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OVER THE RIVER & THROUGH THE WOODS ..
Classic stories of science fiction by this Nebula Grandmaster award-winner. Indeed, the Best Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak
A Death in the House
The Big Front Yard
Goodnight Mr. James
Dusty Zebra
Neighbor
Over the River & Through the Woods
Construction Shack
Grotto of the Dancing Deer
Back . . . he wrote for so long and always so well that his excellence came to be taken for granted, as we take sunlight for granted until we go blind.
- Poul Anderson
I read Cliff's stories with particular attention, and I couldn't help but notice the simplicity and directness of the writing - the utter clarity of it. I made up my mind to imitate it, and I labored over the years to make my writing simpler, clearer, more uncluttered, to present my scenes on a bare stage. - Isaac Asimov
Without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land.
- James Gunn
Good fantasy - and that includes science fiction - takes off from the known for its flights into the new. Cliff Simak was a master of the art. His known was the rural Midwest that he loved. His new could reach to the ends of space and time, but never beyond reality. Even his cosmic aliens always had half human dimensions that made them believable. I loved him, as so many did, for his unfailing warmth and a wit that was keen but never cruel. I heard from him often during the painful time after his wife's death. His own death touched me deeply, and I'm happy to see him remembered with this collection of his best-loved stories. - Jack Williamson
I always loved his stories, short or long. He made me love them -and the rural America of his childhood - as much as he did. - Lester del Rey
Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable that a volume of the best stories of Clifford Simak (author of the classic City) would not have been published by Putnam or Del Rey, but today we have to be grateful to the one-man firm of Tachyon Publications for preserving Over the River and Through the Woods, which includes some of Simak's best stories, including two Hugo Award winners. After all, Simak is dead, which means his career is flatlined, even if Robert Heinlein said, "to read science fiction is to read Simak. The reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all."
Simak was a master of a special kind of nostalgic science fiction that reconciled the values of his youth (the rural Midwest of the 1920s) with the larger universe. Material that became ludicrous cliche in the hands of lesser writers - all those endless flying saucers landing in the hillbilly's back acre - was by Simak handled with elegance and dignity."A Death in the House" is A farmer finds a dying alien. He does what he can, but that's very little. The farmer conceals the grave, wanting to give his "guest" that much dignity. But the alien is plantlike. It (or its young) sprouts out of the corpse. Human and alien struggle toward understanding. In "The Big Front Yard," a rural handyman finds his house transformed into a gateway to other worlds. The common people have the good sense; trouble starts when profiteers and the government get involved. The tone is light, friendly and clever.
This is not to suggest that Simak was a writer with no hard edges. "Good Night Mr. James" is a horror story, about a duplicate human being created to destroy a particularly nasty alien illegally smuggled to Earth. But the gentler mode was more typical, and he could also write humor. "Dusty Zebra" is a long technological joke, maybe a bit slight to be included when a 50-year career must be distilled into 218 pages. Simak's last story, the last in the book, "The Grotto of the Dancing Deer," is about an immortal caveman, quite different from de Camp's "Gnarly Man." He is the original artist who painted that cave art the scientists keep finding; after all this time, he just has to tell someone. The story won both the Hugo and the Nebula for 1980, because both readers and fellow professionals wanted to say "thank you."
- The Washington Post Book World
Clifford D. Simak is another classic SF writer who staked out a distinctive territory based on his rural midwestern roots - only a couple hundred miles north of Bradbury's - but he never strayed very far from a few classic SF themes which he treated with considerably more rigor than Bradbury, if sometimes with as much sentimentality. Simak's City is at least as important to the history of SF as Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles - some would say more so, given its more challenging conceptual framework - and his other short stories are among the most enduring in the genre, as Over the River & Through the Woods, a new limited edition from Tachyon Publications, attests.
Yet Simak, like Sturgeon, seems in danger of fading into the limbo of historical anthologies; while his work was once as widely available as that of any of ...
A Death in the House
The Big Front Yard
Goodnight Mr. James
Dusty Zebra
Neighbor
Over the River & Through the Woods
Construction Shack
Grotto of the Dancing Deer
Back . . . he wrote for so long and always so well that his excellence came to be taken for granted, as we take sunlight for granted until we go blind.
- Poul Anderson
I read Cliff's stories with particular attention, and I couldn't help but notice the simplicity and directness of the writing - the utter clarity of it. I made up my mind to imitate it, and I labored over the years to make my writing simpler, clearer, more uncluttered, to present my scenes on a bare stage. - Isaac Asimov
Without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land.
- James Gunn
Good fantasy - and that includes science fiction - takes off from the known for its flights into the new. Cliff Simak was a master of the art. His known was the rural Midwest that he loved. His new could reach to the ends of space and time, but never beyond reality. Even his cosmic aliens always had half human dimensions that made them believable. I loved him, as so many did, for his unfailing warmth and a wit that was keen but never cruel. I heard from him often during the painful time after his wife's death. His own death touched me deeply, and I'm happy to see him remembered with this collection of his best-loved stories. - Jack Williamson
I always loved his stories, short or long. He made me love them -and the rural America of his childhood - as much as he did. - Lester del Rey
Ten years ago it would have been inconceivable that a volume of the best stories of Clifford Simak (author of the classic City) would not have been published by Putnam or Del Rey, but today we have to be grateful to the one-man firm of Tachyon Publications for preserving Over the River and Through the Woods, which includes some of Simak's best stories, including two Hugo Award winners. After all, Simak is dead, which means his career is flatlined, even if Robert Heinlein said, "to read science fiction is to read Simak. The reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all."
Simak was a master of a special kind of nostalgic science fiction that reconciled the values of his youth (the rural Midwest of the 1920s) with the larger universe. Material that became ludicrous cliche in the hands of lesser writers - all those endless flying saucers landing in the hillbilly's back acre - was by Simak handled with elegance and dignity."A Death in the House" is A farmer finds a dying alien. He does what he can, but that's very little. The farmer conceals the grave, wanting to give his "guest" that much dignity. But the alien is plantlike. It (or its young) sprouts out of the corpse. Human and alien struggle toward understanding. In "The Big Front Yard," a rural handyman finds his house transformed into a gateway to other worlds. The common people have the good sense; trouble starts when profiteers and the government get involved. The tone is light, friendly and clever.
This is not to suggest that Simak was a writer with no hard edges. "Good Night Mr. James" is a horror story, about a duplicate human being created to destroy a particularly nasty alien illegally smuggled to Earth. But the gentler mode was more typical, and he could also write humor. "Dusty Zebra" is a long technological joke, maybe a bit slight to be included when a 50-year career must be distilled into 218 pages. Simak's last story, the last in the book, "The Grotto of the Dancing Deer," is about an immortal caveman, quite different from de Camp's "Gnarly Man." He is the original artist who painted that cave art the scientists keep finding; after all this time, he just has to tell someone. The story won both the Hugo and the Nebula for 1980, because both readers and fellow professionals wanted to say "thank you."
- The Washington Post Book World
Clifford D. Simak is another classic SF writer who staked out a distinctive territory based on his rural midwestern roots - only a couple hundred miles north of Bradbury's - but he never strayed very far from a few classic SF themes which he treated with considerably more rigor than Bradbury, if sometimes with as much sentimentality. Simak's City is at least as important to the history of SF as Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles - some would say more so, given its more challenging conceptual framework - and his other short stories are among the most enduring in the genre, as Over the River & Through the Woods, a new limited edition from Tachyon Publications, attests.
Yet Simak, like Sturgeon, seems in danger of fading into the limbo of historical anthologies; while his work was once as widely available as that of any of ...
Hardcover
First published May 1, 1965
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About the author
Clifford D. Simak
963 books1,064 followers"He was honored by fans with three Hugo awards and by colleagues with one Nebula award and was named the third Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) in 1977." (Wikipedia)
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford...
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford...
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
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July 24, 2023U ovih osam priča možda može da se nađe jedna ili dve u kojima protagonistu ne bi igrao Džejms Stjuart, plain ol' Jimmy u svom najzemljoradničkijem izdanju, u radničkom kombinezonu i s nekom večnom žvakom ili čak duvanom za žvakanje. I to je lepo i tako treba da bude. Simakovi junaci su uglavnom pošteni i smireni ljudi koji niti misle niti postupaju brzopleto, čak ni onda kad u šumi pokupe ranjenog vanzemaljca ili kad otkriju da njihov novi komšija ima čarobni traktor. Nekako su... solidni.* A ono što ove priče izdvaja iz vremena u kome su nastale jeste to što su i vanzemaljci u ogromnoj većini jednako pristojni, dobre komšije takoreći, spremni da abartuju i vaš traktor. Jedino "Laku noć, g. Džejms" varira hladnoratovsku paranoju.
Moj favorit je svakako uvodna "A Death in the House", ne pamtim kad je prvi kontakt obrađen ovako čovečanski u najširem smislu te reči. Baš mi je posle priče došlo nekako toplo oko srca.
*solidni muškarci. Simak ljubazno priznaje da žene postoje i da su takođe ljudi ali se uglavnom ne petlja sa ženskim likovima. To znači i da su barem ove odabrane priče blaženo lišene usiljenih ljubavnih podzapleta karakterističnih za taj period (kamo sreće da je samo za njega, zapravo), pa tako. hvala piscu i na tome.
Moj favorit je svakako uvodna "A Death in the House", ne pamtim kad je prvi kontakt obrađen ovako čovečanski u najširem smislu te reči. Baš mi je posle priče došlo nekako toplo oko srca.
*solidni muškarci. Simak ljubazno priznaje da žene postoje i da su takođe ljudi ali se uglavnom ne petlja sa ženskim likovima. To znači i da su barem ove odabrane priče blaženo lišene usiljenih ljubavnih podzapleta karakterističnih za taj period (kamo sreće da je samo za njega, zapravo), pa tako. hvala piscu i na tome.
April 25, 2020
This is a collection of eight of Simak's best stories from the latter part of his career. None of the City stories are included, but it is still a representative selection of his work. Simak, at his best, was a very comforting storyteller; he framed the most outlandish events in familiar situations and with wise and friendly characters that projected the feeling that things were fascinating and maybe amusing but all you had to do was hold on and trust the author and that everything would be all right. He was frequently called science fiction's pastoralist. Reading him is like looking at Norman Rockwell paintings or watching The Andy Griffith Show; the reader feels nostalgia and affection for places that they never experienced and which, perhaps, never existed. A Death in the House features a rural farmer who has a touching encounter with an alien, Dusty Zebra is a very amusing story of a suburban entrepreneur, Neighbor is a fine examination of rural life and how newcomers fit into a community and what makes good friends and neighbors, and Over the River and Through the Woods is a nice short time travel family tale. Good Night, Mr. James is a creepy story that became a good Outer Limits episode, and my favorite story in the book is The Big Front Yard (which won the Hugo Award in 1959 for best of the year), a terrific novella about a Yankee trader and tinkerer with homespun wisdom who outsmarts the government and the aliens with equal alacrity. Construction Shack, one of the two stories included from late in his career, is a bit of a let down; it's a cute gimmick story that's clever and well executed but is nothing particularly special. It could have appeared in any of the second-tier digest magazines in the 1950s. The final tale, The Grotto of the Dancing Deer, was (I believe) the last of his short works published during his lifetime, and was another award winner. It's also something of a time travel story. Simak was never overly prolific, but his career spanned many decades and he produced many, many fine works; he was a master of the genre and should not be forgotten.
August 30, 2018
Interesting sampling. I honestly have to say, though, that I do not think these are all his best work. Still, some are excellent, and they're a good introduction to his style and themes.
January 4, 2022
An amusing collection of sci-fi and fantasy tales.
January 28, 2021
"Pastoral sci fi"
Someone probably coined this term previously to describe Simak's work.
Solid batch of shorts, with a few standouts.
Someone probably coined this term previously to describe Simak's work.
Solid batch of shorts, with a few standouts.
July 8, 2021
Some great short stories by the under appreciated SF Grand Master Clifford Simak.
July 16, 2022
3.5 stars
January 4, 2017
Ostatnio czytałem książki których akcja miała raczej epicki charakter. Apokalipsy, spotkania z kosmitami, losy świata wiszące na włosku te sprawy. Dlatego "Over the river..." było bardzo przyjemną odmianą. Wszystkie opowiadania dzieją się w skali mikro, dotyczą konkretnych ludzi i rzadko wychodzą poza skale małego miasteczka.
Jak większość opowiadań z tego okresu zazwyczaj opierają się na jednym sprytnym pomyśle. W tym wypadku jest to zazwyczaj kontakt 'prostego człowieka' z nieznanym i obcym. I wiecie co? Niech błogosławiony będzie optymizm lat 50-60 który nie tylko kazał nam wierzyć że jako ludzkość za chwilę podbijemy galaktykę, ale też że prosty człowiek z Pipidówka Górnego zachowa się przyzwoicie napotkawszy obcego. Naprawdę miła odmiana od dzisiejszych czasów.
Trzeba przyznać że setting tych opowiadań zestarzał się dość mocno i w tej chwili wygląda jak coś pomiędzy uroczą ramotką i prześmiewczym sitcomem. Koncepty za to mimo iż z dzisiejszej perspektywy możemy je oceniać jako lekko naiwne wciąż są świeże.
Jak większość opowiadań z tego okresu zazwyczaj opierają się na jednym sprytnym pomyśle. W tym wypadku jest to zazwyczaj kontakt 'prostego człowieka' z nieznanym i obcym. I wiecie co? Niech błogosławiony będzie optymizm lat 50-60 który nie tylko kazał nam wierzyć że jako ludzkość za chwilę podbijemy galaktykę, ale też że prosty człowiek z Pipidówka Górnego zachowa się przyzwoicie napotkawszy obcego. Naprawdę miła odmiana od dzisiejszych czasów.
Trzeba przyznać że setting tych opowiadań zestarzał się dość mocno i w tej chwili wygląda jak coś pomiędzy uroczą ramotką i prześmiewczym sitcomem. Koncepty za to mimo iż z dzisiejszej perspektywy możemy je oceniać jako lekko naiwne wciąż są świeże.
September 14, 2013
I was about to rate this book 4 stars, but then realized that each story crept up on the reader slowly, as if you were reading about one living a quiet everyday life, until something extraordinary happens. Then, once the extraordinary happens, either all hell breaks loose, or the story comes to a great climactic end. Thus, I think these stories will have a lasting impact on my reading, and not be just another anthology that I will barely recall having read years from now.
The way Simak tells these stories, the extraordinary isn't overshadowed by some great revelation (or "big idea")but, rather as if all he is attempting to do is to tell a down-home story about living the simple life. But, even so, the reader is slowly drawn in to the extraordinary that is fantastical and other-worldly.
The way Simak tells these stories, the extraordinary isn't overshadowed by some great revelation (or "big idea")but, rather as if all he is attempting to do is to tell a down-home story about living the simple life. But, even so, the reader is slowly drawn in to the extraordinary that is fantastical and other-worldly.
January 23, 2017
Bless you, Mister Simak, for your simplistic genius. This was an immensely enjoyable collection from a master of the field. Mister Simak wrote in a way reminiscent of Ray Bradbury, in that he brought small-town living alive for the rest of us. For me, his writing brought back many fond memories of growing up on the farm, except we never found any unexpected visitors in the way Mister Simak's characters did. I certainly wish we had though! Every story is fantastic in its quiet brilliance. I have a stack of Mister Simak's work waiting on my bookshelf and, after finishing this one, I can't wait to jump into the next one.
March 6, 2014
walking mp3 - whereby my walking is over the streams and through the woods, and damn it, I don't seem to meet a little friend or leave planet earth except vicariously through my headphones.
Linked short stories and I liked this :a:lot:
So now, is it Simak or Bradbury; Bradbury or Simak that is tops in this Readble Sci Fi category.
Linked short stories and I liked this :a:lot:
So now, is it Simak or Bradbury; Bradbury or Simak that is tops in this Readble Sci Fi category.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 23, 2015
This is a very calm and somehow nostalgic book. At least for me. My favorite story is about the valley and the farmers. Partially because it's a place that I'd really love to actually live in. Otherwise, I have no strong opinions about any of the stories in this book one way or another. It's mildly interesting. That's about it.
January 30, 2015
My biggest problem with this book is that it's missing 5 pages out of the middle of "Dusty Zebra". Which may or may not be intentional. Still, all the stories are excellent, the title one particularly.
June 19, 2009
Can't go wrong with Simak. This stuff is like the Andy Griffith Show shot through with a vein of science fiction.
July 3, 2018
I used to love these stories when I was a kid, but they seem very dated now, and very simplistic. The target audience was obviously 15-year boys, in the late 50's and early 60's.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews