Clifford Simak’sWay Station: A Place to Move On From

Aliens ! Immortality ! Intergalactic intrigue ! Government spies ! Armageddon on the horizon ! The 1964 Hugo winner , Way Station by Clifford D. Simak , has all of these things and much , much less .

Last timeI wrote that The Man in the High Castle crisscross where science fiction breaks away from its Golden Age , but of course of action it ’s not that simple-minded . Clear demarcations are rare in real life , and both Simak and Way Station ( earlier issue as Here Gather the Stars ) seem much more tight tied to an earlier era than Philip K. Dick ’s work does .

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It ’s a combination of thing : There ’s the graceful but altogether straightforward , almost empty writing flair . ( I do n’t imply “ empty ” in a uncollectible room . But whereas with , say , Heinlein , Dick , or Roger Zelazny , an obvious voice get through in almost all their oeuvre — robustious , bleak , and wry , respectively — Simak as an generator is inconspicuous , which is how so many of the former authors take . ) There ’s the Twilight Zone – like dialogue , plaster bandage , setting , and plot : The story is about Enoch Wallace , a Civil War veteran experience in post - WWII rural Wisconsin who still face like he ’s 30 , because he ’s in secret the keeper of an intergalactic way station point for traveling aliens . He ’s being watched by a politics agent , his hillbilly neighbors are nervous of him , and sorry of all , he ’s used extraterrestrial maths to find out that human beings is likely on the verge of annihilating itself .

Most tellingly is how uncomplicatedly all of this — plus plot detail necessitate a deaf - tongueless female child , a set of animated remembering Enoch has created for troupe , a phantasmal force that is by trial and error detectable , and interstellar political machination that threaten to exclude down the room station — is handled . If The Man in the High Castle anticipates a Earth where solid answer are increasingly harder to come by , Way Station does n’t even begin to search the innumerable ancillary questions it raises .

Some , the book explains away : Enoch ’s neighbors are suspicious of him but do n’t publicise the fact that the solitary in the previous star sign has been new for over a century because they ’re private - minded , taciturn country family line , more distrustful of outsiders than their own loony . OK , I ’ll purchase that . Other emergence , though , like how the federal federal agent observing him is unhampered by red tapeline , to the dot where he can reprocure exotic prop he ’s turned over to his bosses within twenty - four hour , no doubtfulness asked , are tougher to ignore . I intend , has living ever been that childlike ?

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No , it has n’t . And though story are by nature nowhere as complex as living , and should n’t have to be — even the most true - to - life are escapist in that they let us look at our public from inside another — Way Station is difficult to take seriously because it simultaneously hews to a such a plainspoken picture of the humanity while also clean up every loose close , including the impending Book of Revelation , so neatly . It ’s certainly not a spoiled leger — and granted , I get to say this with the benefit of hindsight — but when one learns that it thrum out Kurt Vonnegut ’s Cat ’s Cradle for the laurels , one ca n’t help but guess ofJethro Tull and Metallica .

I wo n’t criticize the book for its technology , despite the fact that it involves printing matter on metal home plate , because I do n’t think authors are obligated to be futurist , much less accurate futurists . And actually , the unknown ’s method of move to the fashion place is reasonably nifty — predatingTakeshi Kovacsas it does by almost forty years — although again , it intimate philosophic problem that seem like more interesting fodder than the one the book tackles . Enoch ’s Danger Room – stylus cellar is pretty sweetened too , even if his visit to it sense like a random interlude .

I do n’t have it off . I think it must have been courteous to be a science - fiction author at the clip when Way Station was bring out . meter was still moving relatively easy ( though I ’m sure it did n’t feel that way ) , and you could just spell a fib without worrying that you had n’t addressed every single implication and reverberation of the coolheaded ideas you hail up with . Or , I pretend you do n’t have to worry about that now , but sometimes it finger to me like you do . That said , I think I like it better the way it is now . I do n’t ever rue having read a account book , but I would n’t recommend you operate out and find this one . If manhood ever want to be quick to join “ the cofraternity of the stars , ” as Simak order it so many metre , then it ’s probably a good affair popular SF fine-tune to a more thoughtful , piquant level of storytelling .

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