The World That Couldn’t Be by Clifford D. Simak

Alien wilderness adventure

I have enjoyed very much reading the series of books recently published by Open Road Media entitled The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak. Disappointingly, however, that series was projected to be 14 volumes, but they stopped after Volume 12 in 2017, leaving Simak’s complete short fiction incomplete. I have taken it upon myself, therefore, to track down Simak’s remaining short stories and novellas. The easiest of these to find, because it’s in the public domain and can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg or Amazon, is The World That Couldn’t Be. This novella was originally published in the January 1958 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction magazine.

An Earthling homesteader on the frontier world of Layard has discovered that one of the planet’s native species of fauna has been eating his crops. Unwilling to resign himself to the loss of agricultural production, the farmer, Gavin Duncan, decides to hunt down the beast, known as a Cytha. Duncan knows nothing about the Cytha, and details about the creature are concealed from the reader, to be revealed gradually over the course of the story. To help him track down the Cytha, Duncan employs one of Layard’s intelligent native humanoid inhabitants to accompany him on the hunt.

The nature of the Cytha is not the book’s only mystery. As the hunting plot is set in motion, Duncan ponders over another puzzling aspect of Layard’s zoology. All life on the planet, including its humanoids, is sexless, that is to say, genderless. Simak uses the pronoun “it” to refer to Duncan’s traveling companion, despite the being’s intelligence. Duncan and his friend, a sociologist, figure the planet’s creatures multiply through some form of asexual reproduction, but no one has ever seen this happen, so the mechanism of that process remains unknown. Perhaps during his venture into the wild Duncan will find the answer to this alien biological puzzle.

The unusual asexual premise allows Simak to propose an alternative theory of evolution that might exist on a far-off world. Simak is very adept at creating fictional sci-fi worlds, so the speculative concepts he introduces here are interesting food for thought, as is always the case with his work. The story’s grand title is a bit highfalutin, however, because the main attraction to this story is really the hunting of the Cytha rather than its theoretical aspects. The World That Couldn’t Be is primarily just a good, suspenseful, pulp-fiction wilderness adventure story, except that this wilderness happens to be on another world and the object of the hunt is uncommon quarry. As Duncan learns about the Cytha, so does the reader, and Simak skillfully parcels out the clues with a pace that keeps the reader interested throughout. This story would not have been sufficient to sustain a full-length novel, but as a novella it delivers a brisk and entertaining read. This work lives up to the quality of writing one expects from classic Simak sci-fi and succeeds in taking the reader on a brief but intriguing journey to another world.
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