The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 20 June 2025
by Clifford D. Simak
It's the early 1960s, and we meet Enoch Wallace, a Civil War veteran now 124 years old, and more. He doesn't look a day over thirty. How does he do it? Could it be that he is the caretaker of an interplanetary bus station? In this down-to-earth science fiction drama, (first published in 1963), we see Enoch's quiet life start to come apart as forces come at him from Earth, and from out there in the Galaxy. For decades, generations, he has guided the travel of unusual species from place to place, living quietly in a neatly disguised house built by his father way back in the 19th century. But this quiet can't last for long, especially as Enoch has delveloped a theory that the world is headed for nuclear annihilation. Indeed, the story is steeped in Cold War fears, and at the same time the author writes it with such an appreciation for the sensory joys of living on Earth, as well as a deep sense of the Unknown, that there is an almost elegaiac tone with the dreaded apocalypse that approaches.
The book is beautifully written and it is award-winning, though perhaps its author is not so terribly well-known. In it, he engenders a gruesome version of the transporter beam that appears later in Star Trek (though many later stoners would guess at this unpleasant feature); and the Force, the energy that binds the universe together, which appears, of course, in dozens of Star Wars films (is this where George Lucas got the idea?).
(For this novel, Simak was awarded the 1964 Hugo award for best novel.)