One bad apple in a tasty bushel
New Folks’ Home and Other Stories, published in 2016, is the sixth volume in a projected 14-volume series from Open Road Media, The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak. This is the eleventh book I’ve read in the series (not in order, obviously), and I have enjoyed them all. Some volumes are packed with more masterpieces than others, but Simak’s science fiction writing is consistently excellent, so there’s really not a bad book in the series. Volume Six contains ten stories originally published from 1939 to 1963. Overall the collection is an assortment of the outstanding and the very good, with the exception of one story that really doesn’t measure up to Simak’s usual standards.
Though known for science fiction, Simak also wrote westerns, and each volume has one, but here the horse opera is not the weakest link. “Barb Wire Brings Bullets!” is an exciting, action-packed western adventure. It may be the same old story about a range war between cattle ranchers and homesteading farmers, but this time Simak approaches the narrative from a unique perspective, that of a traveling barbed wire salesman who gets caught up in the conflict.
As for the science fiction, “Sunspot Purge” has got to be one of the worst Simak stories I’ve read in the genre. The premise is based on a hypothesis that mankind thrives during periods of high sunspot activity. It reads as if Simak just read this factoid in a newspaper and then set about constructing the thinnest of cockamamie plots around it. In addition, he adds a lot of alcoholic humor that might have been hilarious to heavy drinkers of the Thin Man generation, but seems hokey and antiquated now. Two other stories, “Hermit of Mars” and “Second Childhood,” are also not among Simak’s best work, but at least they are more than competently written and are based on interesting ideas. The former features some intriguing depictions of alternative forms of life while the latter speculates upon mankind’s reaction to achieving immortality.
Thankfully, the pros far outweigh the cons in this collection, as the remaining stories all meet or exceed high expectations. The title selection is the book’s best entry. In “New Folks’ Home,” an elderly man, about to retire, goes on one last trip to his favorite fishing hole, only to find the pristine wilderness invaded by a newly constructed house. The idea may seem a bit simplistic at first, but Simak takes it into unexpected directions, with excellent results. Another outstanding story is “Drop Dead,” a sort of scientific mystery in which an interplanetary agricultural team investigates a mysterious new life form. “Beachhead” is another good yarn about a planetary expedition team, though the ending isn’t all it could be. “Worlds Without End” is an engrossing thriller set in an agency that fabricates lifelike dreams for those volunteering to undergo suspended animation. “Worrywart,” another story that deals with dreams, feels like the beginning of a novel similar to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven, but it could have been developed further. Lastly, “The Questing of Foster Adams” is surprisingly atypical of Simak in that it is a full-on horror story, more in keeping with something that H. P. Lovecraft might have written, yet still Simak manages to execute it quite effectively.
As expected, this is another fine collection in an excellent series. For those completists like me who plan to read The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak in its entirety, you can look forward to Volumes Seven and Eight, which are among the best in the series.
Stories in this collection
New Folks’ Home
The Questing of Foster Adams
Hermit of Mars
Worlds Without End
Barb Wire Brings Bullets!
Second Childhood
Beachhead
Sunspot Purge
Drop Dead
Worrywart
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Intense legal drama and revenge thriller
Michael Kohlhaas, a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, is a remarkable book that most American readers have likely never heard of, but it is highly regarded as a classic by German-language readers. One of the favorite books of author Franz Kafka, this epic of one man’s struggle with the law obviously influenced the later writer’s legally themed fiction. After reading Michael Kohlhaas, I was shocked to find out that it was originally published in 1810. I would have guessed around 1920. The book has the feel of proto-modernism, like something Kafka, Knut Hamsun, or Hermann Hesse might have written.
Von Kleist based his novel on the real-life story of a 16th-century merchant named Hans Kohlhase. From the book’s opening chapters, it is difficult to determine when the story takes place, but then Martin Luther shows up as a supporting character, establishing that the narrative is set in the Renaissance. At the time, Germany was part of the Holy Roman Empire and was divided into smaller nation-states, governed by Electors, including Saxony and Brandenburg, which figure prominently in the story. Beyond that, it is not necessary to know a great deal about Central European history, even though the plot deals heavily with law and politics. Regardless of its time or place, the way von Kleist explores the universal themes of justice, vengeance, pride, and redemption will still prove profoundly moving to 21st-century readers.
Michael Kohlhaas is the story of how one man’s admirable and unswerving commitment to seeking justice intensifies into a crusade for bloody revenge. Kohlhaas is a horse dealer who owns an estate in Brandenburg but frequently crosses over into Saxony to conduct trade in Dresden. On one such business trip, he is halted at the border by a nobleman of Saxony, Squire Wenzel Tronka, who deceptively informs Kohlhaas that if he wants to cross into Saxony, a new law requires him to produce a passport. Kohlhaas protests that he has never been asked for such a document before, and he does not have one in his possession. The Squire insists that Kohlhaas can cross only if he leaves behind collateral in the form of two prized black horses, and Kohlhaas reluctantly agrees. After doing his business in Dresden, Kohlhaas returns to find his horses in terrible condition. Without his permission, the Squire has used them to pull plows in the fields, work to which they were totally unsuited. In addition, the groom that Kohlhaas left behind to tend the horses has been beaten and run off the Tronka castle grounds. Kohlhaas files a legal suit in Dresden demanding that Squire Tronka restore the horses to their original fine condition before returning them to Kohlhaas’s possession. His suit is rejected because Squire Tronka has relatives who are high-ranking figures in the government of Saxony. Deprived of fair and just compensation for his wrongs, Kohlhaas decides to take the law into his own hands.
From there matters snowball, and the conflict escalates. Though there is a great amount of legal and ethical complexity to the story, it is by no means a mere courtroom drama. Swords are drawn, and blood is shed in a truly gripping tale that is surprisingly morally ambiguous for its time. For the most part, the narrative is quite realistic, though towards the end von Kleist introduces a supernatural element that calls to mind the witches, soothsayers, and prophecies that frequently show up in Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, though written in prose, this almost has the dramatic intensity of one of Shakespeare’s tragedies or history plays. Though it was published over two centuries ago, Michael Kohlhaas turned out to be a truly pleasant surprise and an excellent read.
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Murder mystery with Church history
The Name of the Rose, first published in 1980, is the highly acclaimed first novel by Italian author and professor of philosophy Umberto Eco. The book is a mystery novel set in a 14th century Benedictine monastery in Italy. The “detective” in this mystery is William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan friar, who has come to the monastery to participate in a diplomatic summit between representatives of Pope John XXII and a group of monks accused of heresy. William is accompanied by a young Austrian monk, Adso of Melk, who, like a good Doctor Watson surrogate, serves as narrator. Upon arrival, the two discover that a monk has recently been found murdered, and the abbot asks William, renowned for his reasoning powers, to look into the matter.
In his initial descriptions of William’s physical appearance, personality, and deductive techniques, it seems as if Eco has intentionally patterned his detective after Sherlock Holmes. Early on, Eco also riffs on a scene from Voltaire’s Zadig (regarded by some to be the first piece of modern detective fiction) when William provides a detailed description of a horse that he has never seen, simply by exercising his prodigious faculty of reason. Like any good classic mystery thriller, The Name of the Rose includes a few great scenes of intense suspense, including late-night forays into a spooky labyrinthine library that any lover of old books would be happy to get lost in.
Make no mistake about it, The Name of the Rose is a brilliant mystery, even for those who don’t habitually read mystery novels. There is no getting around the fact, however, that in order to enjoy this mystery you are going to have to spend hours reading about the history of the Catholic Church. The depiction of life inside a medieval monastery is really quite fascinating, but the historical context gets quite tedious. It often seems as if Eco is just using the mystery story to showcase his erudition. Thankfully, he is not pushing any religious agenda; he just comes across as a guy who is obsessed with the minutiae of European history. He loves to go off on any digression, flashback, or dream sequence that will allow him to inject as much arcane knowledge into the proceedings as possible, necessary or not. His prose (at least the English translations I’ve read) is usually a pleasure to read, but often in mid-narrative he will break off into a list that goes on for pages—of decorations in a chapel, for example, or books on a shelf—just to indulge in obscure vocabulary. It is difficult to keep track of all the monks in the supporting cast and the distinguishing differences in their theological views.
The Name of the Rose inspires mixed emotions. On the one hand, one wishes all historical novels could be written this intelligently (as opposed to, for example, the works of Dan Brown, who writes Eco-esque books that seem aimed at a junior high audience). On the other hand, if you’re not avidly interested in the history of the Papacy, the Franciscan and Benedictine orders, or debates on the poverty of Christ, at times this book can be a total bore. Though The Name of the Rose is plotted better than Eco’s second novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, I prefer the latter simply because the historical content is less narrowly focused and more interesting to me personally. The Name of the Rose is certainly a work of great literary merit, but many readers, even fans of mysteries or historical novels, will likely find it tiresome.
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Entertaining nonfiction Civil War biography
I’m a fan of H. Beam Piper’s writings in science fiction, and I read this work as the final piece in The H. Beam Piper Megapack, a collection of nearly his complete works published by Wildside Press. Rebel Raider was originally published in the December 1950 issue of True: The Men’s Magazine. It tells the story of real-life Confederate guerrilla John Singleton Mosby who commanded a party of irregular partisans, known as Mosby’s Raiders, that made incursions into Union-held territory to antagonize and terrorize the Union Army.
Although I was fully aware that this was not a work of science fiction before I began reading it, I expected it to be a work of historical fiction. Instead, it appears to be an almost entirely factual nonfiction account of Mosby’s life and career, as researched and rewritten by Piper. Only the slightest amount of fictionalization is injected into battles or conversations to make the reader feel as if he or she were a spectator at these historical events. The characters, including Mosby himself, don’t amount to much more than names augmented by biographical facts, with little or no hint of their personalities, just essentially a resume of deeds done and missions accomplished.
Although I do enjoy reading history I am by no means a Civil War buff, but even a layman like myself can find much to appreciate in Rebel Raider. Piper was an arms collector and self-professed ballistics expert, and his gun nuttery is often apparent in his science fiction works. Here, however, although he does mention the arms used in various situations, he doesn’t get overly carried away with technical details of the weapons like he does in his mystery novel Murder in the Gunroom. You don’t have to be a hardcore military buff to enjoy Piper’s narrative and learn an interesting fact or two in the process. This chronicle of Mosby’s war record provides an interesting perspective on the Civil War, and his post-war career, briefly touched upon here, is also fascinating.
Obviously, Rebel Raider is an anomaly in Piper’s body of work, and fans of his impressive career in science fiction need not feel compelled to read it, but it is a good, brisk, and entertaining read for those interested in American history.
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Post-apocalyptic nature writing
Science fiction writer Murray Leinster’s novella The Mad Planet was first published in the June 12, 1920 issue of The Argosy magazine. The mad world referred to in the rather lazy, generic title is actually the planet Earth, 30,000 years in the future. Climate change has drastically altered the planet’s flora and fauna, and mankind has adapted into a new species in order to survive in the harsh environment. While Leinster acknowledges that human industry has raised the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, that is not the reason for the apocalypse in this story. Instead, fissures suddenly burst open in the Earth’s surface, and greenhouse gases spew forth from deep beneath the planet’s crust. The result, in the long run, is a world nearly devoid of plants, carpeted instead with various forms of fungi. The animal life of the 320th century consists almost entirely of giant insects and arachnids. The hero of the story, a humanoid named Burl, traverses through toadstool forests fighting off gargantuan spiders and waves of foot-long army ants.
One disappointing aspect of The Mad Planet is that the plot consists entirely of just one guy walking through this landscape. Through flashbacks, there is mention made of a human society existing in this world, but the reader sees almost no interaction between Burl and other members of the human race. This is the first book of a Burl series, so perhaps Leinster delves deeper into these future hominids in a later volume. Here the plot is only the barest of threads, as if the stage setting were far more important to Leinster than the narrative that takes place within it. That said, it is still a very good piece of science fiction writing. The way that Leinster directs the reader’s experience of this future Earth is more effective than, for example, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s descriptions of the lost world in his Land That Time Forgot series. Perhaps the lack of human contact succeeds in one respect, in that Leinster need not be stingy with the monster bugs. The prose is never boring, and Leinster adds a lot of creative touches that bolster the authenticity of this speculative world, such as when Burl crafts himself an outfit from a giant moth’s wing.
For the most part, the book feels like a naturalist’s essay on the ecosystem of a fictional universe, like some bizarre journal of an acid trip by John Muir or Henry David Thoreau. Beyond that, Leinster also includes some supplemental commentary on human development. Though existing 30 millennia in the future, Burl and his people are about as idiotic as mankind was 30 millennia ago, yet he still has the capacity to learn and grow, create new tools, and exercise rudimentary reasoning. Leinster delivers a positive message by using Burl to illustrate the unstoppable ingenuity of mankind, even in the face of deadly adversity. Really though, even that seems like just another excuse to show off this freaky fungi world and its giant insects.
Still, despite its faults, this is an entertaining adventure and an admirable work of sci-fi for 1920. For those who enjoy vintage pulp fiction, The Mad Planet is certainly worth a download and a couple hours of light reading.
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The king of classification and his predecessors
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| Carl Linnaeus |
William MacGillivray (1796-1852) was a Scottish naturalist. His name may ring a bell with birders because his colleague John James Audubon named a bird species after him, the MacGillivray’s Warbler. MacGillivray’s book, Lives of Eminent Zoologists, from Aristotle to Linnaeus, was published in 1834. I came across this book while searching for a biography of Carl Linnaeus, the 18th-century Swedish biologist known as the father of taxonomy. For those seeking an education into this distinguished scientist’s accomplishments, this volume will serve you well. The entire second half of the book—13 chapters—is devoted to Linnaeus.
MacGillivray starts his book with two chapters on Aristotle, which are also quite interesting. Everything in between, however, is painfully boring. Even Pliny the Elder’s death at Pompeii from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius can’t liven things up, and the extremely long chapter on British naturalist John Ray, who must have been a personal hero of MacGillivray’s, is excruciating. MacGillivray doesn’t so much offer biographies of these figures as bibliographical histories. From his summarizing of what had been published in the field of zoology, it is remarkable how few books on animals actually existed prior to the 18th century. For many of the personages profiled here, zoology was merely a sidelight. Most were botanists first, perhaps because plants are much easier to examine than animals. Many were also physicians by profession, and several also studied for positions in the clergy. MacGillivray’s book was published before the theory of evolution was proposed, so it is taken for granted that species were created as is by God, and the author comments on his subjects’ piety almost as much as their scientific discoveries. The profiles in the book are not entirely adulatory. MacGillivray is quick to point out the mistakes made by his illustrious predecessors and the fact that many of them merely summarized prior research rather than engaging in first-hand research of natural phenomena.
Not so with Linnaeus, the book’s guest of honor. MacGillivray makes it clear that Linnaeus had a monumental impact on biological science. Linnaeus invented the system of classification and nomenclature that biologists still use today to assign plants and animals to kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. In one of his comprehensive texts, Linnaeus classified 7,000 species of plants and animals, nearly all those known to the Western world at the time. His accomplishments in botany were even more prodigious than his work in zoology. Linnaeus even applied his classification system to the mineral kingdom. While today species are arranged in an evolutionary family tree, Linnaeus, working prior to an awareness of evolution, classified plants and animals according to morphological characteristics, primarily for the purpose of identification. While much has changed since then, the overall systematic structure he established still remains in use. As MacGillivray points out, Linnaeus made his share of errors, some of which brought him ridicule even during his lifetime, but there is no denying his important and enduring contributions to scientific knowledge. MacGillivray details Linnaeus’s expeditions, his teaching career, his catalog of publications, and his family life (with nothing good to say about Mrs. Linnaeus). MacGillivray’s treatment may be too thorough for some readers, but those with an interest in natural taxonomy will find much food for fascination amid the copious detail.
The content on Linnaeus is worth a solid four stars; the rest of the book brings the overall rating down. If you just want to learn about Linnaeus, I would recommend skipping the first half entirely.
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The quietest of thrillers
Rock Crystal, a novella by Austrian writer Adalbert Stifter, was originally published in 1845 under the German title Bergkristall. The story takes place amid the mountains of Stifter’s homeland. He begins by describing a rural village nestled high in an alpine valley, where the inhabitants lead rather simple, insular lives amid a setting of great natural beauty. In this village, named Gschaid, lives a shoemaker and his family. As was often the case in rural communities of centuries past, the shoemaker’s two children, Conrad and Sanna, enjoy a great deal of independence. They are allowed to journey unaccompanied to a neighboring village to visit their grandparents, a trip of at least a few miles that includes traveling through a mountain pass. After one such visit to the town of Millsdorf on a winter’s morn, the kids set out in the afternoon to return to Gschaid. On their way home, they are hit by heavy snowfall, which hinders their visibility and obscures their path home. Disoriented, the children become lost in the mountains.
The best thing about Rock Crystal is the way Stifter gradually progresses the story towards this predicament. The narrative follows the children, who learn the danger of their situation long after the reader and still approach their journey with gaiety until well after the point of losing their way. Though this would be a parents’ nightmare, the reader doesn’t experience what the parents are going through. The children never seem to realize the danger they’re in, and unfortunately that ambivalence rubs off on the reader. The narrative is told in a very straightforward, deadpan style that nullifies any suspense, if Stifter in fact intended any suspense in the first place. The plot of the novella seems only to serve as a showpiece for the stage setting, as Stifter lovingly describes the mountains and glaciers of the Austrian wild. Stifter was often praised for his depictions of nature, but I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable about his natural description, at least in the hands of English translator Lee M. Hollander, when compared with other writers of winter landscapes such as Jack London, Knut Hamsun, or any number of naturalist novelists.
The story of Rock Crystal takes place on Christmas Eve. Though not specifically a Christmas story in the traditional sense of the phrase, it does have some Christmas spirit to impart in its appreciation of the winter landscape and its picturesque depiction of rural village life. Any story of children separated from their parents also can’t help but convey a reinforcing of the importance of family and the comfort of being with loved ones. I don’t think Stifter intended Rock Crystal to be children’s literature, but since the protagonists are children there is an unavoidable feeling of kid lit about it. One can see how young readers might enjoy the story of these independent children and their thrilling adventure, while adult readers will be more drawn to Stifter’s depiction of nature through poetic realism.
Stifter is highly regarded in the German-language literary world, hailed by fans such as Thomas Mann and Hannah Arendt, and the New York Review of Books thought enough of Rock Crystal to pluck it from the public domain and rerelease it as a paperback. After reading the book, however, it is not easy to discern why this unassuming work has received such acclaim. The free public domain version of the 1914 English translation by Hollander can be found in the book The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII. For those who are attracted to the setting of an Austrian mountain village, it is worth a free download and a couple hours of your time.
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