{"id":1446,"date":"2019-08-13T13:50:05","date_gmt":"2019-08-13T18:50:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1446"},"modified":"2019-08-13T13:50:05","modified_gmt":"2019-08-13T18:50:05","slug":"riding-in-the-ghost-of-a-model-t-with-clifford-d-simak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/riding-in-the-ghost-of-a-model-t-with-clifford-d-simak\/","title":{"rendered":"Riding in The Ghost of a Model T<\/em> with Clifford D. Simak"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The Ghost of a Model T<\/em><\/a>
\nClifford D. Simak
\nOpen Road Media
\nprint $21.99
\nebook $7.99<\/p>\n

Open Road Media publishes a lot of great science fiction and fantasy, and I mean A LOT.\u00a0 Much of it is from classic authors who have fallen out of print or writers who are still active and have an extensive backlist.<\/p>\n

One of my favorite authors is Clifford D. Simak.\u00a0 Open Road has published a twelve volume set of his complete short fiction.\u00a0 They’ve also reprinted a number of his novels (although I’m still waiting for The Visitors<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Simak’s birthday was a week or so ago, and I did a post on it<\/a>.\u00a0 I decided after rereading “All the Traps of Earth” that I would read some more of his work.\u00a0 In honor of Simak’s birthday, F&SF<\/em> tweeted that his story “The Autumn Land”, which they had published back in October of 1971 had been shortlisted for the Nebula Award.\u00a0 So I decided to start with that on, which is one of the stories in The Ghost of a Model T<\/em>.\u00a0 And I ended up reading the whole collection.<\/p>\n

“The Autumn Land” concerns a man traveling across the country hoping to land a job in Chicago.\u00a0 The position has almost certainly been filled, but he hasn’t been able to find work.\u00a0 Along the way he begins to have visions of an apocalyptic landscape, and before long he starts running into people from the visions.\u00a0 Unnerved, he decides to visit a valley he had explored when he was a boy living and working on his uncle’s farm.\u00a0 The valley is close by, so he does.<\/p>\n

That’s when things get interesting.\u00a0 He finds a small town there that didn’t use to be there.\u00a0 A town in which it is always autumn.\u00a0 I was reminded of Ray Bradbury a bit by this part, although there was no mention of Halloween, something Bradbury would have been sure to mention.<\/p>\n

The town is mostly uninhabited, but the little old lady he meets tells him that the house across the street from her is his.\u00a0 He moves in, and soon finds he can’t go back to\"\"<\/a> the outside world.\u00a0 He can only move on to some unspecified destination.<\/p>\n

“The Autumn Land” almost seems to be a rejection of nostalgia at times.\u00a0 The title story, on the other hand, wallows in nostalgia.\u00a0 In this one, an alcoholic stumbling home from the bar one night gets picked up by a driverless Model T.\u00a0 The car takes him back to places he frequented in his youth (the 1920s in this case).<\/p>\n

Both stories flirt with the idea that the protagonist is actually dead, although one is more explicit in this.<\/p>\n

The other stories deal with how to spacemen deal with traveling to other worlds, the risks and advantages of collecting stamps from around the galaxy, and lies necessary for an immortal to tell himself in order to stay sane on a colony planet while it is being terraformed.<\/p>\n

Stories of note include “Physician to the Universe”, about a society where cleanliness, teeth brushing, bathing, and general hygiene are enforced by robots.\u00a0 This one reminded me of Jack Williamson’s “With Folded Hands”.<\/p>\n

“City” is the first story in the cycle that became the novel of the same name.\u00a0 The editorial note said the story was revised for book publication and this was the first time the original version had been reprinted.\u00a0 I’m not so sure.\u00a0 In one of Simak’s collections, sure.\u00a0 But I’m pretty certain the original version was reprinted in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 6 (1944<\/em>), among other places.<\/p>\n

Finally, one of Simak’s westerns, “No More Hides and Tallow”, is included.\u00a0 This series didn’t limit itself to just Simak’s science fiction.\u00a0 All of his short fiction is included.\u00a0 The subtitle of the book does say “The Complete Short Fiction”, after all.\u00a0 This one was interesting because it had more action in it than any of Simak’s science fiction I’ve read.\u00a0 I don’t read enough westerns to judge the quality of this one.\u00a0 I suspect it’s pretty formulaic, but I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

The Ghost of a Model T<\/em> shows Simak’s range, and it’s worth checking out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ghost of a Model T Clifford D. Simak Open Road Media print $21.99 ebook $7.99 Open Road Media publishes a lot of great science fiction and fantasy, and I mean A LOT.\u00a0 Much of it is from classic authors who have fallen out of print or writers who are still active and have an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[861],"tags":[838],"class_list":["post-1446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clifford-d-simak","tag-clifford-d-simak"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-nk","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1446"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1450,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1446\/revisions\/1450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}