Our Children’s Children
Clifford D. Simak
Ebook $9.99

It’s been a little while since I posted about Simak here, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t read any more of his work.  I’ve just been slammed with work and haven’t had a chance to post.  I’ve got at least one more Simak post coming up.

This short novel was published in 1974 after being serialized in Worlds of If. Like much of Simak’s work, it involves time travel.

The plot is fairly straightforward.  Doorways open up all over the world, and people start pouring out of them.  The spokesman for the newcomers tells the President that they are refugees from 500 years in the future.  They are fleeing an alien invasion.

Clifford D. Simak

It seems that all war has been eliminated in the future.  Humanity has given up war and pretty much forgotten how to fight.  There’s plenty of food for everyone. All weapons have been destroyed.

And that’s the problem with utopias.  When the bad guys show up and invade, there’s not a lot you can do to defend yourself.  These aliens are extremely vicious, and they breed rapidly.

Now the surviving members of humanity are fleeing to the past.  They don’t plan on staying in the present.  They want to go back to prehistoric times.  They’re just stopping to get some help.  They don’t have the infrastructure left to build everything they’re going to need to relocate to the past.  They promise to share technology if the world will help them.

And then one of the aliens gets through…

There are a number of viewpoint characters in this book, but the main one is the press secretary. Not surprising since Simak was a newspaper man himself. He shows how complicated such a scenario would be, with all sorts of people complicating things by trying to pursue their own agendas, from politicians to evangelists to the press.

Simak doesn’t shy away from the grim aspects of the scenario he sets up. There are some grisly moments when both ordinary citizens and soldiers have close encounters with the aliens.  They tend to not end well for the humans.

And that ultimately weakens the book. Simak has set up a situation that can only end in disaster.  Then he takes a cop-out. I won’t say what it is.  If you want to know, you’ll need to read the book.

Our Children’s Children isn’t Simak’s best work.  Still, it has its merits in spite of the weak ending.  Simak’s experience as a reporter shows in how he handles all the aspects of approximately a billion people showing up without notice and seeking aid.

I hadn’t read this book before.  I spent a good part of August reading/rereading Simak and plan on continuing that practice.  There is one more Simak review that I need to write, and I’ll be caught up.  On the Simak reviews, that is.  I’ve got several other reviews I need to write for this blog as well as stuff for Adventures Fantastic.

Our Children’s Children has had several editions through the years.  Three of them are shown here.  Personally, I think the Richard Powers cover is the worst one.  Not because i don’t like Powers work. I do.  I just don’t think it reflects the story very well.  Sales would be made more on the basis of Simak’s name than by the cover.  Just my two cents.