Hi all! I've just joined. I've spent most of this morning just lurking on this thread and browsing over all the different reviews, news and musings. It's been a pleasure to read through and find so much information from some excellent sources, as well as hearing people's thoughts on different pieces of Simak's work.
I've been a fan of Simak ever since I read
Time and Again about 6 years ago, and ever since he's become a bit of a comfort read for me. I'm a fan of literature in general, but science fiction is one of my favourite genres and Simak is an author I tend to dip back into now and again. In most cases if I see a book of his I haven't read in a shop, I'll pick it up. I tend to gravitate towards near enough anything of his with the exception of those few "fantasy" works that were churned out in his later years, and often I'm most interested by the more obscure works (possibly because I find myself disagreeing with the majority on what his best work is). I like to vary what I read, so I'm slow going and haven't made it through all of what I own, but at the back of my mind I think I would like to eventually read everything he has done. This seems to be much more achievable as well since the complete short works are being published by Open Road (good to see updates for that on here as well).
Although I'm unpublished as of yet, I write a bit and I consider Simak to be one of my biggest influences, alongside others such as Wells, Greene and Bester. I grew up in Cornwall, UK, so while I have never been to Wisconsin (or the US in general, mind) I relate on some level to the rural descriptions and quaint pastoral style he has. I have often tried to evoke something similar in my own writing.
Here are the novels I have read so far, rated (out of 5) and then ranked according to how I've felt about them:
- Ring Around The Sun - 4.5
- Time and Again - 4 (High 3 on my second read)
- Time Is The Simplest Thing - High 2 (while I enjoyed most of the book immensely, I didn't like the direction it took towards the end at all, which brought the rating down by quite a long way. Despite this, I still look back on much of it with fondness and find it hard to rank it as low as maybe seems apt.)
- City - 3 (Huddling Place and Desertion are easily the strongest entries. Narratively and conceptually I loved the whole thing, but I found some inconsistencies frustrating and the last few stories to be too plodding and flowery.)
- The Werewolf Principle - 3 (audio drama. Doesn't really tap its full potential, but very enjoyable in this format.)
- Project Pope - 2.5 (Another poor climax to an otherwise compelling first 2 acts. If it all held together I think this could have been one of his best.)
- Why Call Them Back From Heaven? - 3.5
- Way Station - 2.5 (a hugely unpopular opinion, I'm aware. Absolutely loved the prose for the most part. Enoch is easily one of Simak's best developed characters and the atmosphere is unmatched. Unfortunately there were just too many elements that I couldn't get on board with. I also thought the climax was clunky and clashed tonally with the rest of the novel.)
- All Flesh is Grass - 3 (I read this after Ring Around The Sun, and so it felt to me like a more dated rehash, and the whimsy grated on me more than some of his other novels. One of the few that I found a bit hard to get through)
- Cemetery World - 1.5 (loved the initial set up and premise for this, but ultimately found it to be silly and a bit of a mess. I think it's easily one of his worst, but equally it was also a lot of fun.)
- A Choice of Gods - High 2 (audiobook. Interesting, but dry and indulgent. Most unusual for Simak)
- Our Children's Children - 1 (audiobook)
- The Goblin Reservation - 1
- Cosmic Engineers - 2
- Empire - high 1 (audiobook)
It's true I have not necessarily rated many all that high, and the truth is I often find many of his works to be quite flawed. Equally, I often find that when he's good, he's great, and even the lesser stuff more often than not is very enjoyable. If I've recently had a big slog of a read, it's then that I will often reach for a Simak on my shelf, as I can almost guarantee it will wash away the taste of a bad book and get me to love reading again. I would put down many of the lower ratings to the fact that while many of his novels start off very well, they tend to lose their way a bit in the latter half. So while a lot of joy can be found in the prose and the concepts and the atmosphere, they don't always feel as satisfying by the end as they could be.
Ring Around The Sun seems to be the exception for me, of which I read in a day and felt was unusually tight for him.
Also pleasantly surprised to have read in this thread that Simak may have considered
Time and Again and
Ring Around The Sun to be his best; for a long time I've considered them my favourites and have felt quite alone in that opinion. Having said that though, I found the flaws in
Time and Again to be much more apparent when I reread it recently.
I've also read the following collections:
- The Night of Puudly - 3.5 (I loved Crying Jag)
- The Best of Clifford D. Simak - 3.5 (Highlights: Sunspot Purge, Final Gentleman, The Thing In The Stone, The Autumn Land. The latter is a 5/5 favourite that I've reread a few times now)
I started reading the first Open Road volume a while back, but it was digital (a format I find hard to stick with). I think I got as far as
Ogre before I abandoned it (unintentionally).
I am currently reading
They Walked Like Men - fun and pulpy; probably not his best so far, but fairly solid. I think
@Bick (?) in his review highlighted the passage with the closet scene as being a standout, and that's also a passage that I jotted down for later reference. An oddly descriptive passage amongst otherwise snappy and undecorative prose.
I also have the following on my shelf waiting to be read (in no particular order):
- Out of Their Minds
- Destiny Doll
- Shakespeare's Planet
- A Heritage of Stars
- The Visitors (2 copies!)
- Catface (AKA Mastadonia)
Lastly, just a bit of trivia: my band released a Christmas single recently and because the re-arrangement was by me the art was to be a stocking with my name on, and the items inside intended to depict my personality. I didn't know what would end up in the stocking, but my sister designed the art and had the stocking contain a beer and a book. The book has Simak's name on the cover in small writing. I would share here, but I didn't want to look like I was trying to self-promote!
