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Loading... Time Is the Simplest Thingby Clifford D. Simak
   Books Read in 2019 (2,702) No current Talk conversations about this book.  Cheryl_in_CC_NV | Oct 18, 2024 |    ) DinadansFriend | Nov 17, 2023 | It is a pity that Clifford D. Simak never became as famous as Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, or Isaac Asimov. Yes, he was the third SFWA grandmaster, and his 1961 novel Time is the Simplest Thing was nominated for a Hugo Award, but it never became a cultural icon like Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, published the same year. Simak kept his day job as a Minnesota journalist and imbued his stories with a sense of American communities and landscape that resembles Bradbury at his best. Simak also gives Time Is the Simplest Thing a science news hook that would be right at home in a story by Asimov. The newly discovered Van Allen radiation belt is a harbinger of dangers inherent in space flight. The failure of crewed space flight spurs research in out-of-body travel and other paranormal abilities. We begin to explore extraterrestrial life with mental powers augmented by machines. Our hero, Shepherd Blaine, comes home from one such mission with an alien consciousness resident in his mind. His discovery makes him a dangerous outcast and sends him on an odyssey through the nation’s paranormal hinterlands. (  ) Tom-e | Oct 31, 2023 | 1. Telepathic space exploration with the danger of meeting superior alien minds that can take you over and make you a danger to mankind or superman. Great idea and well done beginning of book. This could have won a Hugo but it de-solved into another novel. 2. In future world some people have become super psychic. Some can project their minds. Others can read minds. Others can levitate objects or themselves and fly. the rest of America has become afraid that all of the Halloween characters are now real and try to kill the super brains. 3. Giant corporation controls it's employees and hunts them down if they escape. Harmless individuals on the run with secrets. Kill or be killed. Every one of these could have made a good novel. Instead he mashed them all together and never resolved any of them. No real ending. Maybe he needed another book and he used some unfinished ideas. ( ) ikeman100 | Oct 27, 2023 | Starts off fairly solid - if a little strange - with an interesting concept and the potential for a great story. Unfortunately, at around half way through the quality of the writing plummets. There are some really good ideas, but what could have been a good strong science fiction novel is watered down by clunky exposition and a poorly developed last minute romance. (  ) TheScribblingMan | Jul 29, 2023 |
 Simak replonge ainsi dans sa ruralité de prédilection, et l'essentiel du livre est une sorte de road movie, si on prend le road movie, dévoué qu'il est à l'exploration des paysages de l'Ouest américains (et de ses habitants les plus primitifs), pour la forme contemporaine du western. Western auquel Simak emprunte plus que des lieux : du vocabulaire (dans le texte original), des personnages comme le shérif ou le prêtre et des épisodes comme l'attaque de la diligence (un camion) par des Indiens (ce sont des jeunes télékinètes, ne pinaillons pas) ou le lynchage d'un prisonnier défendu plus ou moins mollement par le shérif. Blaine, certes, a acquis des pouvoirs extraterrestres sur le déroulement du temps, mais il ne s'en sert que de façon parcimonieuse, un coup chacun, histoire de réserver des surprises au lecteur. Belongs to Publisher SeriesAwards
A telepath acquires a powerful alien consciousness--and must run to escape corporate assassins and angry mobs--in this novel by the author of Way Station. Space travel has been abandoned in the twenty-second century. It is deemed too dangerous, expensive, and inconvenient--and now the all-powerful Fishhook company holds the monopoly on interstellar exploration for commercial gain. Their secret is the use of "parries," human beings with the remarkable telepathic ability to expand their minds throughout the universe. On what should have been a routine assignment, however, loyal Fishhook employee Shepherd Blaine is inadvertently implanted with a copy of an alien consciousness, becoming something more than human. Now he's a company pariah, forced to flee the safe confines of the Fishhook complex. But the world he escapes into is not a safe sanctuary; Its people have been taught to hate and fear his parapsychological gift--and there is nowhere on Earth, or elsewhere, for Shepherd Blaine to hide. A Hugo Award nominee, Time Is the Simplest Thing showcases the enormous talents of one of the true greats of twentieth-century science fiction. This richly imagined tale of prejudice, corporate greed, oppression, and, ultimately, transcendence stands tall among Simak's most enduring works. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.087621Literature American literature in English American fiction in English By type Genre fiction Adventure fiction Speculative fiction Science fiction Time travelLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.58)
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Wikipedia in English
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"For it was authority that made men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body rather than a person."
Give me Simak over Heinlein any day. (