All reviews copyright 1984-2020 Evelyn C. Leeper.
"City" by Clifford D. Simak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"City", Clifford D. Simak: This is the first of the stories that eventually made up the fix-up novel CITY, and it suffers from a very "First World" perspective. Oh, sure, the people in it are folksy farmers and all, but the idea that cities will disappear because everyone can have a private plane and a ten-acre estate could not have made sense even in 1944. Certainly now, it makes even less sense. In 1940, the "urban area" of New York City had 13 million people, London had 12 million people, and Tokyo had 8 million people, and these were the largest cities in the world. Today there are *twenty* cities larger than any of them. Tokyo alone has over 37 million people. The majority of these cities are in China and India and I doubt everyone there will be getting a private plane soon. And for the population of Tokyo to get a ten- acre plot for each family, even assuming six people in a family would require 100,000 square miles. All of Japan is only 150,000 square miles. It's all a bit too nostalgic for the good old days of individual farmers and all for me.
"Desertion" by Clifford D. Simak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"Desertion", Clifford D. Simak: This is the fourth story in CITY. (The third, "Census", did not make the ballot.) I will not be the first person to point out the similarity of Poul Anderson's 1957 novelette "Call Me Joe" to this story. Both involve putting people into bodies designed to survive on Jupiter: Simak's story modifies the actual body (a la THIS ISLAND EARTH) while Anderson's transplants the mind into a new body engineered for Jupiter. The description of Jupiter is poetic, even if totally outdated.
"Huddling Place" by Clifford D. Simak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"Huddling Place", Clifford D. Simak: This is the second story in CITY, and is basically just an idea from "The Machine Stops" (which was later also used by Isaac Asimov in 1953 in THE CAVES OF STEEL). The premise is that as people have more ability to see everywhere and communicate with everyone from their homes, they will become less willing to actually *go* anywhere. They will all develop agoraphobia (apparently enabled in part by their robots, who support them in their decisions). In these days of "stay-at-home" and social distancing, this story has a certain poignancy and relevance. "City" may have a misplaced nostalgia for the old- fashioned farm life, but this has a nostalgia for the days when people could go outside their homes without having a panic attack. That's a nostalgia we can all get behind. :-)
TIME IS THE SIMPLEST THING by Clifford Simak:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 09/15/2006]
TIME IS THE SIMPLEST THING by Clifford Simak (ISBN 0-020-82075-5) is an older book (first published in 1971), but unfortunately its theme of prejudice and persecution seems to be forever current. At the time, I am sure people read Simak's story of the hostility towards "PKs" (paranormal kinetics) as a parable of the then-current attitudes of many towards blacks. (In fact, one sheriff in the novel talks about a "boy who came across the border and got himself tanked up. Figured he was as good as white folks.") Then later it was probably seen as a parallel to society's treatment of gays. ("Persecuted when they should be given all encouragement. They have abilities at this very moment that [we], also at this very moment, needs most desperately." I suspect those words will come back to me the next time I read about the Army discharging translators of Arabic because they are gay.) Now I am sure some people will see parallels to the anti-Muslim sentiment we are seeing. What with all this underlying message, it is easy for the other part of the novel--Simak's attempt to portray an alien intelligence--to get lost in the shuffle.
It is also interesting to see that Simak projected a rise in interest in the supernatural on television, in ouija boards, and so on--though he had these be the result of the discovery of PK powers rather than whatever less obvious cause has brought it about in our times.