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Clifford D. Simak Way Station (Methuen, 1964)

Having been reasonably impressed by a collection of this guy's short stories, I went for this, being as it has won awards, which seemed to be a good sign. I've seen him described as a writer of 'pastoral science-fiction' (though I'm not sure if this means he's just one of many), which (so far as I can tell) amounts to stories that draw comparisons with John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men or maybe even The Waltons, at least up until the point where we meet the alien in the form of a grizzled gold prospector. Weird. But kind of appealing.
Way Station returns to themes used in Simak's short stories - so you might wonder if he only actually had one story, though if so, at least it was one worth repeating: the isolated man of the mountains with an unorthodox secret, the nosey government investigator, the suspicious hick neighbours - hardly gold dust you might think but it's the way he tells them. Way Station's loner is Enoch Wallace whose isolated dwelling is actually an interplanetary way station used by travellers from all across the galaxy. It gets complicated, as you can probably imagine. What with the suspicious hick neighbours and all.

Some of the elements of this book have (arguably) since become science-fiction cliches (notably the utopian mesage of universal peace, although well-intentioned, it comes across as a bit clunky) though it's easy to forget that whilst reading them here as, cliche or not, one becomes overwhelmed by the sheer poetry of the narrative, the panoramic scale of the rural setting. In some ways it's almost a disappointment when the science-fiction elements begin to intrude, and I'm inclined to wonder if this guy ever wrote any regular pastoral fiction.

It'd make a crap film (that's a recommendation!) and I'm not saying it's the greatest tale ever told, but this guy really had something.

ReverendSalem wrote:

---

I have just one thing to say to this..



That is all.

Sorry chap, the image came out as one of those little boxes with an X in it and 'image' written next to it, so er... come again?

Thanks, Felice - I could see this thread was getting read from the number of views but the response is very much appreciated. Erm... The world of science fiction novels seems so vast and daunting to an outsider (as I was about 12 months ago, Philip K. Dick and Doctor sodding Who excepted) that I figured something like this might help the justifiably wary (as it would have helped me about 12 months ago). When I started reading this stuff, I had a vague idea of some sort of 'Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?' style collection of reviews, but the idea proved more entertaining than the reality - and thus it seems more suited to the ephemeral nature (?) of the internet. Maybe.
For what it's worth (?), the three reviews I actually did churn out for this, I'll post here fresh from my PC (Michel Faber, this Asimov one, plus Joe Haldeman). This Asimov review makes sarcastic use of Asimov font which may or may not survive translation onto this web page; if not, for full comedic effect, copy page and change appropriate sections accordiongly; or else just don't bother.

Isaac Asimov The Complete Robot: The Definitive Collection of Robot Stories (Granada, 1982)

Me have just done a big shit and it come out of me bumhole - tee hee hee.

A somewhat prosaic claim one might say, although this assessment seems inadequate once we examine the same statement as rendered in twelve point Asimov:

Me have just done a big shit and it come out of me bumhole - tee hee hee.

See? One is immediately put in mind of some scatological robot living on Neptune where the lack of available grammar is compensated by well developed sense of humour circuits. The problem here, aside from it not being particularly easy to read, is, I would suggest, an illustration of the maxim that nothing dates so quickly as a new idea. And as it is for the font, so it is for the writer - at least on the evidence of The Complete Robot.

It looked quite appealing on Amazon, particularly as short story collections seem a good way of introducing oneself to a particular author, and this is certainly true if, like myself, you are reluctant to leave a story unfinished even when it's looking like poop and there's another 635 pages you've committed yourself to wading through. Plus, the Definitive Collection of Robot Stories tag line held a promise of not having to buy any more of the things in the name of a wider, more balanced assessment in the event of Isaac Asimov turning out to be Jeffrey Archer with transporter beams or whatever. Still, the Complete claim appears misleading being as there are also Asimov's full-length robot novels, none of which appear here, so I'm not entirely sure where or when these short stories were originally published. However, I'm willing to bet that at least a few derive from magazines with pre-airbrush paintings of space rockets on the cover. Not that that's a bad thing in and of itself, but in all our apparent fervour to canonise Isaac Asimov as the author who makes William Shakespeare look a bit shit, let's not forget who we're talking about here.

Hard science-fiction is a term often applied to Isaac Asimov amongst other authors, notably Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, and more recently, Stephen Baxter. It roughly describes a genre which respects scientific theory as understood at the time of writing, and I therefore gather that these authors have had precious little to say about magic elves, the dinosaur penis people of Atlantis, robot ghosts, telepathy, or anything else that might be considered somewhat fringe. Although Asimov certainly refers to phenomena that could be considered tantamount to telepathy, so perhaps the concept was once considered not quite so improbable a subject for serious scientific investigation.

Anyway, to get to the meat and potatoes, Asimov is considered a legend. Whilst trawling a few favourite internet forums in search of recommended science-fiction novels, I frequently garnered astonished, even horrified responses to my confession that I had never read Asimov. Tellingly, these responses run in direct contrast to those of a few personal acquaintances ranging from nothing special to boring shit (this latter two-word review referring specifically to Asimov's Foundation novels, although not having read them I wouldn't necessarily like to suggest that boring shit constitutes a fair criticism).

So, what do I know of Isaac Asimov aside from the Will Smith vehicle I, Robot?

Well, not very much as it turns out given that said film (apparently) takes only its title and those often quoted three laws of robotics from Asimov's novels. Closer inspection of the stories collected in The Complete Robot reveal a number of ideas (or with hindsight, clichés) which have since become commonplace within both literary and cinematic science-fiction, and I suspect that said ideas may have been those Asimov innovations which have given rise to his posthumous legendary status.

The tone of all this might suggest I'm about to drop a sacrilegious bombshell along the lines of Asimov is shit. Not true. Well, not exactly true.

The problem (for me) is that whilst Isaac Asimov doubtless deserves credit for some groundbreaking (as of whenever they were first set down) concepts, his writing also serves as an illustration of the previously quoted maxim of nothing dating so fast as a new idea. This would not be a problem in itself were the actual standard of his writing a match for those others whose novels retain some power irrespective of any element left looking decidedly clunky by the advance of science and culture. Sadly though, it ain't, and whilst the narratives of H.G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, and C.S. Lewis (for example) continue to pack varying degrees of punch, Asimov's prose just comes across as a bit goofy.

If science-fiction is characterised as a narrative utilising elements beyond the ordinary, then the problem here is that for all that Asimov has a good (or at least half-decent) sense of the extraordinary, it is somewhat undermined by a painfully square (no other word for it) view of what constitutes the ordinary. Whilst these robot stories contain some interesting points about their subject, most notably contradictions inherent in Asimov's celebrated three laws, it all goes tits up (at least with hindsight) for being set in a world in which the norm is the pipe smoking professional who calls out Honey, I'm home after a hard day at the robo-office. Powell and Donovan, two of Asimov's recurring protagonists encounter some intriguing situations on Mercury, Titan or wherever, but as soon as one of them exclaims Sizzling Saturn! or Jumping Jupiter! (which happens with unfortunate frequency, so intriguing are the situations in which they seem to find themselves involved) the whole thing collapses and legendary author or not we're back in a Flash Gordon strip, albeit one with a science qualification.

Having survived several hundred pages of this stuff, I came to the section comprising Susan Calvin stories - Ms. Calvin the robopsychologist was, as the author noted, amongst his favourite creations. Whilst I'm not in the habit of actively scouring my reading material for powerful feminist characters, neither do I necessarily have any objection to them. Nor did Isaac Asimov, it seems, although Susan Calvin is hardly Germaine Greer by current standards. In fact I seriously doubt she was Germaine Greer even by the standards of the time, despite what the author may have intended.

Three Susan Calvin tales in and already the plain, unattractive, butt-ugly, harsh but professional (etcetera) Calvin has revealed herself to be such a dedicated robopsychologist purely because she can't get herself a hubby with whom to churn out babies and will thus never know the simple pleasures of being a homemaker - what with her having a face like the arse end of a bus and all. Still domesticity's loss is robopsychology's gain it would seem. I'm not kidding. I can be a reactionary old fucker at times but the Susan Calvin tales enraged even me. Ladies - if you're planning on dashing out on an impromptu Valerie Solanas inspired castration spree but somehow can't quite summon up the fury necessary for dispensing arbitrary street justice unto the entire male population of your town or city, just take in a few Susan Calvin tales and I promise there'll be no stopping you. Hell - after reading this, I half feel like joining you!

Okay, so I realise Ms. Calvin was a fictional creation of her time and all that, though I'm not sure if that's such a great excuse. I've read plenty of authors who capture a sense of the mid-twentieth century without suggesting anything along the lines of how you're a bit weird if you don't smoke a pipe, have a scamp of a kid called Barney, don't go bowling or live next to a couple called the Hendersons. The (digression) football fanzine Brian Moore's Head used to feature a regular and hilarious column entitled Our Expert Writes which famously (amongst its readers) brought us the line "I certainly do not advocate the idea of a woman being chained to the kitchen sink, for certainly the chains must be of some length in order that she may enter the living room and serve the menfolk of the house." Hopefully that's fairly obvious as an extreme parody of the same archaic values that have given Harry Enfield such mileage. (/digression) The problem with Asimov's Susan Calvin stories is that you could probably slip that line in there without making much of a difference to the tone.

I've heard a defense of this problem on a number of occasions, namely that science-fiction is about ideas rather than characters. Whilst, I'll grudgingly admit this may be true (providing you ignore all those authors who manage to do both), the ideas, or at least the communication of the same tends to suffer if the narrative takes the position that the reader is probably an idiot teenage farmhand who don't go too much on all that fancy word stuff but thinks space and that is real swell. If Asimov is the genius I keep hearing about, I guess I'll just have to read more, which on the evidence of the 300 pages I've ploughed through thus far (and I'm still just over half way into The Complete Robot), is an unfortunately less than appealing prospect.