“But, if you recall, Mr. Harrison, I also was created by the profit motive.”
“That is true, of course. Perhaps it was somehow written in the stars that we must continue with the profit motive until we had developed the capacity for your creation.”
“You believe events may be written in the stars?”
“I don’t know,” said Harrison. “But let us say that somehow, by whatever special dispensation, we were granted a second chance. That second chance was you. Today we live in cities that are you, without great demands being made upon our limited natural resources. Today we specialize in services; we take in one another’s washing. None of us is rich and none expects to be. We never think of monetary riches. And I think we may be much the happier for it. So now you must stand with us. If you don’t, we’re finished. I know there must be a million ways you could bring us to disaster.”
“You must mistake me, Mr. Harrison. I have a sense of duty, perhaps of gratitude.”
“The thing I must point out,” said Harrison, “is that the quickest way for you to ruin us is to strive too much toward humanity. We need someone who thinks a little differently, someone who may understand and sympathize with our human needs and aims, but who can stand off a little distance and tell us when we’re wrong and why we happen to be wrong. We would not, as I say, give up human judgment or any shred of our humanity, but now we need someone else, another kind of judgment to balance against our human judgment.”
“You think this matter of immortality …”
“That’s exactly what I mean. I came as close as I could. I think no human could come closer. But there is something, some blind wall, intruding from the human past, that makes human judgment in this area quite impossible. Here we need another kind of judgment, not to negate human judgment, not to rule it out, but to correlate with it. A survey panel, let us say.”
“I could think on it,” said Univac. “I could let you know. But I feel uncomfortable…”
“I know you do,” said Harrison. “I know exactly how you feel. Don’t you think I feel it, too? I giving up something that was an exclusively human function; you taking on something that is a small step beyond your province. But if we are to make it, if we are to carry on the human dream, each of us must do it. For this is not the only case. This may be the first one, but there will be others, many others as the years go on.”
“I hope that you are right, sir.”
“I hope so, too,” said Harrison.
“I will let you know.”
“Thanks,” said Harrison. “I’ll look forward to it.”
The face of Univac faded and Harrison rose from his chair and went into the living room.
“It was a hard day, sir,” said Harley.
“Yes, Harley, I think you could call it that.”
“And now another drink?”
“That would be very fine.”
“You are sure that is all.”
“Quite sure. No beach, no ski slope, no…”
“I am aware of that,” said Harley, hastily. “I thought perhaps a little music.”
“I want to think,” Harrison said, sharply.
“But man has thought so long,” said Harley, “of so many things.”
“That is right,” said Harrison, “and he’s never going to quit. The best that he can hope for is a little help to keep his thinking straight.”
He sat in the chair in the tiny living room, with the drink in hand.
Sellout, he wondered, or a big stride forward?
The Creator
“The Creator” was the only piece of fiction Clifford D. Simak had published between November 1932 and July 1938. In later years, several different theories would be floated about the science fiction world in efforts to explain his apparent retreat, but I will not go into them here, except to suggest that the very existence of this story probably owes much to some of the same forces that resulted in Cliff’s absence from the field.
“The Creator” was written in 1933, at a time when Astounding had temporarily suspended publication and both Wonder Stories and Amazing were skipping months, seemingly teetering on the edge of extinction—the Great Depression had been going on for some time, too—and Cliff would later tell Sam Moskowitz (as quoted in the latter’s book Seekers of Tomorrow, 1965) that he had not given up on science fiction, but that he felt at the time that there was no longer a market. But Cliff had been approached by William H. Crawford, who aspired to start a new science fiction magazine—a “literary” one—but could not offer payment for stories other than a lifetime subscription … in short, his planned publication was at that point little more than a fanzine.
Cliff had been, and would continue to be, involved in the world of science fiction fandom, but he was a professional writer, and likely would have dismissed Crawford’s overture, except for Cliff’s belief that the market for science fiction had crashed. “‘Had there been a market,’” Cliff told Moskowitz several decades later, “‘the story would never have been written, for I would have slanted for that market.’” But Cliff let Crawford have the story, he said, “‘out of sheer admiration for any man with guts enough to try a new science fiction magazine.’”
The story was published in the March-April 1935 issue of Crawford’s Marvel Tales, and it probably was not seen by more than a few hundred people. But, crude as it was, it seems quickly to have obtained a reputation as a groundbreaking story, as a defiance of publishing taboos. Various reprints appeared over the years.
For all of its iconoclastic reputation, however, “The Creator” was not a complete break from Cliff Simak’s previous writings; in fact, it fits neatly into the body of his exploration of religious thought: It was an extension of ideas that appeared in the author’s very first published story, “The World of the Red Sun,” and Cliff would return, time and time again, to the theme of religion and the ultimate meaning of the universe.
FOREWORD
This is written in the elder days as the Earth rides close to the rim of eternity, edging in nearer to the dying Sun, into which her two innermost companions of the system have already plunged to a fiery death. The Twilight of the Gods is history; and our planet drifts on and on into that oblivion from which nothing escapes, to which time itself, ageless as it may seem to us, may be dedicated in the final cosmic reckoning.
Old Earth, pacing her death march down the corridors of the heavens, turns more slowly upon her axis. Her days have lengthened as she crawls sadly to her tomb, shrouded only in the shreds of her former atmosphere. Because her atmosphere has thinned, her sky has lost its cheerful blue depths and she is arched with a sorrowful grey, which hovers close to the surface, as if the horrors of outer space were pressing close, like ravening wolves, upon the flanks of an ancient monarch of the skies. When night creeps upon her, stranger stars blaze out like a ring of savage eyes closing in upon a dying campfire.