The Shipshape Miracle and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

Published by Open Road Media on July 4, 2017

The Shipshape Miracle and Other Stories is volume 10 in the Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak. It doesn’t include Simak’s best stories, but all of the stories are good, making it one of the best volumes in the series.

In “The Money Tree,” money does grow on trees. Rich people have them, which is why they have walls and fences surrounding their property. But as Chuck Doyle learns, stealing from a money tree isn’t easy when it is protected by an alien. This is a light and amusing story and, like many Simak stories, it comes with a moral. It is also one of Simak’s many stories about kind aliens who are better than the Earth deserves.

“Shotgun Cure” is typical Simak in its focus on small towns and simple lives. A “one-horse doctor in a one-horse town” is approached by an alien who gives him the cure for all disease. Soon the entire planet is vaccinated, but it turns out that the cure comes with a price.

“Paradise” is one of the stories that comprises City. This is the story in which Fowler returns to human form to spread a utopian message about humanity’s future that is suppressed for fear that people will listen to it.

“The Gravestone Rebels Ride by Night!” might be the longest of Simak’s westerns. The hero is a frontier lawyer.

“How-2” imagines a future in which “how to” kits supply instructions and materials for everything from home dentistry to making a robotic dog. A fellow named Knight plans to build a dog but he gets a kit for a robotic person by mistake. Lawyers also play a role in this story, although they are robot lawyers who bring much needed logic and reason to the law. The courtroom scene echoes themes from some of Asimov’s robot stories, but with a unique spin. A moral of many Simak stories, including this one, is that honest hard work is a good thing, and that trying to avoid it will only lead to trouble. Too much leisure may even take the value out of life. This story was new to me, but it is on my growing list of favorite Simak stories.

“The Shipshape Miracle” tells of a lawless man who needs a miracle to leave the isolated planet on which he is stranded. The miracle comes in the form of a ship that has merged with a human (an early example of transhumanism in science fiction), but all miracles come with a price. The story has the sort of ironic ending that would have made a good Twilight Zone episode.

“Rim of the Deep” is one of Simak’s early stories, and for that reason is written in a pulp style that he largely abandoned in his later years. The story is sort of an underwater western with a gangster element and a Venusian.

Simak hinged more than one story on the relationship between immortality (or longevity) and the need to find a place to put all the people who haven’t died. Like other Simak stories that explore the theme, “Eternity Lost” (a story about a corrupt politician’s attempt to gain another life extension) asks whether longevity is a blessing or a curse and suggests that people only appreciate life because they know it has a relatively short span. Simak often gave his stories a twist ending, and is one of the better twists.

The future of an evolving mankind was another frequent Simak theme. In “Immigrant,” Seldon Bishop visits Kimon, a world that only welcomes the smartest immigrants from Earth and that has eschewed foreign trade or diplomatic relationships with other planets. Earth’s government hopes that Bishop will explain why that’s true, although no other emigrant to Kimon has chosen to do so. While aliens in Simak’s stories are usually kinder and wiser than humans, the aliens on Kimon are smug and condescending, perhaps an inevitable trait of a highly-evolved race. But the story is about the human qualities of vanity and pride, as well as the human capacity to set those qualities aside in order to gain knowledge and wisdom.

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Earth for Inspiration by Clifford D. Simak

Published digitally by Open Road Media on July 5, 2016

This is volume 9 of The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak. The introduction to this volume focuses on Clifford Simak’s westerns. A western has been included in each of the volumes that I’ve read, but the bulk of this book, like the other volumes, consists of the science fiction stories at which Simak excelled.

“Earth for Inspiration” (1941) doesn’t fit within the cycle of stories that Simak assembled into the book City, but it does feature a robot valet named Jenkins (apparently not the same Jenkins who appears in City). This Jenkins tells a blocked science fiction writer to visit Earth for inspiration. There the writer meets a rusty robot named Philbert who probably would have fit nicely into the City plotline. This isn’t a great story but it’s interesting to see how Simak played with some ideas that he later used to produce great stories.

“Idiot’s Crusade” (1954) is one of Simak’s alien visitor stories, although it is far from his best use of that theme. The alien takes over a human idiot and launches a crusade against people who are unfriendly to idiots.

“Hellhounds of the Cosmos” (1932) is one of Simak’s earliest published stories. Even the volume’s editor admits that it doesn’t make much sense.

“Honorable Opponent” (1956) illustrates a point that Simak made many times -- that aliens and humans are likely to have very different perspectives on almost everything. In this clever story, aliens have a concept of war that humans only come to understand in defeat.

“Green Flight, Out” (1941) is one of Simak’s aviation combat stories. Not my thing.

“Carbon Copy” (1957) takes on a greedy realtor. Greedy or exploitive businessmen never do well in Simak’s stories. This one is pranked by an alien, deservedly so.

“The Asteroid of Gold” (1932) is a science fiction action/adventure story that borrows its themes from westerns. Prospectors exploring new frontiers fight for survival (using wits, science, and overall toughness). The story is better than some of Simak’s other early efforts.

“Good Nesters Are Dead Nesters” (1945) is a western. I am usually entertained by Simak’s westerns and this one was no exception.

“Desertion” (1944) was one of the stories that Simak incorporated into City. It is also one of his best stories. In fact, this story of a man and a dog who move beyond life on Earth remains my favorite Simak story.

“The Golden Bugs” (1960) tells of aliens who try to steal the Earth’s metal, not realizing that humans take it personally when aliens mess with our cars. The story is notable for the narrator’s ambivalent reaction to Earth’s response.

“Full Cycle” (1955) returns to the theme of deserted cities that was integral to City. This take on the theme takes a more optimistic view of humanity’s ability to endure the breakdown of society.

This may not be the best volume in the series, but it contains two of the best stories: "Desertion" and "Honorable Opponent." Several of the rest have retained their entertainment value.

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Good Night, Mr. James by Clifford D. Simak

Published by Open Road Media on July 5, 2016

Volume 8 in the complete collection of Clifford E. Simak’s short stories begins with an introduction that discusses Simak’s non-fiction writing. Apart from his journalistic efforts, Simak wrote about nature. Of course, nature and the environment are common themes in Simak’s fiction. Not surprisingly, given Simak’s habit of working bits of his life into his stories, a character in the story “Brother” is a nature writer.

“Good Night, Mr. James” (1951) is different from Simak’s other “first contact” stories in that most of Simak’s aliens are benign or bewildered, while this story about an alien that hates all living things takes a decidedly grim view of aliens. But the story also suggests that humans can be equally nasty. The story takes a neat twist that results in one of Simak’s best surprise endings.

“Brother” (1977) is one of several Simak stories in which a character finds simple farm life preferable to the complexities of modern living, this time because spaceports are blocking the view. The evolution of humanity is a theme in this story, one to which Simak returned frequently during his career.

“Senior Citizen” (1975) presents a dark view of living a very long life, which might be telling given that Simak was in his 70s when he wrote the story.

“The Gunsmoke Drummer Sells a War” (1946) is a typical Simak western.

“Kindergarten” (1953) imagines aliens disguised as vending machines, but the story reveals one of Simak’s frequent themes: the probability that humans will respond violently to benign aliens, when peaceful interaction is more likely to benefit the human race.

“Reunion on Ganymede” (1938), like much of the fiction Simak wrote before he got old, contrasts with “Senior Citizen” by portraying an elderly man as wise and heroic. The story, involving robots and a killer, was written early in Simak’s career when he was churning out action stories.

“Galactic Chest” (1956) is one of the Simak stories to feature a journalist in a starring role (Simak worked as a journalist and newspaper editor during his writing career). This is another story in which aliens behave more charitably than humans.

“Death Scene” (1957) imagines that the world has finally achieved peace, but at a cost. People have traded freedom for security, a tendency that makes the story relevant to modern life.

“Census” (1944) is one of the stories that Simak “fixed up” into the novel City. It is the first talking dog story in the novel and it features themes (the decline of urban civilization, the rise of mutants, the evolution of ants) that become central to the later stories.

“Auk House” (1977) revisits a theme that Simak employed in many stories: the greedy and irresponsible nature of large corporations. Businesses use a kind of time travel to visit alternate worlds in an effort to exploit intelligent dinosaurs. This is one of Simak’s strongest “message” stories.

Like all the volumes in this collection, some stories are better than others. That’s the difference between a “complete” collection versus a “best of” collection. If you can’t get enough Simak, the complete collection is worth acquiring.

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A Death in the House and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

Published by Open Road Media on July 5, 2016

A Death in the House is volume 7 in the Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak series published by Open Road. The introduction attributes Simak’s apparent hiatus from science fiction in the mid-1930s to his work as a newspaper editor, moving from town to town in the Midwest after being hired to save sinking newspapers. At the same time, shrinking markets for sf left him with few places to which he could submit his work. Fortunately, the hiatus did not last long and Simak went on to produce some of science fiction's most memorable stories.

The stories (with publication dates) collected in this volume are:

"Operation Stinky" (1957) - A smelly alien meets a drunken human. This is an amusing story that previews themes that Simak developed in greater depth in “A Death in the House,” also collected in this volume.

"Green Thumb" (1954) - This intelligent alien plant story that also previews “A Death in the House.”

"When it’s Hangnoose Time in Hell" (1946) - A western.

"The Sitters" (1958) - Aliens prove to be twisted babysitters. Those who benefit might approve of the aliens’ approach but parents will be horrified.

"Tools" (1942) - An intelligent cloud of radon from Venus is messing with humans, but the radium industry is big business and profits matter more than people. Like many of Simak’s stories, “Tools” is optimistic even as it cautions against greed and other deadly sins.

"Target Generation" (1953) - A generation ship story with some twists. The story has some features in common with Brian Aldiss’ excellent 1958 novel, Non-Stop.

"War is Personal" (1945) - A “pilots behind enemy lines” war story.

"Nine Lives" (1957) - A time travel story with cats.

"A Death in the House" (1959) - A farmer finds a smelly plant-like alien that soon dies -- or does it? Simak’s humanity shines through in this story, as well as his sense that aliens (and by extension, humans who are different from us) are just as capable of empathy and kindness as we are. It’s my favorite story in the volume and one of Simak’s best.

"The Birch Clump Cylinder" (1974) - An alien starship drive that uses time as a source of energy falls to Earth, setting up a clever time travel story.

None of the stories in this volume are duds and all except the war story entertained me, but only one -- the title story -- shows Simak at this best. It’s interesting, however, to see how two of the earlier stories shaped the title story.

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Grotto of the Dancing Deer and Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak

Published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy on March 1, 2016

Grotto of the Dancing Deer is one of several books in a series that will collect all of Clifford D. Simak’s short stories. The stories in this volume are representative of Simak’s range as a writer. Most of them are quite good.

In “Over the River and Through the Woods,” two children show up to visit their grandparents, but the grandparents have never seen the children before. The boy says his father is a temporal engineer, a phrase the grandmother doesn’t understand. Well, you can see where this is going, although the story takes an interesting turn. The story reflects Simak’s love of simple country lifestyles as well as the moral dilemma inherent in time travel. The story is short but powerful. It shows Simak at his best.

“Grotto of the Dancing Deer” is about a 20,000-year-old man. He’s the original survivalist and he does it without a bug-out bag, because survival is about instinct and judgment, not gear and guns. The story’s well-deserved awards include a Hugo and a Nebula. Its point, I think, is that having a friend who understands you, even if the friendship is fleeting, is the true key to survival.

“The Reformation of Hangman’s Gulch” is one of Simak’s westerns. It has the hallmarks of a classic western, including the theme of good versus evil, but the good guy isn’t all that good, giving the story the kind of subtlety that Simak brought to much of his fiction. The dialog could have been better but the story is entertaining.

In “The Civilization Game,” the human race is striving to preserve its culture (everything from art to politics to war) as humans become a minority in the galactic matrix. Those who try to preserve human achievements discover that many of them (like political assassination) are quite ugly. Simak gives a clever twist to the notion of cultural preservation as the story ends.

“Crying Jag” is about an alien (and his robot) who comes to a small town and listens to the sad stories people love to tell about their lives. They feel better after confessing their sorrows, making the alien seem like a priest or psychiatrist, but the alien listens to the stories because they have the same effect on aliens that alcohol has on humans. The gentle humor and the twisted ending are typical Simak, but the story is also typical of Simak’s ability to make a profound point with a simple story.

“The Hunger Disease” was written when sf authors thought that Venus was just a rainy version of Earth. Colonists on Venus come down with a fatal disease that makes them insatiably hungry. A reporter wonders if there’s a connection between the disease and a visit by a colonist from Mars. Simak’s appreciation of agrarian life and its rigors is evident the story, as is his love of westerns. The story, in fact, gives a science fiction twist to a traditional western theme of a man fighting to save his land from swindlers who file an opposing claim. Add a Martian conspiracy, and you’ve got classic Simak.

“Mutiny on Mercury” is probably the first published story that Simak wrote, although it took him a while to sell it. It’s sort of a John Carter story that is easily skipped.

The spaceship crew in “Jackpot” spend their time plundering planets. They come across a planet with only one structure. It appears to be an immense library. This creates a moral dilemma -- should they rob the library, a prospect that will finally give them the wealth they want, or should they leave it for the rest of the galaxy to enjoy? Should education be freely available to benefit all of humankind or should it be sold at a profit to those who can afford it? Is honesty the most important value, even if it leads to complacency? Simak excelled at stories that ask moral questions. This one stands out.

Some aspects of “Day of Truce” reminded me of the first stories in City: the tension between city dwellers and those who are turning the country into cities with larger yards; the tension between generations; the difficulty of living in peace when people have their minds set on conflict. The story builds on a shrewd version of the angry old man who shakes a fist while yelling “you kids get off my lawn.” The story also asks whether a preemptive strike can ever be justified as self-defense. This isn’t one of Simak’s best, but it’s a good effort.

“Unsilent Spring” returns to one of Simak’s favorite themes -- the merits of simple country lifestyles. A rural doctor is asked to keep an eye out for a strange malady that is becoming epidemic. Symptoms include lethargy, abnormal blood sugar, and an increased appetite. Only townfolk complain of those symptoms; country and hill folk seem to be immune. The hill people, in particular, are healthy and self-sufficient, surviving on the food they grow, the fish and game they catch, the few cows and pigs they own. They are “happy, reliable, proud, and independent people, filled with dignity and inborn curiosity” -- the kind of people Simak extolled in his fiction. The story is sort of an ode to country doctors. The solution to the medical mystery might be a little silly, but it’s consistent with Simak’s lifelong interest in the process of evolution.

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