Clifford D. Simak

I recently discovered Clifford D. Simak and it has been nothing short of a revelation.

To say that Isaac Asimov is my favorite author would be inaccurate. I have a short list of top authors but I don’t put Asimov on that list because he is on a much more selective list and I generally don’t believe in redundancy. Or duplication. No, Asimov is not on my list of favorite authors because he’s on my list of favorite humans. I have somehow, slowly over the last twenty years, fallen in love with Isaac Asimov. I have read more of his works than most, devouring not only his science fiction but his nonfiction essays and books, which are written with as much clarity and charm as his fiction. I don’t deny that a good deal of my nonfiction style comes from his, and Asimov himself said that he was puzzled by the trend of most authors to not acknowledge their influences. It was in that very spirit that Asimov cited Clifford Simak as his greatest literary inspiration alongside P. G. Wodehouse and Agatha Christie. Of course I’d heard of the latter two, but who was Clifford Simak? I had never heard that name in all my dealings with science fiction. At first I thought he was a 1950s author that had since fallen into obscurity. Even now I’m not entirely sure I’m incorrect.

Clifford D. Simak, who lived from 1904 to 1988, was an active science fiction writer for most of his life while making a living as a newspaper reporter and editor. He won three Hugo awards, one Nebula, and was the third recipient of the Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master award. (Isaac Asimov was the eighth recipient, in case you were wondering.) What really caught my eye about Simak was that although he had many accomplishments as a science fiction writer he also was one of the three winners of the inaugural Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement for his influence on the horror genre along with Fritz Leiber and Frank Belknap Long. It intrigued me that a science fiction writer who Asimov absolutely adored would be associated with horror since Asimov never wrote with even a whiff of horror. Still, I did nothing with that information beyond filing it away in the dusty storeroom that is my brain before heading to my favorite book store to see what they had of Simak.

I found Special Deliverance, which apart from having an enviously great title had a front and back cover that got me excited for some wacky old school science fiction adventure.

“It all started when Professor Edward Lansing wanted to know who really wrote that great term paper on Shakespeare and learned that his student had bought it from a slot machine. Going to investigate, the good professor found the machine, which gave him two keys and sent him in search of other slot machines. The third machine he tried took his money and transported him to a strange new world.”

When I reached this point of the back cover blurb I was already sold. Normally I wouldn’t have read any further, but I just couldn’t stop. It only got more zany.

“Here Lansing meets up with an odd assortment of fellow travelers – including a take-charge Brigadier, a pompous Parson, a female engineer, a lady poet, and Jurgens, a caretaker robot – all of whom are as mystified as he. Plucked from their own timelines, they were players in a game without rules and, seemingly, without a goal.
“Thus begins an extraordinary quest by these unwilling adventurers, one that leads them to an immense, featureless blue cube and into an ancient and mysterious city, tempts them with even stranger worlds, and, finally, provides them with a life-or-death challenge…”

How could I not immediately start reading that?

So I got home and started reading… and I was reading Isaac Asimov. When he mentioned the influence Simak had on him, Asimov said that he tried to copy Simak’s clear descriptive style. He succeeded. I not only immediately enjoyed reading Special Deliverance, I was ecstatic because I’d found an author who read like Asimov but would have his own take on the world and on the science fiction genre. I saw that in action half way through the book, when, without warning, this science fiction/fantasy tale of a band of unlikely adventurers began to incorporate some very chilling Lovecraftian horror elements. I don’t want to give anything away, so I will just say that this book – and Simak in general – are forgotten gems of both science fiction and horror.
​
If you like your science fiction with a bit of horror, or your horror with a lot of science fiction, then do yourself a favor and get a copy of Special Deliverance. Personally, I have a lot more Simak to track down.

---