Clifford D. Simak: Grand Master Indeed!

“Music that had the whisper of rockets and the quietness of the void and the somber arches of eternal night.”

—Clifford D. Simak in “The Call from Beyond”

You are holding, either in your hands or in your circuits, the first volume of a projected series of fourteen collections that will, in the end, encompass every piece of professionally published short fiction known to the author’s estate to have been written by one of the giants of science fiction, Clifford D. Simak. In addition, you will find here a Simak story that has never before been published: a piece of fiction, written for Harlan Ellison, that was intended for inclusion in the third volume of Ellison’s three-part Dangerous Visions anthology, which was to have been entitled The Last Dangerous Visions™. Alas, that third volume has never been published. But the Simak Estate, and this editor personally, offer thanks to Mr. Ellison for his generosity in releasing that story to allow for its inclusion in this volume.

When the Science Fiction Writers of America, in 1977, named Clifford Donald Simak the third person to receive its Grand Master award, he had been writing science fiction for well over four decades—and while the award certainly reflected the esteem in which the honoree was held by his fellow writers, it also reflected their respect for, and appreciation of, the place his writings occupied in the history and development of science fiction.

It’s not known exactly when Cliff Simak began writing science fiction. Born in 1904, he spent his youth in deeply rural southwestern Wisconsin, where he read stories by such writers as Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and H. G. Wells—but it was not until 1927 (just about the time he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, in order to take some journalism courses) that he chanced upon a copy of Amazing Stories. Perhaps it was simply that being in the city, rather than on farms or in small towns, put him in a place where such magazines were available to be discovered; but at any rate, he became a regular reader of science fiction magazines, and soon thereafter he himself began writing—and in the end, the period between his first and last fiction publications would span about fifty-five years.

In 1929 Cliff, newly married, left college to take advantage of an opportunity to work in journalism. With his new bride, Kay, he moved to Michigan to work on the Iron River Reporter. He quickly moved up to having his own column, (entitled “Driftwood”), and within a few years, he was the paper’s editor.

It’s hard to know just when Cliff started writing fiction. Although he kept a series of journals in which he recorded some of his submissions and sales (and occasionally other events, such as the purchase of a supply of firewood), he was sporadic at best in his data entry, and it’s probable that some of those journals, like some of his stories, did not survive a lifestyle that was, for a long period, extraordinarily itinerant. A journal entry shows that he had already written and submitted at least one story in 1930, and during the following year, he sold at least six stories.

Most Simak fans have heard that Cliff’s first sale was a story called “The Cubes of Ganymede,” which was apparently accepted by Amazing Stories and held for several years before being returned with a note indicating that it no longer met the magazine’s needs. Cliff, who by then had sold a number of other stories, apparently did not attempt to resubmit “Cubes” anywhere else, and at some unknown time thereafter it vanished from the author’s files. (Cliff would later say that “Cubes” was “fairly bad.”)

But what most Simak fans do not realize is that he wrote an even earlier tale, one that eventually did reach publication. Cliff’s journals show that he actually wrote “Mutiny on Mercury” before writing either “The Cubes of Ganymede” or “The World of the Red Sun.” “Mutiny” would be Cliff’s first known submission, but because it was initially rejected and “Cubes” was held up, “Red Sun” became his first fiction publication. (“Mutiny” would sell a short time later.)

Of particular interest is the fact that “Red Sun,” Cliff’s very first published work of fiction, was listed on the cover of the issue of Wonder Stories in which it appeared. And as with the other authors featured in the issue, there was a line drawing of Simak, likely done by the legendary Frank R. Paul, as well as a brief introduction to the young author, which may have been written by the magazine’s editor in chief, the even more legendary Hugo Gernsback. One can only speculate on how exciting this must have been for a beginning author.

Over the next two decades, Clifford D. Simak would continue writing science fiction at short length but would also try his hand at other genres, including weird fantasy, Westerns, war stories, mysteries—and there were a few stories that we cannot now characterize, since they have vanished, leaving us with only their names to go by. He wrote some nonfiction, too, including “outdoor” sorts of stories such as “In the Wisconsin Bush”—but none of these, so far as we know, were published, and none survive.

Although Cliff seems to have begun his fiction career in science fiction—no surprise, considering his early interest in the field—he nonetheless had a Western rejected in 1933. Westerns were popular in the early part of the twentieth century, and it’s likely that Cliff, having grown up in a very rural area, was exposed to them early and often. And so it was that while he continued to write science fiction (including the beginning stories of the City cycle) before and during World War II, he also began to sell Westerns and war stories. It is worth noting that, true to his inclinations to avoid the cliché, none of Cliff’s fourteen published Westerns were of the stereotypical cowboy-and-Indian sort. But with the exception of one Western, likely written earlier, all of his fiction published after 1949 would be in the science fiction and fantasy field.

Also in the fifties, Cliff began moving into the writing of novels (his only prior novel, Cosmic Engineers, had been written specifically for magazine serialization at the request of John W. Campbell Jr.), but he would always keep his hand in the short-story field. And it was during this period that he began to win awards for his fiction—awards that had not even existed in his first two decades in writing.

In 1953 Cliff was awarded the International Fantasy Award for his book City, which was not actually a novel but a compilation of a series of related stories, with interstitial connecting materials. When the Hugo Award was created, he began winning some of those (for “The Big Front Yard” in 1959, Way Station in 1964, and “The Grotto of the Dancing Deer” in 1981)—and when the Nebulas were invented, he won one of those (for “Grotto” in 1981 again). His novel A Heritage of Stars won the Jupiter Award for Best Novel in 1978; and just before his death, he was one of the three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers’ Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.

When Clifford D. Simak won that last Hugo and that Nebula (for “Grotto of the Dancing Deer”), he had been writing fiction for more than fifty years.

One result of all this is that Clifford D. Simak became, and will likely remain, the only person ever to have won a Hugo, a Nebula, and an International Fantasy Award. Probably this is a somewhat unfair observation, since the International Fantasy Award, based in England, lasted less than ten years before becoming defunct, but in its day it developed an unmatched record of recognizing future classic fiction in the fields of fantasy and science fiction: Stewart’s Earth Abides, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Sturgeon’s More Than Human, Collier’s Fancies and Goodnights, and Pangborn’s A Mirror for Observers, for example.

But if a science fiction writer’s career is to be measured by his or her list of awards, it should be kept in mind that Cliff Simak had been a published writer for nearly two decades before any of those awards was created—and who is to say how many Hugos or Nebulas he might have won if any of them had been in existence when he was writing such stories as “Tools,” “Huddling Place,” “Desertion,” or “Earth for Inspiration.”

David W. Wixon