Link+ due 02/21/12

(10/63) In my Hugo Read-Through         Way Station (aka Here Gather the Stars By Clifford D. Simak won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1964. It was originally published as Here Gather the Stars In two parts in Galaxy in 1963. Honestly that's a much better title imho.         The story of Way Station Follows Enoch Wallace, a "young" Vet from the Civil war, who after coming home and taking over his family's old home, is approached by Ulysses, an alien. Ulysses see's that Enoch Wallace is a man of reason, inspiration and as he puts it " looks at the stars and wanders what is out there", he then enlists him to run a Way Station, a stop of sorts for intergalactic travelers. As long as he is inside this way-station he will not age. Our story takes place about 100 years after he started. Where he's become very separate from society save for a casual friendship with the Mail Man, and a deaf-mute girl from another farm.         This book was a beautiful book, Simak's writing was borderline prose and often filled me with such wonder. It wasn't an exciting book at times, but it was a beautiful, introspective, contemplative book. Enoch Wallace struggles with his connection to mankind, as he is it's only representative of it in the galaxy, yet he no longer interacts with it the way he used to. A lot of the book is just him communicating with himself, looking back on past experiences and struggling with his identity. The world is beginning to look like war, the more modern world's government is beginning to take notice and spy on the man who never ages, and due to circumstances the Galaxy has itchy trigger fingers to shut down the Earth way-station. Simak tells Wallace's story in this turbulent time, and helps us feel the way he feels, and understand the problem he faces. Wallace is such a believable character, he feels very real. This believe-ability is what makes the story so successful to me.         I love Science Fiction, however it's not hard to over do it. To make something go from plausible and interesting to not plausible at all. Simak kept this story simple, and made it a story that could be told with many different settings, but chose one that was interesting and believable. Simak successfully explains enough of the Way Station technology to never make me question it, or need more to understand it. He made the aliens that came through simple and unique, had historical backgrounds to them, gave them culture and customs. A lot of thought went into this and maybe a lot of planning, but he doesn't overwhelm the reader with this, you don't need to remember tons of species and planets and important customs or languages. He gives enough information to make every character real and believable, without feeling like your reading a guidebook.        Simak also did a good job of making the ending unexpected and exciting. For me, not predictable. While reading this, I expected it to be a quiet ending, one that just kind of happens, and ties all the ends together but not one that really is... well, exciting. I was wrong, Simak builds the tension and leaves you wondering and nervous until the last moment when things come together and make sense. However I feel this world could be explored much more. It's already a solid and complete story, however I wish more companion pieces were written maybe, like stories from Enoch's journals. It's nothing on the book itself, it's just me being selfish and wanted more of this world that's been created.         in conclusion I thoroughly loved this book. I found myself writing quote after quote down, and enjoying every page when I only had time to read it here or there. This book didn't have dull passages that you can skim to me. Every word felt deliberate and well placed, it added to the story if not just added to your feelings while reading it. I immediately went and bought two more of his books, I want to know if Simak is always this beautiful of a writer, or if this book, due to it's more introspective subject matter was handled in a more beautiful way. "A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river — but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself — a thing that went on caring."

Fun. Different. That good, old 1965 sci-fiction style. Definitely a little rambly.

I read this when I was a kid, and reread it this year because a low-cost ebook version crossed my screen. Since I've spent almost two decades living in the woods, the novel now strikes me as enormously powerful and moving. I've been reading some out loud to my wife and fellow homesteader. Way Station's core idea is that a man lives in a remote house, but the house is actually a disguised node in a galactic travel and communication network. Simak sets up quite a stage around this core idea, with a good range of characters and some world-building. It's a simple idea, really, and I can imagine (although I don't know if it happened this way) the author thinking it up during a wilderness hike. Maybe Simak saw a house that looked unusually well kept up, and daydreamed that it was more, much more than it appeared. The plot concerns outsiders figuring out the house's real purpose, as well as challenges facing its occupant, the well named Enoch Wallace. I don't want to say much more because of spoilers, but also because it's not a novel of suspense and plot-driven mystery. It's a reflective book, spending most of its time with conversations or with solitary people thinking and working. A key theme is the power and beauty of the countryside, and this is a theme whose power has only grown since the novel appeared, as more and more of us have migrated away from rural areas, preferring instead suburban and urban domains. Simak uses Hemingway-ish prose to quietly sketch the beauties of woods and streams, cliffs and open night skies:He went down across the field and through the strip of woods and came out on the great outthrust of rock that stood atop the cliff that faced the river. (39) Two lovely scenes feature people giving others water to drink - one through "a cup fashioned of a strip of folded birch bark" (44) - as a sign of their character. There's an unvarnished argument about city folk learning from the country, learning enough to save the world, and that's one a 2018 reader might dislike. I'm reminded of Bradbury's love of the midwest. Rural science fiction is a thing. A key plot point involves a local poor white family, including some awful men and an unusual woman. That ranges in tone from something like Steinbeck's naturalism to scenes of fantasy. It all worked well for me, but I don't know if people will charge Lucy Fisher (a fantastic name, a fisher of light) with being a manic pixie dreamgirl. The brief note about the Fishers occasionally proselytizing for "some obscure fundamentalist sect" (48) may better suit the modern reader. Perhaps more resonant will be the narrator's identity as a (Civil War) veteran. Enoch was shaped powerfully by the experience of war, and Simak does a fine job of showing us the post-traumatic effects. There's a chapter (28) with a virtual hunting game (very prescient!) which doesn't do much for the plot, but works with that aspect of surviving war. That personal war experience leads to the novel's concern with humanity's evolution, an American science fiction chestnut. Will post-WWII humans stupidly destroy ourselves and/or aliens? (The Day the Earth Stood Still is 1951, just 13 years ahead of Way) Some reviewers will find this slow-moving, which astonishes me. The entire book is barely 200 pages, and manages to cram in a lot of ideas. Ultimately the genre of the novel is a bit elusive. Yes, there's a science fiction frame and it's realized in some detail, with a plot point turning on alien math and multiple alien biologies to consider. But the fantasy elements are strong. Lucy appears as supernatural, thinly veiled by a glimpse of alien science. Enoch entertains literal ghosts from his past, similarly explained by a light touch of extraterrestrial super-science. Meanwhile, there are scenes drawing from horror, most impressively the first encounter between Enoch and Ulysses, his galactic handler. One last note: I don't usually say this about stories, but there's a mythic aspect to the plot. A key development concerns proper burial rites, and while that connects nicely with contemporary (1960s) anthropological science fiction, the rituals and forms are vital on their own terms. There's a touch of Antigone in those Wisconsin woods. I can be a cynical fiend who loves horror stories, but I am still moved by the novel's final optimism. Simak's handling of it reminds me a bit of the crucial scene in Watchmen when Dr. Manhattan is logically convinced that humans matter after all (and remember how the final image in that storyline is an honest smile?). Maybe I'm just a soppy Slav who cries too easily, but I love passages like this when they are set up as brilliantly as Simak does:The assurance would be there, he thought, the assurance that life had a special place in the great scheme of existence, that one, no matter how small, how feeble, how insignificant, still did count for something in the vast sweep of space and time. (81) Now I want to read the Simak I've missed and reread the ones I have. You should, too.