I’m periodically plagued by the virulent Esoterica virus, the relentless desire to catalogue and write about the less known, and even better, the completely unknown. While attending a Medieval English literature graduate class, I remember a conversation I had with the professor, Robert D. Fulk, during office hours about the sheer quantity of scholarship on Beowulf (here’s his edition of the iconic text). I pointed out the panic I experience if I’m unable to read ALL the scholarship on a popular text.
Bizarre alien civilizations. Homesickness as psychiatric treatment. The dangers of space travel. Capitalism unleashed. Utopian possibilities? Welcome to the strange wonders of Clifford D. Simak.
Today I’ve gathered together three more fascinating Simak tales that chart his deeply critical views of American business ethic. As in my previous post on the theme, the Grandmaster creates a future in which colonization goes hand-in-hand with the exploitation of resources, workers, and threatens the often bizarre alien intelligences they encounter.1
Two of the three rank among my best reads of the year. And now, to the stories!
Ed Emshwiller’s cover for Galaxy Magazine (April 1960)
4.75/5 (Near Masterpiece)
“Conditions of Employment” first appeared in Galaxy, ed. H. L. Gold (April 1960). You can read it online here.
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).
As I am currently exploring the north-of-the-Arctic Circle reaches of Norway, why not segue way into this post by re-ruminating on the only Norwegian SF novel I’ve read: Knut Faldbakken’s spectacular Twilight Country(1974, trans. Joan Tate, 1993). I wish I’d thought to bring the sequel — Sweetwater (1976, trans. Joan Tate, 1994). Twilight Country, my second favorite SF novel read of 2021, contains one of the great depictions of a decaying metropolis. It is a densely metaphoric story of survival within its crumbling edifices. The masterstroke of Faldbakken’s novel is the portrayal of the Dump, a border zone containing the cast off fragments of human existence, as a place of recreation. Our characters run to the Dump to escape, to make their lives anew. They’re deeply flawed figures. There’s a tangible sense of organic transformation within the transients who inhabit this liminal zone. Sweetwater and The Dump act as a closed system. One decays into the other. One creates the other. Not recommended unless you like your SF dark and moody like me!
In January, I inaugurated a new review series on the urban landscape in science fiction. I finally present the second post! And it’s a good one. I am joined by Anthony Hayes, a frequent contributor and creator of wonderful conversations over the last few years on the site (as antyphayes). I recommend you check out his website The Sinister Science. In addition to ruminations on science fiction–often through the lens of his academic PhD research in the Situationist International, “as well as other related left-communist and post-situationist writings,” he creates fascinating collages that interweave comic books, textual play, and historical images.
We chose Robert Abernathy’s deceptively complex parable of urban alienation “Single Combat” (1955) as our inaugural story. It first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Anthony Boucher (January 1955). You can read it online here.
Nick Solovioff’s cover for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, ed. Anthony Boucher (January 1955)
Anthony Paul Hayes’ Rumination
Urban alienation writ large: Robert Abernathy’s “Single Combat”’ (1955)
Having planted an explosive device in a forgotten corner of an unnamed, North American city, the similarly unnamed protagonist flees. However, in fleeing the protagonist comes to realise what they had hitherto only suspected: that the city has become a living, conscious thing, and like all such things is willing to fight for its survival.my
Spring semester in the books! It’s now time to read (and go on vacation).
Which books/covers/authors in the post intrigue you? Which have you read? Disliked? Enjoyed?
1. Invaders from Earth and To Worlds Beyond, Robert Silverberg (1980)
Chris Foss’ cover for the 1st edition.
From the back cover: “The Ganymedians had a rich, peace culture, peaceful culture extending back hundreds of thousands of years in human time. But the soil of their Jovian moon held uncountable riches in the form of the nuclear fuels Earth so desperately needed. It was a pattern that had been repeated many times in humanity’s bloody history; in Asia, in Africa, in the American West–but the nations of mankind were not ready to make the same mistake again. So when the Corporation decided it wanted those fissionables whether the Ganymedians wanted to give them up or not, they knew they had a job of selling of their hands, to swing the weight of public opinion behind them. And that was a job for Ted Kennedy, ad-man supreme. Kennedy’s record showed he could sell the public on just about anything. Even genocide.”
First, a bit about Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (1951) from M. Keith Booker’s Monsters, Mushroom Clouds, and the Cold War: American Science Fiction and the Roots of Postmodernism, 1946-1964 (2001), my current history of science fiction read:
After watching the first episode of the new Fallout (2024) adaptation a few nights ago (I like it!), I impulsively decided to push aside all my unfinished reviews and write about two more nuclear gloom tales. I selected two by Robert Bloch (1917-1994), best known as the author of Psycho (1959), whose SF output I’ve only recently started to explore. Both stories are slick satires that use the nuclear scenario to poke holes in the stories we weave about American exceptionalism and progress.
Let’s get to the nightmares!
Richard Powers’ cover for Star, ed. Frederik Pohl (1958)
3.25/5 (Above Average)
“Daybroke” first appeared in the only issue of Star, ed. Frederik Pohl (1958). You can read it online here.
Robert Bloch’s “Daybroke” attempts to convey an encyclopedic glimpse of post-apocalyptic destruction in order to satirize an America that allowed the usage of a nuclear weapon. Despite its appealing structure, the story lacks the prose necessary to sear and burn–the last sentence, well, that you’ll remember.
Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations 