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tome15's review
5.0
Simak, Clifford D. All the Traps of Earth and Other Stories. 1962. Avon, 1979.
Clifford Simak began publishing stories in the early 1930s and continued to write for 50 years. While writing short stories and novels in several genres, he kept his day job as a daily newspaperman in Minneapolis. He wrote two great novels, City and Way Station, but his real strength, I think, was short fiction. As a working journalist he was trained to write clean, efficient, transparent prose, and we find those qualities in his fiction--well represented in his mid-career collection, All the Traps of Earth. His stories are never needlessly flashy or self-indulgent, they never stray too far from known or plausible science, and they always have something to say about society or human psychology. The last story in the collection, “Project Mastodon,” provides a good example of how he works. As you might guess from the title, it is a time travel story. Like his fellow science fiction grand masters, Asimov and Heinlein, he likes the way engineers approach problems, but his is not as interested in the mechanics of their work. In “Mastodon” three men build a time machine, travel back 150,000 years. They choose a location in Wisconsin where they know the level of the land has not changed much and has not been underwater. But Simak is not so much interested in these practicalities as he is in the question of what you would use a time machine for if you had one. Simak does not bury his lead. The story begins with one of the time travelers going into a government office, declaring that he is a representative of a new nation called Mastodonia, and offering to negotiate a trade deal and apply for foreign aid. Simak has an Aristotelian approach to character. He is not interested in the nuances and quirks of behavior, only in the basics of their character that motivate their decision-making. A timid government clerk reports him to his boss who has him kicked out of the office, but a crusty old general worried about Cold War competition is willing to listen. When I was a teenager, I always liked to see Simak’s name on the covers of magazines like Galaxy. It always meant a good read and it still does. FYI: “Project Mastodon” did not have its copyright renewed and so is available for free on Project Gutenberg.
Clifford Simak began publishing stories in the early 1930s and continued to write for 50 years. While writing short stories and novels in several genres, he kept his day job as a daily newspaperman in Minneapolis. He wrote two great novels, City and Way Station, but his real strength, I think, was short fiction. As a working journalist he was trained to write clean, efficient, transparent prose, and we find those qualities in his fiction--well represented in his mid-career collection, All the Traps of Earth. His stories are never needlessly flashy or self-indulgent, they never stray too far from known or plausible science, and they always have something to say about society or human psychology. The last story in the collection, “Project Mastodon,” provides a good example of how he works. As you might guess from the title, it is a time travel story. Like his fellow science fiction grand masters, Asimov and Heinlein, he likes the way engineers approach problems, but his is not as interested in the mechanics of their work. In “Mastodon” three men build a time machine, travel back 150,000 years. They choose a location in Wisconsin where they know the level of the land has not changed much and has not been underwater. But Simak is not so much interested in these practicalities as he is in the question of what you would use a time machine for if you had one. Simak does not bury his lead. The story begins with one of the time travelers going into a government office, declaring that he is a representative of a new nation called Mastodonia, and offering to negotiate a trade deal and apply for foreign aid. Simak has an Aristotelian approach to character. He is not interested in the nuances and quirks of behavior, only in the basics of their character that motivate their decision-making. A timid government clerk reports him to his boss who has him kicked out of the office, but a crusty old general worried about Cold War competition is willing to listen. When I was a teenager, I always liked to see Simak’s name on the covers of magazines like Galaxy. It always meant a good read and it still does. FYI: “Project Mastodon” did not have its copyright renewed and so is available for free on Project Gutenberg.
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