I had a grand idea back in 2016; that I would read through my entire collection of Simak books and review them.  I lapsed quite badly and this month I found I hadn't reviewed a title for over two years.  So, here I am; trying to get back in the saddle.  Click the link at the end if you want to see previously reviewed titles.

This one is different; all the titles previously reviewed were novels, this is a curated collection of four stories. The book comes from a UK publisher, Severn Press, which is, I think, rather like Doubleday books.

Up first is "The Golden Bugs", originally published in 1960 by Mercury Press.  This is one of Simak's patented 'first contact' type stories.  His first contact type stories rarely have a BEM; his aliens are rather more on the small and sneaky side; which is what we get in this story. At first, the golden bugs were just a curiosity; enough to fascinate Randall's young son and the neighbor who loved insects.  Later, they became beloved by Helen, Randall's wife, when she discovered that left alone the bugs would clean everything in sight.  She started making plans to share the bugs with other housewives.  But then things changed.  The bugs started destructively dismantling everything in their house; they had to run.  The police that arrived also found reason to run when the bugs started dismantling all their vehicles.  Even then, the neighborhood was still cautiously curious; everyone waiting for the inevitable arrival of the government.  The curiosity stopped pretty abruptly when everyone saw the bugs' reaction to an incursion by a friendly dog.  It wasn't pretty.  Randall's neighbor who loved insects was able to make some observations about the bugs and, coincidentally, one of his inventions might just be the answer to the problem.  The question was, though, one of should we just destroy our first evidence of alien life or should we wait and try to communicate?  But how much of the neighborhood or even the city would still be there while they were trying to communicate?  This was a very dialogue-dense story and no worldbuilding at all.  The plot, as usual, was everything.  Simak hinged the entire story on that last question; hoping, I expect, that it would generate discussion.

The second story "Leg. Forst." was published in 1958 by Infinity Science Fiction. This is not quite a first-contact story and doesn't particularly follow any style that Simak later adopted for the majority of his stories as this is quite an early one. The Earth has been visited by a great quantity of aliens and of all the things that an alien might want from humans one might never imagine it to be postage stamps.  Collecting postage stamps is still done today but not at the pace and passion it had in the twentieth-century so this story probably spoke to a lot of readers at the time.  Our protagonist, Packer, is an avid stamp collector and seller.  He has made the acquaintance of various aliens throughout the galaxy and they send him all sorts of rarities.  His favorite friend also sends him a quantity of a special herb that he chews.  The peculiarity of the situation is that he always gets a new quantity of the herb on the very day that he used the last of the previous shipment; no matter if he uses it quickly or more slowly.  It is a puzzle just how his friend knows when to send a new batch.  One day he gets a large parcel with an interesting mixture of stamps.  One of them is yellow with no markings whatsoever.  While examining the shipment, he is having his lunch; a lovely beef broth cooked up by his widowed neighbor.  He accidently spills a bit of broth on the mysterious yellow stamp.  Frustrated and angry he dumps the mess into a wastebasket. The next day the entire wastebasket was full of a foamy frothing yellow mass.  It was a curiosity to him that the yellow mess never went past the rim of the basket; it was even more of a curiosity that the stuff seemed to sense that he needed things done.  The next morning he found all his stamp stock sorted and catalogued, the mice were dead, and his missing stamp tongs were waiting on his desk.  His nephew was quick to see the profit in such an arrangement and their partnership was born: Efficiency, Inc.  A bucket of the yellow stuff could be had for a price and a business would suddenly find itself organized, efficient, and profitable.  Both Packer and his nephew obviously had some Yankee trader blood in them; both enjoyed the opportunity to skin, fleece, and otherwise dicker all the money they could out of their marks.  But something happened…in addition to the organizing and cleaning the yellow stuff could do, it did something altogether unexpected and greatly unwelcome.  It caused people to be…honest.  Honest, and healthy, and good.  Packer guessed it wasn't any harder to organize people than it was to organize his stamps.  The thing was…Packer was the only person, perhaps in the whole world, who was immune to the effects. And the fun part of the story was discovering just how and why.

The third one was "So Bright the Vision", published in 1956 for Fantastic Universe; so this is a very early story, as well.  This reads pretty oddly some seventy years later.  Simak didn't go in for futuristic gadgets much in his later work but this one had a doozy. His protagonist is a writer but it's considered rather gauche to actually write words manually or with personal creativity.  All good writers use what we might say today is a database and algorithms.  He named them as narrative problem tapes, character films, mood and atmosphere fixers.  But you need a yarner to pull it all together and churn out the story.  And the better model of a yarner that one had, the better the quality of the story.  Our protagonist, Kemp, is a down-on-his-luck drunk whose yarner is broken and he wallows in envy of the yarner skills of a rival, Jasper, who had, apparently, gimmicked his yarner and it turned out scads of high-quality stories that sold.  Now, here's the next McGuffin: the stories are sold to aliens all over the galaxy.  Fiction is pretty much the only thing Earth has to offer in trade. Desperate, Kemp resorts to illegally filming an alien in a bar in order to create a character and gets caught.  He was supposed to pay them and get a signed contract; but Kemp is dead broke.  The aliens don't take kindly to it and after a pretty good beating, Kemp escapes the bar; hoping the aliens don't come after him.  On the way home, he finds a tiny alien crying that looks like nothing more than a small blanket. In all his experience, he never heard of or saw such an alien but the poor thing is so pathetic that he takes it home.  Unfortunately for him, the aliens did decide that he still had much to answer for.  They have decided to take him with them back to their planet so he can provide fresh fiction.  Kemp is, understandably, reluctant to go and convinces the aliens that Jasper is a much better writer and they should take him.  Off they go.  Once Jasper has been taken, Kemp breaks into his place in order to use his yarner.  What he finds pretty much breaks his mind.  Unable to use the yarner, he retreats back to his apartment. That night, he has the most wonderful and vivid dream and wakes to find the blanket creature draped over him.  He figures out that the dream and his new-found health have to be because of the little alien.  He finally finds a book that describes the foundling and to his Kemp's astonishment, the little alien is actually fiction.  It almost feels dirty and uncouth to do so but Kemp realizes that he no longer needs a yarner to imagine a story and he could actually write it by hand. But he has to have the impossible little alien.  The problem is…whoever actually created it wants it back.  It was actually a pretty clever plot and Kemp had some depth.  Simak threw in a woman but she wasn't actually necessary to the story.  He never did get the hang of writing a female character.

The last one is "Galactic Chest", published in 1956 for Original Science Fiction. Mark is a newspaper reporter (Simak was, as well; write what you know, I guess) and assigned to write stupid little good-will stories that bore everyone.  Angered at his boss' cavalier attitude and condescension, he takes up the challenge to find his own story.  He takes the totality of feel-good stories and ascribes them to an incursion of brownies.  Brownies, those little creatures of Scottish folklore, who do good deeds and help a household in exchange for a treat of milk, are now being talked about by everyone; and the milk company is having a rare run on milk.  The story gets out of hand and both Mark and his boss are canned.  Later that night, still pretty drunk, Mark gets home to his house and sees the impossible.  He'd had a whole list of stuff that needed to be done, painting and cleaning and fixing storm windows, that he just never found the time to get to.  To his amazement, there was a legion of brownies clambering all over his house, boat and car and all he could do was stand there with his mouth open. They never acknowledged him and although he tried to thank them, he couldn't catch one's eye.  The next day, he was visited by an Air Force Colonel who wanted to know how he knew about the brownies. It seems the Air Force knew they were there but had no idea what the creatures wanted.  He wanted to cry "It was all a gag!" but the evidence was piling up.  It took him a bit but he finally figured out just how long the brownies had been here, and why they did what they did.  He also figured out that the brownies took advantage of his gag story to communicate in a way that actually worked for them.  It was a cute story but not terribly interesting or thought-provoking.  It made me wonder just why this story was picked for the book collection.  ~~ Catherine Book

For more titles by Clifford Simak click here