I may have to rethink what makes my next Tears review

[james_davis_nicoll]

Context removed

Does anybody want to argue that “Here Gather the Stars” is better than Dune? (First, has anybody ever even heard of it?)

“Here Gather the Stars” is by the late Clifford Simak. It is better known as Way Station.

Comments

[spaceoperadiva]

Like many folk in the original post, I didn't know that Way Station had another title. I loved Way Station. I haven't read it in quite some time, so I don't know if I'd still love it. I do still have it on my shelf. I also love Dune, which I have re-read recently and still love. I've never read the earlier "Dune World" version, so I can't argue whether Way Station is better. I think Way Station and Dune are not easily compared in any case. That what wins awards and what ends up being enduring is not always identical doesn't surprise me much. The fact that some things have endured against what I think is all taste and reason is another thing, though.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Is pizza better than sushi?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I can argue either way about Dune or Way Station but for the Simak to be considered unspeakably obscure makes me sad.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I too was saddened by his dismissal of the very favorite science fiction author of myh childhood. There were never enough of his books in the library.

[glinda-w.livejournal.com]

Saw this, before noticing "It is better known as Way Station.", and was confused, because I was fairly sure I have everything Simak wrote (rescued from the storage locker a while ago, sort of made room for on the shelves).

Hm. May have to re-read Way Station. (My favorite Simak book is Goblin Reservation, but I've re-read that within the last year. Alley Oop, Ghost, the biomech sabertooth, the last banshee, October ale...)

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

I am not sure whether I prefer Way Station or The Goblin Reservation as my favourite Simak... but seconded!

[lyle-hopwood.livejournal.com]

I loved Here Gather The Stars. Hm, I don't seem to have it any longer. I read it as a kid and it made a big impression on me.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

I've read The Way Station, but I can't recall much about it. Certainly not the ending.

The thing I remember clearest is that his century-long subscription to Scientific American gets him into trouble. I'll have to look for this to read again.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I remember the ending fairly well.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I liked Way Station very much (tho' I had no idea it had an alternate title: is that a US thing, or a before-I-saw-it thing?) - but no, it is not on the same scale as Dune.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

I liked it myself, and personally found "Dune" a bit of a slog, although I'll acknowledge Dune is the more _important_ SF novel.

If you had control over, say, NESFA press and wanted to publish a Big Fat Omnibus of your favorite four or five Simaks, which would you choose, James? [1]

[1] Assume also that you are fabulously wealthy and are free to choose without any concern as to whether the book would sell or not. :)

[seth ellis (from livejournal.com)]

I'd love it if NESFA, or somebody similar, published ebooks. For my own preference, it would be great if you could buy single books or omnibuses, the way that cheapo DVDs package the same copyright-free movies on single disks, packs, or box sets. Digital publishing isn't going to be the same kind of game changer as the printing press, I don't think, but still it'll be harder for authors like Simak (or Henderson) to be unobscured with physical-only distribution.

Probably the rights are a huge legal tangle though.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Way Station is one of my favourite Simaks, if not my very, very favourite, and I love him as an author. I think his folksy midwestern thing has gone out of fashion, but the central conceit of Way Station (which was the name it was serialised under and published in the UK and is a damn better title) is like that of no other book I have read before or since.

And the sheer alienness, is terrific. It was Simak's great strength. It is a tragedy he is still not in print. I think I will go away now and read this again - and The Goblin Reservation which is one of the funniest of his books, for good measure.

[julesjones]

He is not in print, but he is in ebook, at least for those regions covered by Commonwealth rights. Gollancz's "SF Gateway" e-only imprint has some of his stuff, including Way Station. Alas, their "all books by" search has fallen over, although they mention a workaround somewhere in the blog.

http://sfgateway.com/authors/s/simak-clifford-d/

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

But to answer your question, Way Station and Dune are very different novels. Both are excellent in their own right. Though I am very fond of Dune I have probably read Way Station more often. It has some advantages over Dune - a) it has some terrific aliens b) the central character is more sympathetic c) it is better structured and d) stylistically it does its own thing but is well written. Certainly it is both funnier and less overblown than Dune

Dune on the other hand is a game-changer.a) Arakis itself is beautifully constructed. b)The world building is so complex it can only be compared, on its publication, to LotR. c) It has a number of interesting SF themes - such as the nature of prescience and dry land ecology - which it explores with some insight. d) There is a lot more well written action. But it is also full of overblown and pretentious claptrap.

The only thing the two really have in common is that they are SF (and pretty hard SF at that, though Simak's style tends to disguise the fact) and that they are both well worth reading. Otherwise, apples and oranges.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

Comparing apples and walnuts.

[awesomeaud.livejournal.com]

"Comparing apples and walnuts."

No. That would be comparing "Dune" to "Bridges of Madison County"!

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'd be willing to make an argument that Way Station was better than Dune. Overall levels of craftsmanship, structure of the novel, plus great aliens and fine characterization. Herbert's novel is a great big untidy heap of interesting ideas.

Better is a useless comparison between unlike things. "More influential" is easy, and Dune wins that hands down. But which is "better", Pound's two-liner about the Métro, or The Cantos?

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've read Way Station a couple of times, I think it's probably Simak's best book, and a very good example of this type of work. But it is nothing like Dune, which evidently appealed to a different and larger audience.

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Okay, James, I'm an idiot newbie :-)

But I think my serious point is we have a lot of Hugo voters who weren't even born in 1964 (like Yours Truly), tastes change over time, and as evidenced above there is no consensus as to what should get an award.

ETA - So I went and bought the book. In the latest edition, which has been out of print for 35 years. Sadly, it may be a great book, but it's become obscure.

[(Anonymous)]

I liked Way Station, and bounced hard off Dune after two or three pages every time I tried to read it.

Matt M.

[cristalex.livejournal.com]

How much of the eventual Dune was in Dune World? I seem to remember it's basically the first part of Dune, up to where Paul and Jessica escape into the desert... is my memory correct?

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

All I know for sure is that I've read too little Simak. His work wasn't much available around me back in the days when I read everything sf/f I could find.

Also, I remain to this day very impressed with what Herbert did in Dune.

Love, C.

[connactic.livejournal.com]

I am going to guess that mant more people are familiar with Dune today since it spawned a movie, a couple of mini-series', a video game, a couple of board games as well as multiple sequels.

Way Station needs a Hollywood treatment to make it big. I am seeing Bruce Willis as the lead- he can use those gun skills of his on the invading alien army.

(Now that I think of it, did Way Station predict the first person shooter genre of video games?

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Dear gods yes. I've reread Way Station at least five times and consider it one of the finest SF novels of the 1960s. In vivid contrast, I've read Dune 1.5 times (I found it impossible to finish the 2nd time) and consider it a piece of vastly over-rated crap, and Frank Herbert to have been a talentless, vastly misogynistic (even more the era) hack.

[bill miller (from livejournal.com)]

Adding to the "I liked Way Station" chorus. But there were actual girls in high school (1970s) who wanted to borrow Dune from me.

[ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com]

I loved Way Station when I read it some years back, and need to read it again. My memory is mush and can't be more precise, but I do remember being moved by the story.

I was very drawn into the Dune universe when I read the first book (back in the 1980s), and my interest continued over several books. At some point, though, I bounced off one of them (the fifth one?) early on and never tried to get through it. The saga had quite an epic scale to it, piles of ideas. If I tried to reread it now, the flaws would probably jump out at me.

[felila.livejournal.com]

I do not remember Simak clearly; I was reading him when I was a teen. Do not have many books left from that time.

I remember reading Dune. My then boyfriend and I returned to his house, after an evening outing. There was a copy of Dune in the living room. "You go to bed," I said. "I'll be right up, after I read a little."

I read the whole thing. I remember dawn breaking, birds starting to sing.

[jamoche]

Well, it just popped up in whatwasthatbook and was ID'd on the first comment, so it can't be that obscure.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Apparently Simak is pronounced as though it had two ems, like Simmons. I had no idea. I'd always assumed it was Sigh-mack, like Simons.