Ştefan Tiron's Reviews > Way Station

It's not entirely contradictory to write a review for Ben Woodard Ungrounded Earth and then applaud Clifford D Simak's classic Way Station. One could say that Simak is exactly one of the worst apologetics of planet Earth, his style being classified as the pastoral sci-fi: a permanent nostalgia for the colonist, the homesick rural homesteading, the yearly agrarian cycles and old ways of life. Even if that be the case, Simak is most likely to have his odd idyllic mid-west corner settled at the hybrid edge of the galaxy. This is actually his strength, rather than settling for the entirely familiar the comforting, he's drawing it out or nesting it at edge of the greater even incomprehensible and unknown outside. His station master is a human gatekeeper, a chosen earthling, exposed to the outside and immortality becose his job demands it. There's much one could write about it. Although written in the early 60s it concerns us even now. It's exactly a reversed solution, in the face of present lost jobs swept away by full automation, his job is not even visible (a premonition of those de-materializing effects of finance capital?) to the human world around his house, his job is entirely home-based. He is a sort of galactic tele worker, he risks being tagged as jobless or obsolete IF he is found out by prying national secret services or other human surveillance systems. Instead of finding a an easy automatic replacement he gets a token job as lonely representative of his species. A job for life in a life outside the bounds of his species, beyond extinction the widest sense of the world. Instead of fancy transhuman lifestyle he
is totally parochial & oldtimer style. And even if his circumstances are humble, entirely rural and parochial, it's also partially a ruse, hiding his true unusual job beneath a entirely naturalistic stance and boring way of life.
What I like is his being so lost so out of time (hence his civilian, Civil War ex soldier status) in midst of modern times but also completly at odds with the vastness of cosmos. He is always keeping informed of world matters but also aware of the way he never belongs to earth, aware of how he's changed or of the fact that he's not being at home anywhere.

He has got infinite time, impossible alien artifacts to ponder on, mind bending non - human math to teach himself and a detailed diary to keep. Unknown to his earthly brethren, he guards quietly and generally unseen the transit of other beings across the expanse of the galaxy, permitting various alien beings to transit and jump from one portal to the next. The most incredible grinding routine is thus conjoined to the most cognitively estranged encounters, be it with polymorphic non carbon alien visitors, communication systems, alien aesthetics or alien habits. He's got all the time in the world to figure out what those relics are and to meditate on the futility of war and incoming destruction of his planet as well as to try and do something about it.