Buckets of Diamonds and Other Stories
Clifford D. Simak: High Anxiety?
«It was dark and lonely and unending in the depths of space with no Companion.»
Something about space travel, as we envision it, did not appeal to the writer Clifford D. Simak; and I have come to believe that there is a reason for this that may be rooted in that author’s psyche.
In his long career Clifford D. Simak wrote more than 150 science fiction stories (the exact number is unclear, since records show that some of his stories have been lost); but it may be surprising to learn that a relatively small number of those stories revolved around that mainstay motif of science fiction—space travel.
It is true that some of Cliff Simak’s science fiction involved the actual portrayal of that classic mode of travel; but close examination of both his novels and shorter fiction reveals that most mentioned spaceships only in passing, focusing on the story of what happened after the ship landed. (I will not argue the issue of whether «Target Generation» (see Volume 7 of this series, The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak) counts as such a tale, since although most of the action did in fact take place during interstellar travel, the story was a «generation ship» story, and most of the ship’s passengers were unaware that they were on a spaceship until the end of the story.)
It is also true that Cliff Simak’s fiction tended to focus more on personalities than on technology. Still, I find in his work a puzzling sort of aversion to space travel. In, for instance, «The Shipshape Miracle» (see Volume 10 of this series, The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak), a marooned criminal, seeking to evade law enforcement, is offered a ride in a spaceship—only to find himself locked inside it … for life. And in «Lulu,» (see Volume 14), three Earthmen struggle to gain control of their ship which, having been created to have its own robotic personality, is making life very difficult for the passengers …
And then there is the novel Time is the Simplest Thing, in which the entire plot revolves around the fact that space travel is impossibly deadly for human beings; other ways to explore the universe must be used.
In fact, a number of Cliff’s stories revolved around ways to travel off-Earth by means other than ships. In the novel Shakespeare’s Planet, an Earthman who has been in suspended animation on an interstellar voyage awakens on a distant world, only to discover that humankind has learned, since his ship left Earth, to travel farther and faster than his ship could, through the use of mysterious «tunnels» through space—thus passing him by while he slept. And in «The Spaceman’s Van Gogh» (see Volume 12), people travel by means of something called «polting,» which is never really explained, perhaps because it is irrelevant to the plot.
And yet, despite such evidence, Simak wrote an entire astronomy-popularization book entitled Wonder and Glory: The Story of the Universe (St. Martin’s Press, 1969)—a title that also happens to contain a phrase he used a number of times in his fiction: wonder and glory. In it he wrote enthusiastically of the «glory» of the stars, of the Universe. That makes me sure that he really liked the idea of being Out There—but that he preferred some form of travel that would not require a ship.
What might have caused Simak to find some aspects, at least, of space travel unappealing? If he liked the idea of being Out There, but did not want to be in a ship—was it that he did not want to be confined? Was he indulging some secret fantasy, in «All the Traps of Earth» (see Volume 1) when his character, the robot Richard Daniel, rode on the outside of a ship in interstellar space, and received thereby an extraordinary gift? Or consider the story «Brother» (see Volume 8), in which Phil, an «extension» of the stay-at-home writer Edward Lambert, travels in or on ships. In what might have been Cliff’s Simak’s most autobiographical piece of fiction, did his point-of-view character find another way to see the Universe without having to get into a ship?
In «Condition of Employment» (see Volume 3), humans have to be drugged and brainwashed to make them willing to endure a space voyage.
And in «A Death in the House» (Volume 7), an alien being who has crash-landed on Earth survives and is able to return to space due to the aid of a lonely, ignorant Earthman. In thanks, the alien makes a gift to the Earthman of the device that helps it endure the awfulness of space travel.
Did Cliff Simak have some sort of phobia about space travel? He told me, when his wife died, that he had chosen to have them both interred in an above-ground vault rather than buried in a conventional grave; he explained to me that he did not like the idea of being put underground. I drew a line from that comment to his great story «Huddling Place» (Volume 5), in which the point-of-view character tragically fails to board a ship that was to take him to Mars to save a friend’s life. The character diagnoses himself as having agoraphobia, but he is unable to deal with the disabling condition.
Please note that I am not suggesting that Cliff Simak suffered from agoraphobia—or, for that matter, from claustrophobia; and in fact Cliff’s daughter has told me that she knows nothing about her father having either such phobia. (Interestingly, she added that she was under the impression that the vault was her mother’s idea; and knowing Cliff, I would not put it past him to have taken upon himself the responsibility for such a decision…)
I have come to the conclusion that although Cliff Simak liked the idea of being Out There, he did not want to be in a ship, did not want to be confined. His idea might have been best expressed, albeit ambivalently, by Richard Daniel, the robot who, in «All the Traps of Earth,» rode on the outside of a ship that entered hyperspace and was transformed. Richard Daniel, Cliff wrote, «felt the mystery and delight and the loneliness and the color and the great uncaring …»
In fact, Cliff, on several occasions, spoke of the cold darkness between the stars, and of the «great uncaringness» Out There. But I would suggest that despite the negative feelings displayed in such words, he made it clear on many occasions that he felt a strong attraction to the wonderfulness of the Universe.
David W. Wixon
Horrible Example
One of the reasons Clifford D. Simak would come to be described as the «pastoralist of science fiction» was because so many of his most endearing stories were set in small towns—towns often much like those in the Middle America of Cliff’s boyhood. And many of those small towns bore the name «Millville»—which happened to be the name of the closest town to the Wisconsin farm on which Cliff Simak was raised. But don’t be misled: the actual Millville was very little like the Millvilles of Cliff’s stories. Cliff often remarked that his memories of his home area frequently turned out to be different, on those occasions when he returned; the valleys were deeper, he said, the ridges steeper and higher—and the woods darker and more mysterious.
This particular story, though, is concerned less with the countryside than with the people of the small town—their attitudes and mores, their very human strengths and failings … Cliff Simak could portray that kind of thing better than most.
«Horrible Example» first appeared in the March 1961 issue of Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact.
—dww
Tobias staggered down the street and thought how tough it was.
He hadn’t any money and Joe, the barkeep, had hurled him out of Happy Hollow tavern before he’d much more than wet his whistle and now all that was left for him was the cold and lonely shack that he called a home and no one gave a damn, no matter what might happen. For, he told himself, with maudlin self-pity, he was nothing but a bum and a drunken one at that and it was a wonder the town put up with him at all.