Today I’ve selected two early Clifford D. Simak “apprentice” stories–“Masquerade” (1941) and “Tools” (1942)–deeply critical of the American business ethic.¹ Collectively they posit a future in which colonization goes hand-in-hand with the exploitation of resources, workers, and threatens the alien intelligences they encounter.²

Welcome to a future of capitalistic vastation!

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3/5 (Average)

“Masquerade” first appeared in Astounding, ed. John W. Campbell, Jr. (March 1941). You can read it online here.

In the surprisingly bleak “Masquerade” (1941), metamorphic aliens on Mercury’s radiation-blasted surface parrot human actions. Beneath their clownish behavior is a plot, a plot to takedown an Earth corporation. The story begins with a disquieting sequence in the bleak expanse outside a sunlight harvesting power station on the surface of Mercury: “the Roman candles, snatching their shapes from Creepy’s mind, had assumed the form of Terrestrial hillbillies and were cavorting the measures of a square dance” (57). The Candles, “kicking up the dust, shuffling and hopping and flapping their arms” (58), are the mysterious natives of Mercury. In classic Simak fashion, there’s a method to their apparent comic madness.³

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