{"id":6796,"date":"2025-05-13T02:29:19","date_gmt":"2025-05-12T20:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=6796"},"modified":"2025-09-10T22:04:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-10T16:04:15","slug":"that-blahg-about-clifford-d-simak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=6796","title":{"rendered":"THAT BLAHG ABOUT CLIFFORD D. SIMAK"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Clifford<\/a>\u00a0 This is a blahg that I’ve been meaning to write for a very long time.\u00a0 I’ve been a rabid fan of the science fiction author Clifford D. Simak.\u00a0 In fact, I’ve maintained a website dedicated to “The Science Fiction Short Stories of Clifford D. Simak<\/a>.”\u00a0 I was just looking at the website today, May 12th, 2025 and posting some updates.\u00a0 At the bottom of the main page I have the following:\u00a0 Created by Scott Henderson on May 13th, 2005\u00a0<\/em> followed by Last modified May 12, 2025.\u00a0 <\/b><\/i>The previous modified date was August 11, 2023 so I was due to revise it.\u00a0 The bigger news is that tomorrow, May 13th, my Simak website is celebrating the 20th anniversary of going live.\u00a0 I guess it was about time I got around to writing that blahg about Clifford D. Simak!
\n<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 By the way, that’s a photo of Clifford Simak on the upper right and not me in a cosplay attempt at being Clifford Simak.\u00a0 I’ll drop the “D.” for now, which stands for Donald.\u00a0 I remember when I first encountered the writings of Clifford Simak and I remember where I was when I heard he’d died.\u00a0 I’ll get to that in a bit.\u00a0 I went back through some of my blahgs and I found that I did reference that elusive Simak blahg during a previous blahg entitled THIS IS 50, PART TWO<\/a> which I posted in December of 2015.\u00a0 I had been reviewing some of the first 50 blahgs I had written but the review got a little bogged down so this is what I wrote:\u00a0 I started my last blahg by reviewing the 50 blahgs I had published up to and including that blahg.\u00a0 I split it into two blahgs because I felt a review of all 50 would be too long for one posting.\u00a0 Unfortunately, I\u2019ve skipped over a few blahgs because their topics were very similar.\u00a0 That left me nine comments short and that\u2019s where the artistic license is going to come into play.\u00a0 The next nine don\u2019t refer to specific blahgs but are important to me none the less. \u00a0 <\/em>One of the nine was number 47 and it talked about Clifford Simak <\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

47.\u00a0 Clifford D. Simak.\u00a0 That’s another blahg that needs writing.\u00a0 He’s my favourite science fiction author and I have a website dedicated to his short science fiction stories:\u00a0 The Science Fiction Short Stories of Clifford D. Simak<\/a>.\u00a0 I started the website in May of 2005 as a way to fill my time.\u00a0 I wanted it to be one of the most comprehensive websites about this late great author but there is a new website dedicated to the work of Clifford Simak that covers releases in many different countries: \u00a0Clifford D. Simak – The International Bibliography<\/a>.\u00a0 In many ways it is far superior to my website but I have been encouraged by others to keep my website going.\u00a0 \"simak\"<\/a>This past October saw a new release of some of his short stories and it included the release of “I had no head and my eyes were floating way up in the air” which was submitted in the 1970s for publication in Harlan Ellison’s “The Last Dangerous Visions”.\u00a0 That anthology has never been published but that lost Simak story is available in the new Simak anthology “I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, Volume One”.\u00a0<\/em> <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0 So here we are…back up to speed.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Let’s start with a little introduction of Clifford Simak courtesy of Wikipedia:<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Clifford Donald Simak (August 3, 1904 \u2013 April 25, 1988) was an American science fiction writer. He won three Hugo Awards and one Nebula Award. The Science Fiction Writers of America made him its third SFWA Grand Master, and the Horror Writers Association made him one of three inaugural winners of the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement. He is associated with the pastoral science fiction subgenre.<\/em><\/h4>\n

Pastoral science fiction is slower paced with rural settings or technology as it interacts with people and places never having encountered the technology before.\u00a0 Probably not as clear as it could be but that’s the gist.\u00a0 Here’s a list of the novels that Clifford Simak wrote over the years:\u00a0 <\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    Cosmic Engineers (1950)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  2. \n

    Empire (1951)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  3. \n

    Time and Again (1951)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  4. \n

    City (1952)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  5. \n

    Ring Around the Sun (1953)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  6. \n

    Time is the Simplest Thing (1961)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  7. \n

    The Trouble with Tycho (1961)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  8. \n

    They Walked Like Men (1962)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  9. \n

    Way Station (1963)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  10. \n

    All Flesh Is Grass (1965)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  11. \n

    Why Call Them Back From Heaven? (1967)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  12. \n

    The Werewolf Principle (1967)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  13. \n

    The Goblin Reservation (1968)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  14. \n

    Out of Their Minds (1970)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  15. \n

    A Choice of Gods (1972)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  16. \n

    Cemetery World (1973)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  17. \n

    Our Children’s Children (1974)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  18. \n

    Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  19. \n

    Shakespeare’s Planet (1976)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  20. \n

    A Heritage of Stars (1977)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  21. \n

    The Fellowship of the Talisman (1978)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  22. \n

    Mastodonia (1978)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  23. \n

    The Visitors (1980)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  24. \n

    Project Pope (1981)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  25. \n

    Where the Evil Dwells (1982)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  26. \n

    Special Deliverance (1982)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n
  27. \n

    Highway of Eternity (1986)<\/h4>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Notice that Simak published “Highway of Eternity” two years before he passed away.\u00a0 I was working at a group home in Aurora, Ontario here in Canada in 1988 when a radio personality told about Clifford Simak having passed.\u00a0 I was surprised by his death but more surprised that someone else thought his passing was noteworthy.\u00a0 Funny the things you remember.\u00a0 In high-school I took a course on Futuristic studies and Simak’s novel “City” was part of the course and my first introduction to the author.<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0 Although Simak didn’t publish his first novel, “Cosmic Engineers” until 1950, and he was around 46 years old, he had been submitting and having his short stories published since 1931.\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>His first published story was “The World of the Red Sun” appearing in the December 1931 edition of “Wonder Stories.”\u00a0 That would have put Simak around twenty-seven when he first saw his name in print.\u00a0 His last short story, “Byte Your Tongue!” was published in the 1981 anthology “Stellar #6: Science-Fiction Stories.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/i>Fifty years and around 124 short science fiction stories.\u00a0 That’s impressive!\u00a0 <\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0 I have collected and own all of Simak’s novels and many years ago I set out to collect and read all of his short science fiction stories.\u00a0 Here’s an interesting tidbit on a side note:\u00a0 Between 1944 and 1952 Simak wrote 14 western short stories and between 1942 and 1944 he wrote and published 5 war theme short stories.\u00a0 I’ve read a few of the western stories but this blahg is going to be dedicated to Simak’s short science fiction stories.\u00a0 Unfortunately, when I set out to try and find and read all of the short sci-fi stories the Internet was in its infancy and there weren’t a lot of places to find the stories to read online.\u00a0 So that’s why I set out to compile a list of publications that contained the 124 science fiction short stories by Simak.\u00a0 That list eventually became my Simak website.<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    \u00a0\u00a0 Creating the website was a daunting task.\u00a0 First look at the list of short stories I was dealing with and their publication year:<\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

    1. “The World of the Red Sun” (1931)
    \n2. “Mutiny on Mercury” (1932)
    \n3. “The Voice in the Void” (1932)
    \n4. “Hellhounds of the Cosmos” (1932)
    \n5. “The Asteroid of Gold” (1932)
    \n6. “The Creator” (1935)
    \n7. “Rule 18” (1938)
    \n8. “Hunger Death” (1938)
    \n9. “Reunion on Ganymede” (1938)
    \n10. “The Loot of Time” (1938)
    \n11. “Cosmic Engineers” (1939)
    \n12. “Madness from Mars” (1939)
    \n13. “Hermit of Mars” (1939)
    \n14. “The Space Beasts” (1940)
    \n15. “Rim of the Deep” (1940)
    \n16. “Clerical Error” (1940)
    \n17. “Sunspot Purge” (1940)
    \n18. “Masquerade” (1941)
    \n19. “Earth for Inspiration” (1941)
    \n20. “Spaceship in a Flask” (1941)
    \n21. “The Street That Wasn’t There” (1941)
    \n22. “Tools” (1942)
    \n23. “Shadow of Life” (1943)
    \n24. “Hunch” (1943)
    \n25. “Infiltration” (1943)
    \n26. “Message from Mars” (1943)
    \n27. “Ogre” (1944)
    \n28. “Lobby” (1944)
    \n29. “City” (1944)
    \n30. “Mr. Meek – Musketeer” (1944)
    \n31. “Huddling Place” (1944)
    \n32. “Mr. Meek Plays Polo” (1944)
    \n33. “Census” (1944)
    \n34. “Desertion” (1944)
    \n35. “Paradise” (1946)
    \n36. “Hobbies” (1946)
    \n37. “Aesop” (1947)
    \n38. “Eternity Lost” (1949)
    \n39. “Limiting Factor” (1949)
    \n40. “Bathe Your Bearings in Blood!” (1950)
    \n41. “The Call from Beyond” (1950)
    \n42. “Seven Came Back” (1950)
    \n43. “The Trouble with Ants” (1951)
    \n44. “Second Childhood” (1951)
    \n45. “Good Night, Mr. James” (1951)
    \n46. “You’ll Never Go Home Again” (1951)
    \n47. “Courtesy” (1951)
    \n48. “The Fence” (1952)
    \n49. “And The Truth Shall Make You Free” (1953)
    \n50. “Retrograde Evolution” (1953)
    \n51. “Junkyard” (1953)
    \n52. “Kindergarten” (1953)
    \n53. “Worrywart” (1953)
    \n54. “Shadow Show” (1953)
    \n55. “Contraption” (1953)
    \n56. “The Questing of Foster Adams” (1953)
    \n57. “Spacebred Generations” (1953)
    \n58. “Immigrant” (1954)
    \n59. “Neighbor” (1954)
    \n60. “Green Thumb” (1954)
    \n61. “Dusty Zebra” (1954)
    \n62. “Idiot’s Crusade” (1954)
    \n63. “How-2” (1954)
    \n64. “Project Mastodon” (1955)
    \n65. “Full Cycle” (1955)
    \n66. “Worlds Without End” (1956)
    \n67. “The Spaceman’s Van Gogh” (1956)
    \n68. “Drop Dead” (1956)
    \n69. “So Bright the Vision” (1956)
    \n70. “Honorable Opponent” (1956)
    \n71. “Galactic Chest” (1956)
    \n72. “Jackpot” (1956)
    \n73. “Operation Stinky” (1957)
    \n74. “Founding Father” (1957)
    \n75. “Lulu” (1957)
    \n76. “Shadow World” (1957)
    \n77. “Death Scene” (1957)
    \n78. “Carbon Copy” (1957)
    \n79. “Nine Lives” (1957)
    \n80. “The World That Couldn’t Be” (1958)
    \n81. “Leg. Forst.” (1958)
    \n82. “The Sitters” (1958)
    \n83. “The Money Tree” (1958)
    \n84. “The Big Front Yard” (1958)
    \n85. “The Civilization Game” (1958)
    \n86. “Installment Plan” (1959)
    \n87. “No Life of Their Own” (1959)
    \n88. “A Death in the House” (1959)
    \n89. “Final Gentleman” (1960)
    \n90. “Crying Jag” (1960)
    \n91. “All the Traps of Earth” (1960)
    \n92. “Gleaners” (1960)
    \n93. “Condition of Employment” (1960)
    \n94. “The Golden Bugs” (1960)
    \n95. “Shotgun Cure” (1961)
    \n96. “Horrible Example” (1961)
    \n97. “The Shipshape Miracle” (1963)
    \n98. “Day of Truce” (1963)
    \n99. “Physician to the Universe” (1963)
    \n100. “A Pipeline to Destiny” (1963)
    \n101. “New Folk’s Home” (1963)
    \n102. “Small Deer” (1965)
    \n103. “Over the River and Through the Woods” (1965)
    \n104. “Buckets of Diamonds” (1969)
    \n105. “I Am Crying All Inside” (1969)
    \n106. “The Thing in the Stone” (1970)
    \n107. “The Autumn Land” (1971)
    \n108. “To Walk a City’s Street” (1972)
    \n109. “The Observer” (1972)
    \n110. “Construction Shack” (1973)
    \n111. “UNIVAC: 2200” (1973)
    \n112. “Epilog” (1973)
    \n113. “The Marathon Photograph” (1974)
    \n114. “The Birch Clump Cylinder” (1974)
    \n115. “The Ghost of a Model T” (1975)
    \n116. “Senior Citizen” (1975)
    \n117. “Unsilent Spring” (1976)
    \n118. “Auk House” (1977)
    \n119. “Brother” (1977)
    \n120. “Party Line” (1978)
    \n121. “Grotto of the Dancing Deer” (1980)
    \n122. “The Whistling Well” (1980)
    \n123. “Byte Your Tongue!” (1981)
    \n124. “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air” (2015)<\/p>\n

    As I said earlier, this was the early days of the Internet and there weren’t a lot of resources and those that existed were incomplete or hadn’t been updated in a long time.\u00a0 I found a website that listed each short story by Simak (as well as other science fiction authors) and I used it as a basis for my website and continue to build on it and update it annually.\u00a0 One of the other issues was that some of Simak’s stories were also published under different titles or were republished under different titles.\u00a0 For example here’s a list of some of the stories followed by their republished titles:\u00a0 <\/b><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n