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Way Station by Clifford Simak
Great book. I second the recommendation of the audio version.
:D
Have you read City? Which do you like best?
Have you read City? Which do you like best?
I have not read city, but will make a point of it this summer.
Spooky1947 wrote: "Simak is something of a stylist, maybe not as much of one as Bradbury, but he can lay down some beautiful writing...Way Station is a character-driven novel, focusing on Enoch Wallace."So I see. I'm a third through. It's often beautiful, Bradburyesque, and it's soft or gentle SF, of the type 'aliens are people too'. Humanist, as one reviewer uses, except that's human-centric for this book that is wonderfully accepting of ugly-faced extraterrestrials. I'm loving it; and thanks to the group, because I had never paid attn to who Clifford Simak was.
I have read both City and Way Station - and I will throw my lot in with Way Station. Loved it so much the first time I read it many years ago, and have recommended it many times to anyone who will listen. City I thought was good, but not up to Way Station.
Hi GuysI don't intend to join in with this read, but for the record:-
I know I have read 'City', but it was a very long time ago and I don't honestly remember it. My copy disappeared many years ago.
I have an old copy of Way Station on my shelves. It is one of the prime examples of the mental category "NEVER throw this away, and buy on sight anything else by this author that I don't already own". Only a dozen or so authors were ever considered for this category, and only five have held their places in it.
Way Station by Clifford D. SimakI first started reading Clifford D. Simak in the late 1960's at college, and read a lot of his books. In fact, when I pulled my old copy of Way Station off the shelf a couple days ago, I noticed he has a lot of real estate on those shelves. (It also reminded me I haven't read his books in many years. (My personal favorite of his is A Choice of Gods, by the way.)
Simak is a SFWA Grand Master (he also has a Lifetime Achievement from the Bram Stoker Awards, which is weird, because I don't think of him as a horror writer at all and I really don't like horror myself.)
Bryn wrote: "It's often beautiful, Bradburyesque, and it's soft or gentle SF, of the type 'aliens are people too'. Humanist, as one reviewer uses, except that's human-centric for this book l..."
The comparison to Bradbury is pretty apt, it seems to me; especially at the time. Simak isn't the sort of space opera & hardware guy Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Anderson and his other contemporary SF masters were. And he often wanders off the beaten track (in a way the later Heinlein stories did.)
Interesting you use the term "humanist". At one point in Way Station, Enoch Wallace actually thinks about how his alien friends deserve "human rights", and muses that the term itself is biased. (I wish I could dig up the exact quote, though I noted at the time, I don't highlight paper books, and of course you can't search them. – You also can't read them on the back porch after the sunsets; dang things don't come with built-in light source!)
The comparison to Bradbury is pretty apt, it seems to me; especially at the time. Simak isn't the sort of space opera & hardware guy Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Anderson and his other contemporary SF masters were. And he often wanders off the beaten track (in a way the later Heinlein stories did.)
Interesting you use the term "humanist". At one point in Way Station, Enoch Wallace actually thinks about how his alien friends deserve "human rights", and muses that the term itself is biased. (I wish I could dig up the exact quote, though I noted at the time, I don't highlight paper books, and of course you can't search them. – You also can't read them on the back porch after the sunsets; dang things don't come with built-in light source!)
I am only about a fourth through with 'Way Station' and enjoying it so far. Pretty sure I haven’t read this one before. As an aside, if you look for Simak’s books for Kindle, you will only find those works that have slipped into the public domain.
TIME QUARRY [novel]
EMPIRE [novel]
THE STREET THAT WASN'T THERE [short story]
THE WORLD THAT COULDN'T BE [novelet]
HELLHOUNDS OF THE COSMOS [short story]
PROJECT MASTODON [short story]
In more than one Kindle collection the titles are something like ‘The Best of Simak’. While there would be plenty of good reading in such a collection, the contemporary reader would be misguided to think these early works represent Simak at his best.
Sarah wrote: "I am only about a fourth through with 'Way Station' and enjoying it so far. Pretty sure I haven’t read this one before. As an aside, if you look for Simak’s books for Kindle, you will only find t..."
That is exactly why I'm not reading along with the group. His good books haven't been converted to e-books and I hate dead-tree editions. I've had Simak on my " I have to read" list for a long time.
I really like the cover art from the hard cover I picked up at the library. Seems to set the right tone to me. 
There is a Kindle book of The Way Station: Gateway /Gollancz Collectors' Editions, US $6.30 (as I see it from Australia). http://www.amazon.com/Way-Station-Gol...
I don't know what's late and early of his work but there's 24 of his titles under these Gateway covers. Includes G33z3r's A Choice of Gods, but I don't see City. These were put out 2011-13.
Alan wrote: "I have an old copy of Way Station on my shelves. It is one of the prime examples of the mental category "NEVER throw this away, and buy on sight anything else by this author that I don't already own"..."Funny. I have exactly the same mental category taking up residence in my brain as well, and Simak is on it.
As a consequence I have a ton of Simak books I have collected up over the years at every Second-hand bookstore I wandered into. Sad that so many of his books ended up there, but happy for me I was able to purchase them.
ok, I'm going to do this in short bursts...i've typed it out twice on my kindle, and lost it twice by brushing the "Cancel" button accidentally with my little finger...here goes....
Simak's day job was as news editor for the Minneapolis Star newspaper, retiring in 1976...he died in 1988 at age 84
his first SF story appeared in Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories in 1931....it was titled The World of the Red Sun...among his fans in those early days Simak could count a young Isaac Asimov...
early on he wrote "super-science" epics...then again, 1930's SF was the age of super-science, ruled by E E "Doc" Smith (The Skylark of Space) and John W Campbell (the Arcot, Wade, and Morly stories)...Simak wasn't top dog, but with fans like a young Isaac Asimov you can bet he was a force....
as time went on, Simak changed his approach to writing...his writing began to be described as "pastoral"....seems to me he dropped the super-science for a small-town attitude...when I read Way Station I am constantly reminded of the small farm I grew up on, how the people could be infuriating at times, but were basically good folk, not meaning any harm...a place you could go for a long walk and hear nothing but the birds singing, or a fish jumping in the creek....
more tomorrow...enjoy the book
:D
:D
Referring to the alien as Ulysses before telling me why lead me to think he was named for the Greek hero. In some ways more fitting because of the far travels.Of course, just 'cause the character named him for the general doesn't mean that the author did not name him for the original. 0:)
I guess it's time we can actually talk about the story. With Way Station, Simak introduces a Civil War survivor, Enoch Wallace. The story starts with a one-page description the tragic aftermath of a sizable battle over that conflict, nicely written.
Then we jump to the present day. (Which was 1963, 100 years after the Civil War.) Wallace hasn't aged.
Sometime not long after the Civil War, Enoch Wallace met an alien, who he nicknamed Ulysses (apparently after Gen. Grant, under whom Wallace served.) The alien proposed Wallace become stationmaster of an interstellar transport network, which was subsequently constructed inside and under his cabin in Wisconsin. Wallace, forbidden to disclose his strange line of work and the various alien races he converses with during the course of his duties, doesn't mingle much with his neighbors.
Wallace is old-fashioned, as one might expect of a 125-year-old man. (In some ways his 19th century manners reminds me of some Edgar Rice Burroughs characters, though not so man-of-action.)
Wallace is given to wonder whether he's more alien ("Galactic") than human now. His only contact with the human race is the mailman and the magazines and newspapers the mail brings him. He despairs over the news of world affairs, fearing a new, great war, and not just because that might destroy the human race through nuclear Armageddon, but also because it would mean the Galactics wouldn't let Earth into their Confederation.
Since the book was published in 1963, I guess it's safe to assume Simak had the Cuban missile crisis fresh in his mind when he wrote of Wallace's worries about international affairs.
Then we jump to the present day. (Which was 1963, 100 years after the Civil War.) Wallace hasn't aged.
Sometime not long after the Civil War, Enoch Wallace met an alien, who he nicknamed Ulysses (apparently after Gen. Grant, under whom Wallace served.) The alien proposed Wallace become stationmaster of an interstellar transport network, which was subsequently constructed inside and under his cabin in Wisconsin. Wallace, forbidden to disclose his strange line of work and the various alien races he converses with during the course of his duties, doesn't mingle much with his neighbors.
Wallace is old-fashioned, as one might expect of a 125-year-old man. (In some ways his 19th century manners reminds me of some Edgar Rice Burroughs characters, though not so man-of-action.)
Wallace is given to wonder whether he's more alien ("Galactic") than human now. His only contact with the human race is the mailman and the magazines and newspapers the mail brings him. He despairs over the news of world affairs, fearing a new, great war, and not just because that might destroy the human race through nuclear Armageddon, but also because it would mean the Galactics wouldn't let Earth into their Confederation.
Since the book was published in 1963, I guess it's safe to assume Simak had the Cuban missile crisis fresh in his mind when he wrote of Wallace's worries about international affairs.
But he carefully omitted all topical references, and so it can be viewed as "war and rumors of war" in the abstract.helps keep it from being tied down.
Rose wrote: "That is exactly why I'm not reading along with the group. His good books haven't been converted to e-books and I hate dead-tree editions. I've had Simak on my " I have to read" list for a long time...."
Good news on that... Way Station will be an e-book from Open Road Media on sale July 21. Way Station on Kindle.
It looks like Open Road Media are also releasing City in ebook on the same day, and have a few others (8 total) I didn't spot dates for.
Good news on that... Way Station will be an e-book from Open Road Media on sale July 21. Way Station on Kindle.
It looks like Open Road Media are also releasing City in ebook on the same day, and have a few others (8 total) I didn't spot dates for.
G33z3r wrote: "Rose wrote: "That is exactly why I'm not reading along with the group. His good books haven't been converted to e-books and I hate dead-tree editions. I've had Simak on my " I have to read" list fo..."Thanks very much!! I've been trying to find the ebook, or info on when an ebook will come out, on this and City for the past couple of years.
about Wallace and his despair over the world's problems...I'm like that all the time...maybe I'm just a sucker (you tell me), but when I was a kid I totally bought into SF's view of what humanity COULD be...you can see bits and parts of it in this novel, and practically ever other SF author's works...humanity full of great potential, and yes, we WILL realize it...yet I look around me and I see humanity tossing in all away, like the impending war in the novel threatens to do in the novel, as the grave robbery from Wallace's family plot threatens the planet's future. Maybe I'm just weird, but I see this sort of insanity all about me as does anyone who keeps up with world events. I fear we will soon (very, very soon...as in my lifetime) reach the point of no return...humanity may survive, but we will never again have the ability to reach out beyond our own planet...yes, I drank the kool-aid offered by this book, and about a zillion others like it...and it has made me a angry, bitter man...I wonder if this book (which actually is quite optimistic) or SF in general has had a similar effect on anyone else, or if I just need to get my doctor to up my meds?
I wonder if Simak wasn't also thinking about how easy it could be for the writer or avid reader of stories of imaginary worlds to isolate from humanity. I just read the part where Enoch goes from wonderment of the Vegan gifts to rescuing Lucy. He knows that he could isolate from the rest of Earth, and considering his age has no necessary ties with his neighbors.
Personally, I absolutely loved that section.
Simak's narrative voice resembles the protagonist's background and reclusiveness very good. An easy, simple language with sometimes lyrical pictures like the scent of apple blossoms in the middle of winter.He introduces lots of concepts and ideas. I liked those virtual persons Mary and David and their emotional problems with their relationships to Wallace. Nowadays there wouldn't be such a fear of virtuality, but back in the 60s feelings were different, and I love the retrospective comparison.
Weaker parts are the Galactics' religion around the talisman, and some of the motivations - I think that the novel could be a good bit longer without loosing its sharpness. No, I don't need a thousand pages, but some parts in the novel are quite rash.
Sarah, I love your comment about how it can be easy for one who reads fantasy and SF to become isolated like Wallace....back in the day there was a saying..."it is a proud and lonely thing to be a fan" ...meaning a SF fan. Lots of reasons for that statement I think. I know from my school days it seemed the few of us who read the stuff were the quite, wallflower types...part of that because some of these folks just had issues going on (one in particular I'm thinking of was slightly autistic), part of it just because kids are mean as all heck and will happily take the square pegs among them and try to beat them into their idea of round holes...under such circumstances a person withdraws deeper into their own world, or they become a round peg...that's my experience anyway.
Andreas wrote: "He introduces lots of concepts and ideas. I liked those virtual persons Mary and David and their emotional problems with their relationships to Wallace. Nowadays there wouldn't be such a fear of virtuality, but back in the 60s feelings were different, and I love the retrospective comparison...."
Wallace's imaginary friends (technologically enhanced version) were an interesting side story in the novel. Mary seems an artificial construction of his ideal woman, to love pure and chaste from afar; David his best bud from childhood. An alien artifact (or was it a book?) let him create far more realistic versions. They also serve as a his conscience?
Eventually he discovers, courtesy of Lucy, the additional alien artifact that would let him add solidity to those creations. Just in time for his conscience to tell him it was time to rejoin the human race. (Boy, when your imaginary girlfriend dumps you, that's really tough.)
Wallace's imaginary friends (technologically enhanced version) were an interesting side story in the novel. Mary seems an artificial construction of his ideal woman, to love pure and chaste from afar; David his best bud from childhood. An alien artifact (or was it a book?) let him create far more realistic versions. They also serve as a his conscience?
Eventually he discovers, courtesy of Lucy, the additional alien artifact that would let him add solidity to those creations. Just in time for his conscience to tell him it was time to rejoin the human race. (Boy, when your imaginary girlfriend dumps you, that's really tough.)
Spooky1947 wrote: "about Wallace and his despair over the world's problems......"
I thought it was interesting that the Galactics' proffered solution was Stupidity. (You're free to go on hurting each other, but only with clubs.) Apparently kindness or peacefulness is too hard (except with the Talisman), but stupid come easy. Sort of reminiscent of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It's also used as a form of attack in The Three-Body Problem (some sort of super electron that confounds scientists' ability to innovate.) The idea shows up in fantasy as well, such as Duncan's The Reluctant Swordsman ((view spoiler).)
I thought it was interesting that the Galactics' proffered solution was Stupidity. (You're free to go on hurting each other, but only with clubs.) Apparently kindness or peacefulness is too hard (except with the Talisman), but stupid come easy. Sort of reminiscent of the biblical story of the Tower of Babel. It's also used as a form of attack in The Three-Body Problem (some sort of super electron that confounds scientists' ability to innovate.) The idea shows up in fantasy as well, such as Duncan's The Reluctant Swordsman ((view spoiler).)
G33, the idea in reverse shows up in Poul Anderson's Brain Wave (a long time since I read it, working on memory here)...the Earth passes out of a huge cloud of something that has suppressed intelligence here for millions of years....everyone's intelligence gets a 100 or so point boost....
ok, once again I have lost a long post before I could put it up because of my stupid kindle fire, so i'm going to put this up in two or three parts....I get tired of typeing on this darn kindle fire...
OK, to re-visit Sarah's comment about Wallace being a metaphor (is that the right word? I'm no critic...) for the SF fen and how easy it is for them to become isolated from the "real world" (I should point out that Isaac Asimov, in his 25 volume respective anthology The Great SF Stories, only half tongue-in-cheek refered to SF as the "real world")....continued in next post
I just finished reading (actually listening....I did the audio book version this time) Way Station....tword the end, about the time Wallace gets his unexpected visitor to the station, Wallace wonders if he is still human...sure he has the body of a human, but the wonders if all this exposure to so many aliens and galactic culture hasn't somehow changed him to the point that he isn't really human anymore and thus not fit to represent Earth before the galactic council....now keep that in mind as we begin the mental gymnastics below.....on to the next post....
Samuel R Delaney, in his books The Jewel-hinged Jaw and Starboard Wine, (both collections of essays about the use of language in SF) points out that the way SF authors use language is markedly different than mundane authors use language....for example, if a writer of mundane fiction writes "Joe walked into the wall" we expect Joe to have bumped his nose or hurt his head or some-such...hey, walls are HARD....but if a SF author writes the same sentence, we want to know what Joe found when he got to the other side of the wall....in other words, the very same sentence can have a completely different meaning in a SF story vs. any other type of story.....onward to next post
now, remember, the golden age of SF is twelve...that statement has a dual meaning, but in this context it means most of us discover SF around the age of 12... for the next few years most of us fen go on a almost exclusive reading diet of SF...then many fall away from SF for whatever reason, but some of us keep at it thru our teen years into adulthood....so all the time our brains are growing and forming the neural networks we will carry with us the rest of our lives, we are reading fiction that, in effect, uses a language not understood by most people....continued below
I'm sure everyone here has read 1984 by Orwell...rember, in it, he introduced Newspeek as a way of controlling the masses...in effect, if you control the language, you control how the people think...if they have no word for concepts, how do you think in terms of, or express those concepts....thus Delaney contends the reason the mundane world doesn't read SF is because they can't UNDERSTAND sf.......continued below
now, let me introduce another concept....I'm sure you have all heard of A. E. van Vogt's SF classic novel Slan....it is one of the foundation books on which the house of modern SF is is built...if any of you young space cadets haven't heard of it, suffice to say Slans are mental supermen of the future....well, way back in the day, the SF fen had a saying...."fans are Slans", meaning SF fans were mental supermen compared to our mundane brethren...and the treatment we received was about as good (in the book normal humans hunted down the Slans and killed them)....I continue below.....
now, fans were Slans by virtue of regular reading of SF, which, if Delaney is to be believed (along with my shadeing in some spots), has the power to re-wire the human brain, thus changing the way we think....Wallace wonders if he still thinks like a human due to his exposure to aliens and alien culture on a regular basis...I ask do we still think like the mundane population due to our constant exposure to SF....fans are Slans....
or, to pull from another bit of fannish lore....
I have a cosmic mind...now what???
or, to pull from another bit of fannish lore....
I have a cosmic mind...now what???
I know the above is pretty weird....likely mostly BS as well, but I DO believe there are at least grains of truth to be had in it...I hope you enjoy chewing it over
Had to five-star that. Optimistic, yeah. Optimistic, humanistic: well, I hate SF that's about how the intelligences out there want to eat us. And yes, to answer the question, I had no doubt I'd meet the aliens by the turn of the century, and no doubt either that they'd be along the lines of these aliens, and the effects on earth along these lines. No, it hasn't happened. Still respond to this book.
Just finished the novel and one things really stood out for me. The book was written during Cuban missile crisis and it really shows. At the same time the ending was quite optimistic.
So the question is, how come science fiction was optimistic during the Cold War (this is not the only example), but as soon as the war was over practically all science fiction became about bleak dystopian future? How comes we lost the ability to see bright future ahead, or it least the possibility of it?
So the question is, how come science fiction was optimistic during the Cold War (this is not the only example), but as soon as the war was over practically all science fiction became about bleak dystopian future? How comes we lost the ability to see bright future ahead, or it least the possibility of it?
Evgeny wrote: "So the question is, how come science fiction was optimistic during the Cold War (this is not the only example), but as soon as the war was over practically all science fiction became about bleak dystopian future? How comes we lost the ability to see bright future ahead, or it least the possibility of it? .."
I wanted to respond to the premise without hijacking this book discussion onto a tangent, so I created a new topic: Has SciFi become More Pessimistic?
I wanted to respond to the premise without hijacking this book discussion onto a tangent, so I created a new topic: Has SciFi become More Pessimistic?
I've finished this one, here's my review.I'd say it shows some age but is well worth reading.
But if you compare it to other works of that years, then I'd say that there are better ones, and Way Station is far too naive for me - plot-wise, language-wise, and narrative style-wise.
Compare with Dune only two years later, Cat's Cradle in the same year, some Dystopians like 1962's Clockwork Orange, The Drowned World, The Man in the High Castle, a couple of Jack Vance novels, or some Brunner or Disch. I know, it is all a matter of taste.
one thing about Simak...he thought people were good at heart...on my audio book version Mike Resnik did the intro, and he said if Heinlein thought humans were the the biggest, baddest monkeys on the galactic block, then Simak thought humans were the nicest...not a quote, but close enough
Andreas, like in your review, I wondered about the Talisman...was it a sermon-in-a-chip or what??? All it seemed to do was make everyone seem really mellow...if that's the case, just wait til the Galactic Community gets a load of our Rastafarians!!!
But seriously, the Talisman could have been a bit more fleshed-out...if done properly it would have carried more weight, been more believable, and made a classic novel even better....
But seriously, the Talisman could have been a bit more fleshed-out...if done properly it would have carried more weight, been more believable, and made a classic novel even better....
I agree that this aged somewhat, but not as bad as some of Heinlein works (I am looking at you,
).
).
Spooky1947 wrote: "about Wallace and his despair over the world's problems...I'm like that all the time...maybe I'm just a sucker (you tell me), but when I was a kid I totally bought into SF's view of what humanity C..."Your words really resonated with me. The optimistic vision of the future in some science fiction makes me realize just how far from utopia we are. When I contemplate alien life, I think about all the life forms on this planet (plants, animals, etc.) that we have no means of communication with, and humanity's superiority-complex, and wonder why any other planetary life would bother with us.
I enjoyed Way Station, though All the Traps of Earth is by far my favorite Simak collection. What really struck me as I finished "Way Station" was Enoch's continued sense of isolation at the end of everything. He'd finally bridged the gap between his humanity and his Galactic identity, but was still struck by an all-consuming sense of loneliness.
I think it was from this place that he was able to fully embody his position as a keeper, being no longer a man of earth, or a simple gatekeeper to the stars. He had to relinquish his hold on any relationship, imagined or otherwise, before he could become a channel for humanity's future. We see this in his surprised realization that he had sided with humanity, but also his hesitation to expose Galactic Central to the world. He wants desperately to be a part of each world, but can occupy neither. It is his solitude that made him successful.
I think most writers or creative sorts can relate to this...genius and creation often require a sacrifice of personal relationships and freedoms. I wonder how much of Simak was poured into Enoch Wallace, and how much acceptance Simak was able to enjoy before he left life on this earth.
Robin, about Simak...yes, writing is a lonely job...it does require "quiet time" to do the work...but from what I've read about the work habits of writers most only spend a few hours a day working at the craft...most of the day they are doing other things....Simak worked as a newspaper editor as his day job and was married, a couple of kids if I remember right...I know it's possible to feel lonely in a crowd, but that doesn't strike me as Simak's style.
Also, you can tell from his work he has a real affection for the human race...I could be wrong (have been offten) but I don't think he got that from living a lonely life
Also, you can tell from his work he has a real affection for the human race...I could be wrong (have been offten) but I don't think he got that from living a lonely life
Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy
Books mentioned in this topic
Way Station (other topics)A Heritage of Stars (other topics)
City (other topics)
Way Station (other topics)
The Werewolf Principle (other topics)
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I'm one of those who prefer Way Station. I read it when I was but a wee Space Cadet, and it's stuck with me.
If you haven't read it yet, get to it, we will be discussing it this month. It's in print, digital copies are out there, and I believe Audible.com has a audio book version. I know you will enjoy it.
Simak is something of a stylist, maybe not as much of one as Bradbury, but he can lay down some beautiful writing...Way Station is a character-driven novel, focusing on Enoch Wallace. This is no two-fisted adventure story, but it will suck you in. It's also short, a great read for a lazy summer afternoon. If you haven't read it before, I envy you...you're in for a great read.
Over the next few days I'll be telling you about Clifford Simak, feel free to jump in anytime with your comments about the book, Mr. Simak, calling me out on errors, or anything else that may be pertinent.
ENJOY!!!