A Heritage of Stars by Clifford D. Simak is a harmless lightweight piece of SF-fantasy "pastoral" fluff. There is no particular pretension to literary quality, just a story told as well as he knows how.We skate over various improbabilities, most obviously how the motley cast of characters come to be assembled. We quietly ignore the improbability of anyone not attempting to recreate tech. We just about manage to believe that pretty well all tech all over the world would somehow simultaneously be destroyed with no hold-outs, bar obvs the one Our Heroes are heading for. I'm dubious that the various "talents" that his party shows wouldn't have been noticed and studied and learnt from, but the book calls on us to believe in a vitiated huan race, somewhat like Tolkein's elves, so maybe.
Oh dear. This was meant to be on "the other blog". Well, never mind, it isn't as if it is crowded here. FWIW the dig about "literary quality" was a fling at John Harrison's Light. Since I ended up putting it here, I could add: reading the wiki biog of Simak, he seems a decent likeable chap.
Umm... did you enjoy the book? Do you think it is good? Is it a fantasy, hard SF...?
ReplyDeleteA little help, here, please.
Ah, the things left unsaid. Overall the book is "meh". Had I been bright, sharp and alert I would have been disappointed, and might not have finished it. As it was, I was exhausted after a week of rowing, and happy to slump in the garden with an undemanding tome. There are no layers of subtlety, there are no complex back or forward references, there are no allusions, there are no difficult ideas (is that true? There's a guy that talks to plants, but nothing much comes of it, so I guess that's not hard), everything is plain.
ReplyDeleteIs it...? It is what I discover as Pastoral Sci-Fi which is a label I haven't met before, but which fits very nicely to this and a few others.
That's actually quite helpful. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteRead any really good sci-fi lately?
Good? Now you're asking. No. Looking back, the best I can do "recently" is A World Out Of Time (wittily, reviewed in French. In retrospect, also "pastoral" in a way). My full sort-by-quality list is here.
ReplyDelete