Consideration of Works Past: Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak is an odd duck. His work absolutely science fiction. There's no frippery in it. It's not hard SF in that we don't learn the nuts and bolts of things. It's more humanistic than that. He postulates things and then plays with human reactions. He's in the vein of Edgar Pangborn or (sometimes) Ray Bradbury.

But what makes Simak interesting, to me, is the gentleness of his fiction. I'm going to talk about three books: The Werewolf Principle, Time is the Simplest Thing and The Goblin Reservation. (Curiously, full text of The Werewolf Principle is here as well as others.)

Let's set the stage.

The TWP and TGR were written in 1967 and 1968. TITSP was written in 1961. I moved to Huntsville, Alabama, in 1964 and left in 1969. During that period I devoured every science fiction, fantasy and mystery book that existed in the Huntsville Public Library-- which contained more than you might think. Many of which I can barely remember. There was one piece of drivel called Hyperspace, which involved voracious creatures of the fourth dimension that liked to eat buildings.

It must have been during this period I read these three (and also some other works) by Simak.

Simak wasn't afraid to talk about love or fear. Many more "modern" works seem to have to paint over love with sentimentality and fear with horror. Simak wasn't like that. He was, I think, a throwback to earlier kinds of fiction like William Saroyan's The Human Comedy or Ross Lockridge's Raintree County. These were works more about how people lived their lives and any insight gained about their inner psychology derived from thoughts and actions deriving from those acts of life. Simak seemed to understand that people treat themselves gently most of the time.

That said, much of Simak's work followed a common plot where a man (almost alway) had achieved a status quo, an event drives him from that and the rest of the novel follows him finding a new equilibrium. The Werewolf Principle starts with a man having no memory of who he was but he's been declared normal and given a place in the world. But he starts transforming into different creatures. The Goblin Reservation tells the story of a professor who returns to earth only to find he had already returned previously and died. Time is the Simplest Thing posits a world where telepaths explore other worlds and encounter aliens. One of these gets a copy of an alien's mind and then must flee.

In all three, humans are not lords of creation but neither are they low scum. Aliens are often not particularly threatening but often have their own agenda-- living their (alien) lives just like humans.

What I found in Simak's work, and these three novels in particular, was a tenderness. It's very clear Simak loved his characters. I expect he enjoyed people-- at least, that's what I've gotten from his work. Both are rare qualities in SF. Tenderness is an emotion felt towards those who are vulnerable and most SF writers just don't view humans in this way. Heck, most writers don't view humans in this way.

I have to say I've consciously tried in several stories to emulate this qualilty. I've had some success. It's easy to get maudlin-- which, of course, destroys the effect.
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