Subject: Retrograde Reviews--Clifford Simak:Way Station

From: [email-masked] (Aaron V. Humphrey)
Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 22:02:48 GMT

Clifford Simak:Way Station

A Retrograde Review by Aaron V. Humphrey

Way Station is, as far as I know, Simak's only Hugo-winner.
In my opinion, it definitely earned it.

Simak is one of those authors I have as vague an impression of as Fred
Pohl.  I've only read a couple of his books before, and don't have a
clear image of either of them.  But Way Station is undeniably his
classic.

It's almost as thick in ideas as a first novel, but is a bit more
sophisticated in style.  It's the story of Enoch Wallace, who was
recruited after the end of the Civil War to be the monitor of a
transfer station on Earth.  A galactic league of aliens was trying to
open up this spiral arm, and an alien who Enoch names Ulysses found in
Enoch the ideal man for the job.

So Wallace retires from human society, for the most part, for a
hundred years.  He watched aliens come through, chats with some,
receives gifts, most of which he can barely comprehend, and only
spends about an hour a day in the outside world, which is the only
time he ages.

The first part of the book concerns some CIA agents who become
interested in this unaging hermit(and especially the alien body buried
beside his parents').

The book soon shifts to Wallace himself, telling his story mostly by
flashbacks.  But when the action catches up to the present day, we
find that a number of factors are converging--impending war on Earth,
a mob prepared to stalk him at home, a galactic furor over the
disappearance of the alien body buried there, as well as the theft of
the Talisman, a holy object which, in the hands of a sensitive
custodian, allows communion with The Force.  (Or Simak's equivalent to
it.)  Wallace is faced with a decision between the galactic community
and his own planet.

I'll try not to give away the ending, but let's just say that
everything is wrapped up nicely, or almost everything.

A great tour de force.  I'll definitely have to read more Simak after
this.

%A Simak, Clifford D.
%T Way Station
%I Ballantine del Rey
%C New York
%D Copyright 1963
%G ISBN 0-345-28420-8
%P 236 pp.
%O Paperback, US$1.95

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