Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

Hardcover, 210 pages

English language

Published October 1963 by Doubleday.

OCLC Number:: 795534330
Goodreads:: 7617102

Enoch Wallace led a solitary life. He left his house only to collect his mail or take an occasional walk; his two Earthly acquaintances were the postman and a beautiful deaf-mute girl who could mend the broken wing of a butterfly. If his neighbors in the hills of Wisconsin thought it strange that he never seemed to grow older, they never spoke of it. He was, in fact, the keeper of Way Station 18327.

When Wallace agreed to manage the Way Station, he had been unaware of the greater role for which he was being considered—Earth's sole representative to the Inter-Galactic Council. For more than a century he carried out his duties flawlessly, having become so accustomed to the bizarre and wonderful creatures that passed through his materializer he saw nothing unusual in a plasm that communicated by changing its shape or a beetle that counted by clicking its …

Then the outside world threatened to destroy the Way Station, and with it, man's Last hope of avoiding cataclysmic self-annihilation. The CIA suddenly became interested in a Civil War veteran who looked younger than thirty, an alien corpse in his family cemetery, and a house whose windows could not be broken with an axe.

Way Station is top-grade science fiction by one of the foremost authors in the field.

15 editions

Sandra reviewed Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

Occult BEM

3 stars

What a curious gem of a book densely packed with oblique quotes from occult tablets and tomes all refluffed into bug-eyed 1963 tropey SF! Page after page straight out of emerald tablet and its ilk. All stuffed into an actually good story with great warm caring characters (CW well-meaning ableism that was pretty hard to get through). Dinged for initially using weird framework as a tension driver but to my delight it was read by boardgaming's darling, Eric Summerer! I didn't know he did audio books! Although it was hard to hear it was him because he got deep into character, really elevating the main guy.

AvonVilla@ramblingreaders.org reviewed Way Station by Clifford D. Simak

Peace, Love and Understanding Under Threat in the Whole Galaxy

4 stars

The premise is that a single human has been chosen as the manager of a galactic teleportation station. He is the only person on earth who is in contact with the broader community of interstellar life. On the outside, he lives a peaceful existence walking through the countryside and chatting with his best friend the postman, but secretly he is in daily contact with strange creatures from all over the galaxy.

The book was written at the height of the cold war, and Simak portrays an earth society on a seemingly inevitable course to nuclear annihilation. The protagonist, Enoch Wallace, discovers that the galactic community of which he is the sole human participant is also on the brink of a destructive crisis.

Simak portrays a universe where god exists as a sort of higher lifeform, and is somehow made accessible by technology. The nature of that technology, in …

Simak portrays a universe where god exists as a sort of higher lifeform, and is somehow made accessible by technology. The nature of that technology, in keeping with the old SF adage, is indistinguishable from magic. My strident atheism is mollified by the broader knowledge that this idea was codified by Arthur C Clarke, a non-believer of the highest order. In "Way Station", the access to the deity could also be seen as metaphorical. Either way, I don't think this book is describing a universe where we would find god if we ventured out to the stars, but if you are that way inclined you might interpret it that way.

I greatly enjoyed this book which was published the year after I was born. I get such a warm feeling of nostalgia from discovering the ideas of mid-century science fiction. It was a fertile time and I think its more concise forms of storytelling are preferable in a lot of ways to the longer form styles in vogue today. Simak also portrays simple but lasting virtues: friendship and tenderness are precious; peace is something to strive for; violence and death are bad things, even if you are forced to resort to them for the greater good.

Also, get rid of your guns, you insane Americans.

I look forward to reading Simak's other famous work "City".