep respect for life” (11). Simak points out his favorites among his own works: A Choice of Gods (1972) and “The Thing of Stone” (1970).

Other major topics: Simak’s view on the vital importance of characterization, his refusal to include autobiographical characters or those based on people he knows, and the impact of the first 20 years of his life in southwestern Wisconsin on the rural vibe found in his work.

While not a major focus of the interview, Simak briefly engages with the concept of New Wave science fiction in the late 60s. Despite the fact that “you don’t hear about [the uproar over the New Wave] anymore, “what the New Wave did was to come in and call our attention to the fact that we very well better begin to think about doing a little better writing” (13). Simak does not dismiss the movement. He implies that even those who disagreed with the movement were probably subconsciously influenced by it.

Simak shifts to discussing his move from primarily short stories to novels: “If I can, I write a short story, but there’s more money in writing novels, there’s more satisfaction in writing novels and I’ve found that perhaps I can write a novel more easily than I could write a short story” (14). The interview moves to more detailed discussion of Simak’s compositional practice.

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4. Dave Truesdale interviewed Simak in the March 1978 issue of The Diversifier, ed. C. C. Clingan, Joey Froelich, Ralph Stephen Harding, Jon Inouye, and Robert Metcalf. As I cannot find the fanzine digitized in any of the standard places, I went ahead and purchased a copy in order to provide scans (below) in this post.

“It is unconscionable to carve out a single decade or so and say, ‘Here science fiction knew its finest hour.’ By doing so we consign to limbo all the truly magnificent things that have been done since (12).”

“I think that instead of trying to peg Golden Ages, we all should be happy that science fiction continuously has contrived, year after year, to give us worthwhile works” (14).”

Truesdale frames his interview as a discussion of the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” which Simak situates as “roughly covering the first years of Campbell’s editorship of Astounding” (12). When pressed for specifics about terminology, Simak emphasizes how he was isolated geographically and philosophically as a full-time newspaperman in the Midwest, far away from the East coast scene. He downplays the contribution of Campbell, “I have a hunch that even if Campbell had not appeared in the field something of the same thing would have happened, perhaps not as quickly nor so dramatically” (13). Simak states that he’s “never paid too much attention to the so-called Golden Age” (12), disagrees with stringent periodization, and dismisses the “cult” that surrounds the term that tends to disparage work that came before. One of Simak’s perceptive moments concerns the role of nostalgia in forming the Golden Age: “it is my impression that the term of Golden Age came into being among a group of older fans and readers who felt vaguely dissatisfied with some of the great things that were being done in the 50’s and harked back, with a great deal of nostalgia, to what had been done in the first decade or so of the resurgence of science fiction” (13).

Despite his start in the 30s, Simak admits that he was isolated as a writer with few acquittances in the field, until his retirement from his newspaper career in 1976. He writes that “I never was, nor am I now, in the science fiction swim” (13). His few friendships with Asimov and Williamson occurred by letter before they eventually met. Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson, as they lived in Minneapolis, were exceptions.

“Galaxy, under Gold’s editorship and later Fred Pohl’s, was a breath of new life to me. Nothing was out of bounds. You could write damn well what you wanted to so long as you did it well.”

Returning to the topic of Golden Age, Simak spells out Campbell’s increasing resistance to new ideas in the 40s after he had “schooled his writers” what to produce (14). He crew restive and frustrated with the lack of exploration and jumped ship to Horace Gold at Galaxy and send a few stories to the equally experimental The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

“There is no question that under the early years of Campbell’s editorship a new breath of life was breathed into science fiction. New writers with fresh viewpoints began to appear in its pages. But to a large extent the same thing was true with Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which still is carrying on the old tradition under the editorship of Ed Ferman.”

Simak concludes the interview by celebrating the rise of fantasy. He hopes it does not gain ascendency over science fiction but emphasizes that “there is room for both.”

SCANS OF INTERVIEW (click to enlarge)

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5. Muriel R. Becker interviewed Simak in 1978 for her bibliography of his SF and non-SF work. You can read it online here. You’ll need an Internet Archive account.

Becker’s interview is concerned with clarifying unclear information about Simak’s life and background. He clarifies the exact name of his wife, what he knows about his paternal Eastern European heritage (his father arrived at 12), maternal background from Northern Ireland via England, memories of Civil War ancestors who fought for the Union, etc.

She also attempts to clarify information about Simak’s publications (he provided a list of his non-SF works for her bibliography as well): his lost first manuscript (“Cubes of Ganymede”), the butchered condescend version of Destiny Doll, the story behind his novel Empire (Campbell wrote some of it when he was 18 and asked Simak to rewrite it) and how such a miserable work ended up in Galaxy, and his refusal to use pseudonyms.

As with Truesdale, Becker narrows in on Simak’s increasingly testy relationship with Campbell: “Later on, there was some coolness between John and me because of his famous habit of writing seven to eight page, single-space letters. By doing so, he was trying to spur you on to write what he wanted you to write.” Simak wanted “real people to tell the tales: football players, farmers homesteading on Venus, old soldiers” (xxxiv). After a while, he could no longer stand “John’s seven page, single-space letters” and wrote a response where he indicated that he was “weary of him rejecting them for the wrong reasons” (xxxv). While he continued to send to stories to John, “there was some reserve in our relationship” (xxxv).

Becker shifts gears by asking about his favorite works. He lists the following: “Out of Their Minds probably had the best critical potential of anything I’ve written. And I got such a kick out of writing Goblin Reservation […]. In the past decade, I’ve felt elated with ‘Auk House,’ with ‘Marathon Photograph'” (xxxv). He spends some time discussing the importance of A Choice of God as “it did have something to say” despite its lack of a hero, villain, and action! Apparently his agent was appalled but the publisher gave him his biggest advance.

He concludes by discussing his most recent novel fantasy The Fellowship of the Talisman that Lester del Rey requested and the importance of writing in his later years: “life without writing would be unbearable to me” (xxxvi).

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6. Darrell Schweitzer interview Simak in Amazing Stories, ed. Omar Gohagen (February 1980). You can read it online here.

“I write about ordinary people and most of the people who read my work are ordinary people. I am disinclined to think that if there were to be an alien come to earth he would seek out a professional. He would probably make an effort to talk to someone who is a typical representative of our race.”

Schweitzer’s interview immediately dives into the critical choices that Simak makes in his best known stories alien contact stories: why does he focus on the experience of ordinary people who make contact with aliens? Simak states that “today we should be writing about the ordinary man in the street” (16). He explains his personal inability to write about scientists. He suggests that an “ordinary man” is more “apt to look on this alien life sympathetically and on his own terms than the scientists would” (I assume, due to his training). An extended series of science-fictional extrapolations follow about how an ordinary man would react vs. a scientists (17). Simak never clearly identifies who an “ordinary man” even is.

As with Simak’s fiction, a discussion of the alien soon turns inwards to the state of humanity. He suggest that people have “become perhaps a bit better behaved toward other people than we were […] we burn fewer witches at the stake [and] except in times of great war madness, we massacre fewer populations” (14). Regardless, he emphasizes the powerful danger of Cold War technology on us: “we’re tremendously entranced with out toys of destruction. Maybe we can reach a time when we won’t need them” (17). Simak ruminates on the possibility that the “human race can live together” over time (17). He also provides his most overt commentary on the Cold War politics and the importance of pressuring our governments to maintain peace (17).

The interview shifts back to his fiction (alas! I wish there was more talk of politics!) and the inability to truly write an alien perspective: “we can only think in human terms. What we try to do is twist human concepts into strange, distorted shapes” (18). He continues: “Terry Carr came awful close [to creating something truly alien] in ‘The Dance of the Charger and the Three’ (1968).”

The rest of the interview discusses Simak’s turn towards fantasy, his writing process, refusal to talk about a story before he’s finished writing it, speculations on the future of publishing, The Outer Limits adaption one of his short stories, and his earliest attempts to write and publish science fiction. He concludes with some justified Star Wars snark: “If you take Star Wars, which is so fascinating to people, and break it down, there’s practically no story there” (22).

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1. If you want a hint about its topic, look through my recent reviews of his work: here, here, and here. ↩︎
2. Becker’s bibliography lists an an interview conducted by George White titled “His World Is Limited Only by Boundaries of Imagination” in the Minneapolis Tribune (August 26th, 1976) in honor of Simak’s retirement after forty-seven years in newspaper field. I hope to find a copy. ↩︎

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