Maybe I'm an old dude.
So am I .
Maybe I'm an old dude.
The first book I read by Simak was Out of Their Minds I purchased it at a store called Grand Central in the early eighties. Admittedly the cover illustration b y Kelly Freas is what initially drew my attention. Upon reading, I discovered ingenious concepts presented in prosaic prose with a solid dose of humor. I was hooked.
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Here's mine before the price doubled:That cover is a an oldie.
I have a sizable collection of Simak's works, but am lacking the following four short stories. I'd like to read these, but #1 and #4 have never been reprinted to my knowledge, and #2 and #3 would cost me $100 or more to purchase the hardbound books that they're contained in.
Does anyone have any other sources for any of these four stories?
"Clerical Error"
Astounding, Aug. 1940
Never reprinted.
"Infiltration"
Science Fiction Stories, July 1943
Reprinted in Physician to the Universe - The Collected Stories of Clifford D. Simak Vol. 2 (only 500 copies)
This may be available as an expensive hardbound book on Amazon.
"Lobby"
Astounding Science Fiction, April 1944
Reprinted in The Best of Science Fiction (1963) and The Golden Age of Science Fiction (1980), both ed. by Groff Conklin
One of these reprints may also be available as an expensive hardbound book on Amazon.
"A Pipeline to Destiny"
HKLPLOD #4, Summer 1963
Never reprinted, as far as I know.
As always looking forward to the next installments.Perhaps this will help?
"Clerical Error," "Infiltration," and "Lobby" are all scheduled to be published (soon, I hope) in vol. 13 of my collection: v. 13 of the Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak: Buckets of Diamonds and other stories -- it will be published by Open Road Media.
(I owe apologies to all for my tardiness if getting volumes 13 and 14 finished -- I've had a bad few years...)
Those are to be the last two volumes of the Collection.
As for "A Pipeline to Destiny:" that story will not appear in any volume of the collection.
I have read the story, in a xerox someone was good enough to send me. But I made the decision not to include it simply because it was not a piece of professional-level fiction. That story only appeared in a small-market fanzine, and it has never been reprinted. As far as I've been able to find out, Cliff Simak simply gave the story to someone he met at a convention. It's not very good.
(I also have a number of unpublished stories and fragments that were in Cliff's files when he died. Some of those, I know, from Cliff's notes and journals, were finished, submitted, refused, and returned to him. I also know that a few stories that were mentioned in his journals were in fact sold...but as far as I can find, they were never published in any publication I've been able to find.)
(It is unfortunately the case that in the earliest part of his writing career, Cliff had to pick up and move frequently -- and it's likely that some of his writings (whether returned originals or carbon copies), as well as notes and journals, were lost in those moves. And it might be, too, that some stories were sold but were published under a pseudonym -- Cliff never submitted stories under pseudonyms, but it was not unusual (and particularly in the Westerns markets) for stories to be published under names that the authors did not put on them...and other writers are known to have had stories published under "house name.")(A lot of Cliff's stories were published under titles he had not put on them -- editors did that sort of thing a lot -- but I'm not aware of any stories he wrote having been published under other names...)
To be clear, then, there were some stories that Cliff wrote (or started to write) but never submitted, or that he wrote and submitted but never sold; some of them I have, but some I know of only from the journals. And there were several stories mentioned in Cliff's journals as having been sold -- but there is no subsequent information about whether they were returned or published...I wish I had those, but I've had no success in tracking them down, despite years of trying.
"Pipeline" was never sold, was published only once in an amateur forum -- and I just cannot see including it in the Collection I have been assembling.
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