Clifford D. Simak

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Clifford D. Simak
Born August 3, 1904(1904-08-03)
Millville, Wisconsin
Died April 25, 1988 (aged 83)
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Occupation Journalist, novelist, short story author
Genres Science fiction, Fantasy

Clifford Donald Simak (August 3, 1904 - April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He won three Hugo awards and one Nebula award, and was named the third Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SWFA) in 1977.[1][2]

Contents

[edit] Biography

Clifford Donald Simak was born in Millville, Wisconsin, son of John Lewis and Margaret (Wiseman) Simak. He married Agnes Kuchenberg on April 13, 1929 and they had two children, Scott and Shelley. Simak attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later worked at various newspapers in the Midwest. He began a lifelong association with the Minneapolis Star and Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota) in 1939, which continued until his retirement in 1976. He became Minneapolis Star 's news editor in 1949 and coordinator of Minneapolis Tribune's Science Reading Series in 1961. He died in Minneapolis.[3]

[edit] Writing career

Simak became interested in science fiction after reading the works of H. G. Wells as a child. He started writing for science fiction pulp magazines in 1931, but dropped out of the field by 1933. The only science-fiction piece that he published between 1933 and 1937 was The Creator (Marvel Tales #4, March-April 1935), a notable story with religious implications, which was at the time a rarity in the genre of science fiction.

Once John W. Campbell began redefining the field in late 1937, Simak returned to science fiction and was a regular contributor to Astounding Stories throughout the Golden Age of Science Fiction (1938–1950). His first publications, such as Cosmic Engineers (1939), were in the traditions of the earlier superscience subgenre perfected by E. E. "Doc" Smith, but he soon developed his own style, which is usually described as gentle and pastoral. A typical Simak alien is much more likely to be seen sitting on a porch in rural Wisconsin drinking beer with the protagonist than invading Earth. During this period, Simak also published a number of war and western stories in pulp magazines. His best known novel may be City, a collection of short stories with a common theme of mankind's eventual exodus from Earth.

Simak continued to produce award-nominated novels throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The quality of his longer pieces somewhat declined in the 1970s as his health deteriorated, although his short fiction was still well regarded. Aided by a friend, he continued writing and publishing science fiction and, later, fantasy, into his 80s. He believed that science fiction not rooted in scientific fact was responsible for the failure of the genre to be taken seriously, and stated that his aim was to make the genre a part of what he called "realistic fiction."

[edit] Common themes

 This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (July 2008)
Also see transmog.

Simak's best known stories often repeat a few basic ideas and themes. First and foremost is a setting in rural Wisconsin. A crusty individualistic backwoodsman character literally comes with the territory, the best example being Hiram Taine, the protagonist of The Big Front Yard. Hiram's dog "Towser" (sometimes "Bowser") is another Simak trademark being common to many of Simak's works. But the rural setting is not always as idyllic as here; and in Ring Around the Sun it is largely dominated by intolerance and isolationism.

Another idea often found in the stories is the idea that there is no past time for a time traveler to go to. Instead, our world moves along in a stream of time, and to move to a different place in time is to move to another world altogether. Thus in City our Earth is overrun by ants, but the intelligent dogs and the remaining humans escape to other worlds in the time stream. In Ring Around the Sun the persecuted paranormals escape to other Earths which, if they could all be seen at once, would be at different stages of their orbit around the sun, hence the title. In Time is the Simplest Thing a paranormal escapes a mob by moving back in time, only to find that the past is a place where there are no living things and inanimate objects are barely substantial.

Time travel also plays an important role in the ingeniously constructed Time and Again, then ventures into metaphysics. A long-lost space traveler returns with a message which is SF-slanted yet religious in tone. He crashed on a planet and was nurtured by ethereal duplicates - spirits? souls? - that seem to accompany every sentient being throughout life. His fuddled observations were seized upon by religious factions, and a schism is threatening to erupt into war on Earth.

An important theme (or theme group) concerns robots, who in Simak's case are usually very likable mechanical persons. In the novella All the Traps of Earth (in the collection of the same title) the robot Daniel seeks freedom having served men for a very long time, only to find in the end that he has become more human than he had thought. There is also the faithful butler Jenkins in City, the religious robot Hezekiel in A Choice of Gods and the theological project of the robots in Project Pope. Having achieved intelligence, the robots move onto common themes such as, "Why are we here?" and "Do robots have souls"?

The religious theme is often present in Simak's work, but the protagonists who have searched for God in a traditional sense, tend to find something more abstract and inhuman. Hezekiel in A Choice of Gods cannot accept this. Quote: "God must be, forever, a kindly old (human) gentleman with a long, white, flowing beard."

One finds many other traditional SF themes in Simak's work. The importance of knowledge and compassion in Immigrant and Kindergarten. Identity play, at times almost in a Philip Dick like manner, as in Good Night. Mr James (filmed as The Outer Limits: The Duplicate Man in 1964). Fictions come to life in Shadow Show and elsewhere, such as the novel Out of Our Minds. And there is the revolt of the machines in Skirmish. And the rather horrifying meeting with an alien world in Beachhead, AKA You'll Never Go Home Again. (Many of these stories are to be found in Strangers in the Universe).

Finally, Simak throws in many science-fictional fillips that remain unexplained. "Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine," is a phrase misattributed to Arthur Stanley Eddington. Simak's characters encounter alien creatures and concepts they simply cannot understand, and never will. For example, in Special Deliverance, the humans are stalked by The Wailer, which turns out to be a huge wolf-like creature that bells an infinitely-sad howl. They never learn what the creature is, why it seems sad, or how it got there. While other SF authors such as Asimov and Clarke take pains to explain every mystery, Simak leaves many hanging, a reminder that the universe is more vast and inexplicable than the human mind can encompass.

[edit] Themes

Simak's short stories and longer novellas range from the contemplative and thoughtfully idyllic to pure terror, although the punch line is often characteristically understated, as in Good Night Mr. James and Skirmish. There is also a group of humorous stories, of which "The Big Front Yard" is the most successful. And Way Station is in the midst of all of the science fiction paraphernalia a moving psychological study of a very lonely man who has to make peace with his past and finally manages to do so, but not without personal loss. The contemplative nature of the Simak character is a recurring trait both of theme and of the author's style.

One often overlooked aspect of Simak's writing is the whimsical nature of much of it. Many of his aliens have a dry, otherworldly sense of humor, and others are unintentionally amusing, either in their speech or their appearance.

[edit] Works

[edit] Novels

  • The Creator (first magazine publication 1935, first book publication 1946)
  • Cosmic Engineers (first magazine publication 1939, first book publication 1950)
  • Empire (1951) (Galaxy novel #7)
  • Time and Again (1951) Alternate paperback title: First He Died
  • City (fixup 1952, "Epilog" added in the 1976 edition, but omitted in some subsequent Science Fiction Book Club reprints)
  • Ring Around the Sun (1953) A man's unique psychic gift allows him to step into parallel "quantum" earths that were once fractions of a second ahead of each other, eons ago, as they travel around the sun.
  • Time is the Simplest Thing (1961)
  • The Trouble With Tycho (1961) A lunar prospector investigates the crater Tycho where spacecraft have disappeared.
  • They Walked Like Men, 1962. A newsman learns alien "bowling balls" that can take any form are buying up the Earth.
  • Way Station (1963) [1964-Hugo Award Winner]
  • All Flesh Is Grass (1965)
  • Why Call them Back From Heaven? (1967)
  • The Werewolf Principle (1967) In the future, it is easier to engineer man to fit an alien world, than to re-engineer the alien world to fit man.
  • The Goblin Reservation (1968)
  • Out of Their Minds (1970)
  • Destiny Doll (1971)
  • A Choice of Gods (1972) After 99.99% of the human race has disappeared, people discover they have lifespans of 5 or 6 thousand years.
  • Cemetery World (1973)
  • Our Children's Children (1974)
  • Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975)
  • Shakespeare's Planet (1976)
  • A Heritage of Stars, Berkley Medallion Books,1977. In a primitive world where technology collapsed, a woodsrunner, a witch, and a frontiering robot seek answers at The Place of Going to the Stars.
  • The Fellowship of the Talisman (1978)
  • Mastodonia, 1978, Del Rey/Ballantine Books and the Science Fiction Book Club, published as Catface in the UK. A cat-faced alien stranded in drift-free Wisconsin befriends locals and time-engineers portals into prehistoric epochs, where they establish a new nation: Mastodonia.
  • The Visitors (1980)
  • Project Pope, 1981, Del Rey/Ballantine Books and the Science Fiction Book Club. On the planet End of Nowhere, robots have labored a thousand years to build a computerized infallible pope to eke out the ultimate truth. Their work is preempted when a human Listener (mind-caster) discovers what might be the planet Heaven.
  • Where the Evil Dwells (1982)
  • Special Deliverance Del Rey/Ballantine Books, 1982 and the Science Fiction Book Club. A college professor and other oddballs are dropped onto a bleak world near a giant blue cube - and no clue how to proceed.
  • Highway of Eternity (1986) [alternate title Highway to Eternity] A man finds a time machine in a skyscraper, and discovers fugitives from a distant future where aliens have convinced people to suicide.

[edit] Collections

  • Strangers in the Universe (1956) (contents revised in 1957 and 1958). Paperback contains 7 of 11 stories from hardback edition: “Target Generation”, “Mirage”, “Beachhead”, “The Answers”, “Retrograde Evolution”, “The Fence”, and “Shadow Show”.
  • The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1960)
  • Aliens for Neighbours (1961) (UK reprint of The Worlds of Clifford Simak)
  • All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories (1962) (contents revised in 1963) Contains “All the Traps of Earth”, “Good Night, Mr. James”, “Drop Dead”, “The Sitters”, “Installment Plan”, and “Condition of Employment”.
  • Other Worlds of Clifford Simak (1962) (abridgement of The Worlds of Clifford Simak (1961) Contains “Dusty Zebra”, “Carbon Copy”, “Founding Father”, “Idiot’s Crusade”, “Death Scene”, and “Green Thumb”.
  • The Night of the Puudly (1964) (UK reprint of All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories)
  • Worlds Without End (1964) Contains “Worlds Without End”, “The Spaceman’s Van Gogh”, and “Full Cycle”.
  • Best Science Fiction Stories of Clifford Simak (1967)
  • So Bright the Vision (1968) Contains “The Golden Bugs”, “Leg. Forst.”, “So Bright the Vision,” and “Galactic Chest”.
  • The Best of Clifford D. Simak (1975) Contains “1939: Madness from Mars”, “1940: Sunspot Purge”, “1958: The Sitters”, “1959: A Death in the House”, “1960: Final Gentlemen”, “1961: Shotgun Cure”, “1963: Day of Truce”, “1965: Small Deer”, “1970: The Thing in the Stone”, and “1971: The Autumn Land”.
  • Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak (1977) Contains “Huddling Place”, “Desertion”, “Skirmish”, “Good Night, Mr. James”, “The Sitters”, “The Big Front Yard”, “All the Traps of Earth”, “The Thing in the Stone”, “The Autumn Land”, and “The Ghost of a Model T”.
  • Brother And Other Stories (1986)
  • The Marathon Photograph and Other Stories (1986)
  • Off-Planet (1989)
  • The Autumn Land and Other Stories (1990)
  • Immigrant and Other Stories (1991)
  • The Creator and Other Stories (1993)
  • Over the River and Through the Woods: The Best Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak (1996)
  • The Civilization Game and Other Stories (1997)

[edit] Stories

  • “The World of the Red Sun”, Wonder Stories, Dec, 1931. And in Lan's Lantern (fanzine), 1981
  • “Madness from Mars”, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Better Publications, 1939
  • “Sunspot Purge”, Astounding Science Fiction, 1940
  • “City”, Astounding, 1944
  • “Huddling Place”, Astounding, 1944
  • “Census”, Astounding, 1944
  • “Desertion” in Astounding Science Fiction, 1944. And in City, Ace, 1952. And in Tomorrow’s Worlds, Award, 1969. When survey teams fail to return from Jupiter's harsh surface, an aging administrator and his old dog volunteer for a one-way conversion.
  • “Paradise”, Astounding, 1946
  • “Hobbies”, Astounding, 1946
  • “Aesop”, Astounding, 1947
  • “Limiting Factor”, Better Publications, 1949. And Contact, Paperback Library, 1963. A survey team finds a shining planet is one vast computer, built to calculate - what?
  • "Target Generation" in Strangers in the Universe. A generation ship that's traveled for 1,000 years suddenly stops. Only one man, a "sinner" who can read books, will risk his life to complete the mission.
  • "Mirage" in Strangers in the Universe. A stranded archeologist who befriends Martians is shown an ancient city that glitters like a mirage.
  • "Retrograde Evolution" in Strangers in the Universe. Spacefaring traders are stumped when an alien race evolves from savages to geniuses overnight.
  • "The Answers" in Strangers in the Universe. A space wanderer finds the long-lost mutant strain of humans and the universal truths they uncovered.
  • "The Fence" in Strangers in the Universe. A man with a dismal PS (Personal Satisfaction rating) finds intrigue in an invisible fence that can't be crossed.
  • "Shadow Show" in Strangers in the Universe. A colony of scientists struggle to develop artificial life. For entertainment, they role-play in a neverending melodrama. Until art begins to imitate life.
  • “Skirmish”, Amazing Stories, 1950, AKA “Bathe Your Bearings in Blood”
  • “Trouble with Ants”, Ziff-Davis, 1951
  • “Good Night, Mr. James”, 1951
  • “You’ll Never Go Home Again”, Ziff-Davis, 1951. And in Time Untamed, Belmont, 1972. A survey team brutally pacifies a toehold on an alien planet, then learns you can't plan for the unknown. Published as "Beachhead" in Strangers in the Universe.
  • “Courtesy”, Crossroads in Time, Permabooks, 1953
  • “Worrywart”, Galaxy Science Fiction, 1953. And in Operation Future, Permabooks, 1955. A newspaperman finds a recluse who can seemingly fix any problem just by wishing it better.
  • “Shadow World”, Galaxy Science Fiction, 1957. And in 5 Unearthly Visions, Fawcett, 1965. On an alien planet, a construction crew is pestered by “Shadows” that copy everything they do - literally.
  • “The World That Couldn’t Be”, in Galaxy Science Fiction, 1958. And in The World That Couldn’t Be, Permabooks, 1961. A plantation owner on an alien world tracks the strange animal Cytha, and gets a lesson in xeno-ecology.
  • “The Big Front Yard”, 1958. Finding a spatial gateway to another planet, a handyman drives in to explore - and to dicker with the locals. Winner 1959 Hugo for Best Novelette
  • “The Sitters”, Galaxy Science Fiction, 1958
  • “A Death in the House”, in Galaxy Science Fiction, 1959. And inSF: The Best of the Best, Mayflower, 1968. A hillman finds a smashed spaceship and a dying alien, and buries it. Then is visited again.
  • “Final Gentlemen”, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1960
  • “The Golden Bugs”, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1960. And in Seven Come Infinity, Fawcett, 1966. An insurance salesman finds an agate boulder in his garden and his house full of golden (alien?) ladybugs.
  • “Shotgun Cure”, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1960
  • “All the Traps of Earth”, 1960. And in All the Traps of Earth, Manor, 1963
  • “The Shipshape Miracle”, Worlds of If, Digest Prods, 1963
  • “Day of Truce” , 1963
  • “Small Deer”, Galaxy Science Fiction, 1965
  • “Over the River and Through the Woods”, in Amazing Stories, 1966. And in World’s Best Science Fiction: 1966, Ace 1966. A farm family c. 1900 is visited by their great-great-great-grandchildren.
  • “The Thing in the Stone”, Worlds of If, Universal, 1970
  • “The Autumn Land”, Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1971
  • “The Ghost of a Model T”, 1975
  • “Unsilent Spring”, Stellar #2, Ballantine, 1976. A country doctor suspects an epidemic of malaise is due to a lack(?) of DDT.
  • “Auk House”, Stellar#3, Ballantine, 1977. An artist enters a remote house only to learn it actually sits in prehistoric North America, with no way back.
  • “Party Line” in Destinies, Ace, 1978. Volunteers risk their sanity by sending their minds into the void to query alien intelligences.
  • “Grotto of the Dancing Deer”, Conde-Nast, 1980. And in The Hugo Winners Volume 5, 1980-1982. An archeologist discovers ancient cartoony cave paintings, and the artist who painted them.
  • “The Whistling Well”, Dark Forces, Viking, 1980. And Science Fiction Book Club. A genealogist unearths his ancestral home, and wonders, "Did dinosaurs have gods?"
  • “Epilog” (added to City), Ace, 1980

[edit] Non-fiction

  • The Solar System: Our New Front Yard (1962)
  • Trilobite, Dinosaur, and Man: The Earth's Story (1965)
  • Wonder and Glory: The Story of the Universe (1969)
  • Prehistoric Man: The Story of Man's Rise to Civilization (1971)

[edit] Books edited by Clifford D. Simak

  • From Atoms to Infinity: Readings in Modern Science (1965)
  • The March of Science (1971)
  • Nebula Award Stories #6 (1971)
  • The Best of Astounding (1978)

[edit] Audiotape

  • Clifford D. Simak; Over the River and Through the Woods (read by Jonathan Frakes) (1995)

[edit] Awards

[edit] Books about Clifford D. Simak

[edit] External links

Sister project Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Clifford D. Simak

[edit] Biographical sources

  • Contemporary Authors. New Revision Series. Detroit, Gale Research Co.
  • Sam Moskowitz Seekers of Tomorrow (1967) (one chapter covers Simak)
  • "Obituaries: Clifford D. Simak." Nationwide News Pty Limited - Herald, April 29, 1988.
  • Weatherby, W. J. "Obituary of Clifford Simak, realist of SF." Guardian Newspapers Limited/The Guardian (London), April 29, 1988.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ http://www.mprinstitute.org/vaclav/Simak.htm
  2. ^ http://templetongate.tripod.com/simak.htm
  3. ^ http://www.tc.umn.edu/~brams006/simak/biography.html
This is an extract from Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
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