No Life of Their Own And Other Stories

Introduction Clifford Simak’s Country by David W. Wixon

On numerous occasions during the last decades of his life, Clifford D. Simak was described, often with admiration but sometimes with just a tinge of disdain, by such phrases as “the pastoral voice of science fiction” or “the poet of rural space.” He was not put off by such language; he interpreted it as recognition of his love for the land in which he grew up and the people who lived there and in other similar locations. He believed that he came from a special place, and he was right.

The work of some writers is so distinctive that a discerning and experienced reader can sometimes name the author even if no name is attached to a particular story, but it can be harder to pin down exactly what distinctive trait is being recognized: Is it plot, or theme, or tone? Is it something about the characters, or even the “purple”-ness, or lack thereof, of the prose?

But when you’re asking questions like that about Clifford D. Simak, you’ll find that most knowledgeable critics—or even many casual readers—point, immediately and without hesitation, to the settings of his stories: settings that, over the decades, caused him to be described in the phrases noted above. And many of those readers use the phrase Simak Country as a shorthand for these settings.

Nonetheless, many would be surprised to learn how often Cliff Simak’s stories were not set in Simak Country. For every “Big Front Yard,” for example, there was a “Limiting Factor”; for every “No Life of Their Own,” a “Construction Shack.”

So what exactly do we mean when we refer to “Simak Country”? When I say that Clifford D. Simak was born on a farm on the south side of the Wisconsin River, not far from where that stream meets the Mississippi, some will think that means he was raised on the flat Midwestern prairies. But that’s not true.

One could attempt to figure out exactly how many of Cliff Simak’s stories could be characterized as taking place in Simak Country, but that would require closely reading all of those stories and deciding what characteristics place a story into that category. For “Simak Country” is an ephemeral place, one of the mind and of attitude, and stories that never mention Wisconsin or the little town of Millville may nevertheless take place there. In fact, even stories set on other planets sometimes have a touch of “Simak Country,” for example, when a character remembers growing up on a chicken farm back on Earth. That mere mention tells the reader something about the person.

“Brother” is clearly set in Simak Country: Edward Lambert’s memories of his life on the family farm paint a place similar to the Simak family farm. And the mention that Lambert can see ships landing at the spaceport on the Iowa bluffs is enough to situate the Lambert’s farm in extreme western Wisconsin. “The Ghost of a Model T,” with its loving descriptions of country dance halls and old roads climbing the sides of ridges, fits the category. And the novel Time Is the Simplest Thing is also set in Simak Country. Although it starts in Mexico, the climax takes place along the Missouri River in South Dakota, where there is a little village set above the river, and a people set apart from the majority.

Consider the landscape into which Cliff was born.

Clifford Simak himself occasionally spoke of his land as a unique and special place. At one point, he described it as “an incredibly ancient land.” And, indeed, his land had an unusual history, one that geologists recognize as part of a geological anomaly known as the “Driftless Area,” so named because it largely lacked the “drifts” of material—ranging from gravel to gigantic boulders—generally left behind by retreating or melting glaciers. And that was because the Driftless Area—which encompasses a large chunk of southwestern and central Wisconsin as well as smaller portions of northwestern Illinois, northeastern Iowa, and southeastern Minnesota—did not get covered by ice during the most recent glaciation, even though lobes of ice almost surrounded it. (This is not to say that glaciers never covered Cliff’s land, but it was spared the most recent encroachment.)

For that reason, the land largely retained the shape predating that most recent Ice Age; it was not ground down by the weight of moving ice, nor buried by mounds of gravel. Its only changes were a result of the slow actions of wind, rain, and the rivers.

Today, that terrain consists of ridges cut by the small valleys created by streams making their way to larger rivers such as the Wisconsin, and the combination creates a complex pattern of steep-sided branching valleys. Roads crossing the area often have to twist and curve, using switchbacks to make the steep climb from the deep valley bottoms to the ridge tops, only to face the choice of either following the ridge top, or descending into the next valley. For a long time, people living in those areas found it difficult to travel. Moreover, the land was thickly wooded, so that farms had to be literally chopped out of the forest. (Starting a farm on virgin prairie was not easy—the sod was difficult for the first plows to break through, which led to the term sodbuster—but it is at least arguable that having to cut down a small forest was worse.)

Knowing that, we can reasonably say that Simak stories set on or near the lower reaches of the Wisconsin River—or in similar rural settings, even if there’s no mention of the Wisconsin—are set in “Simak Country.” Look for such clues as mentions of Platteville limestone, a creek whose waters gurgle over stony shallows before swirling into a deeper pool, little hidden valleys (“hollows”), lilacs, deep ravines, narrow ridge-top roads, obscure paths vanishing among the trees …

And yet, having laid out for you some images to look for if you want to recognize “Simak Country,” I must add that these physical things alone are not required. Cliff himself once said that his country “was not only a physical environment, but psychological as well.” While any similar setting can be called “Simak Country” regardless of where it might be, the truth is that the most important trait that makes a place part of Simak Country is the character, the manners, of the people. Any country, after all, is best described through the character of its people.

The portrayal of such people was how Clifford Simak tried to make the people who populated his stories ordinary. Despite what he sometimes did to sell his fiction, he did not want to tell stories about heroes—once, when someone told him that his characters were often losers, his reply was simply that “I like losers!”