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A review by avalinahsbooks
No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories by Clifford D. Simak, David W. Wixon
4.0
How I read this: borrowed through Scribd free trial
Most of the stories in this collection are really, really good. There were only a few that were so-so ones. I can't wait to read the other tomes.
I really love Simak's rural settings that intersect with futuristics - a village full of alien immigrants, a villager orphan who finds alien artefacts. Those kinds of stories are the ones I love best among his work. But the space travel stories are also interesting - considering Simak wrote them before any real space travel took part, it's cute to read about how he imagined it - you pick up the keys, get into a rocket and go. Only the strongest can survive take off. There are no space suits in some stories, and in others they have an inexhaustible amount of oxygen. Rockets are powered by gasoline, and Mars and Venus have aliens living on them. It was very interesting to read and see the world that the pre-Nasa people imagined.
I must note that due to when the stories were written (anywhere between 1940-1960 or something like that), you may find some language that isn't fully politically correct, but that's due to the time frame. The author is very respectful even to the races that he's created himself (the aliens who don't actually exist). You could say the same about how women are missing from Simak's stories. I'm not entirely sure there was even a single woman in the whole book. Maybe one side character that never said anything. But if you understand when this was written, you can see it all in a slightly different light. And it's still definitely worth a read.
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Most of the stories in this collection are really, really good. There were only a few that were so-so ones. I can't wait to read the other tomes.
I really love Simak's rural settings that intersect with futuristics - a village full of alien immigrants, a villager orphan who finds alien artefacts. Those kinds of stories are the ones I love best among his work. But the space travel stories are also interesting - considering Simak wrote them before any real space travel took part, it's cute to read about how he imagined it - you pick up the keys, get into a rocket and go. Only the strongest can survive take off. There are no space suits in some stories, and in others they have an inexhaustible amount of oxygen. Rockets are powered by gasoline, and Mars and Venus have aliens living on them. It was very interesting to read and see the world that the pre-Nasa people imagined.
I must note that due to when the stories were written (anywhere between 1940-1960 or something like that), you may find some language that isn't fully politically correct, but that's due to the time frame. The author is very respectful even to the races that he's created himself (the aliens who don't actually exist). You could say the same about how women are missing from Simak's stories. I'm not entirely sure there was even a single woman in the whole book. Maybe one side character that never said anything. But if you understand when this was written, you can see it all in a slightly different light. And it's still definitely worth a read.
Book Blog | Bookstagram | Bookish Twitter