Who Goes There?

Clifford Simak is one of my favorite discoveries of the past few years, in that he’s exactly the kind of author I like to show off to people who think so-called Golden Age SF is just this or that. Simak debuted in 1931, which would make him a bit of an oldster by the time John W. Campbell took over Astounding in late 1937; but whereas some authors merely adapted to the new standard and were lucky to do that, Simak actually got better as time went on. He wrote most of the stories that would comprise City in the ’40s, with 1944 alone seeing four of them in print. These were some of the best and most emotionally fulfilling short stories of the era, even surpassing most literary fiction of the time in my opinion. The ’50s then saw a period of immense productivity for Simak, mostly in the pages of Galaxy, where he played well with authors two decades his junior.

“Immigrant” was one of the few major Simak stories in the ’50s to be published in Astounding, and without giving the game away at the start, I can see why it was published there and not in Galaxy. This is a bit of an unusual Simak story in that it takes place entirely away from Earth, as instead we find ourselves on an alien planet with a race of powerful and condescending aliens. It’s also rather foreboding—for the most part.

Placing Coordinates

First published in the March 1954 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which is on the Archive. It was most recently reprinted in The Shipshape Miracle and Other Stories, which seems to only have an ebook edition. Sigh. You gotta go back to the ’90s for a paperback reprint. The most relevant for me has to be Galactic Empires Volume One (ed. Brian Aldiss), which is not an anthology you’d expect to see a Simak story in.

Enhancing Image

Going into this I thought it would be a coming-of-age narrative featuring a juvenile protagonist; well, it is a coming-of-age narrative in a sense, but there are a few twists. Our Hero™ is Selden Bishop, a 29-year-old genius who, through rigorous testing and passing a certain exam, gained the privilege of traveling to Kimon, apparently the most prosperous and alluring planet in the known galaxy. In this distant future, humanity knows it’s far from the only sentient race in the galaxy, and yet Kimon stands out among its neighbors as being where you wanna go if you wanna make it big; only thing is that a tiny fraction of humans (such that they can only be an extreme minority on Kimon) are allowed to enter.

Kimon was a galactic El Dorado, a never-never land, the country at the rainbow’s foot. There were few who did not dream of going there, and there were many who aspired, but those who were chosen were a very small percentage of those who tried to make the grade and failed.

The other thing is that those who are lucky enough to land on Kimon have been awfully cryptic in their letters to Earth for decades. It’s a shame Simak did not anticipate social media, as it would then be much harder to keep the exact relationship between humans and Kimonians a secret. Anyway, Bishop is here because he earned it, but also to do a sort of job for Morley, his Earth contact, which is to figure out what is actually happening on Kimon and what the humans are supposed to be doing there. No, despite the Kimonians being humanoid and very handsome (akin to tall bronze statues), there’s no implication of cross-breeding between humans and Kimonians; this is still a John W. Campbell magazine, after all. What Bishop discovered will be much more aligned with Campbell’s interests, but that’s for later. Much of the first half of “Immigrant” involves Bishop figuring out the basics and how to get a job, since he still needs one of those.

Like other immigrants from Earth, Bishop is sent to stay at a hotel that’s almost quite literally in the middle of nowhere, with “nothing, absolutely nothing, but rolling countryside” outside the hotel. There are no roads on Kimone, nor do there seem to be cities. While Simak does pander to Campbell somewhat in this story, the pastoralism of Kimon is surely Simak’s treat to himself. Actually the decadent ruralism of the Kimonians reminds me of what became of future humanity in Campbell’s own “Forgetfulness,” wherein mankind, in developing psi powers, forgets how to use technology as said technology becomes no longer needed. The Kimonians themselves are natural psi users, being able to communicate with each other across distances without tech via telepathy and teleportation; naturally, and more creepily, they can also read human minds.

As for the Kimonians themselves, they’re kinda… well, they’re like Vulcans: they’re a bunch of assholes. Not in an actively malicious way, but more in that they clearly think of humans as “cute.” Bishop can’t have a real conversation with them. The good news is that while the number of humans on Kimon is incredibly small, the humans have been clustered together such that it doesn’t take long for Bishop to make at least one new friend, namely Maxine, who to her credit does not exist to be Bishop’s love interest. Maxine has been here for a while now and not only understands the Kimonians to a better degree, but is capable of doing a couple things that normal humans ought not to be able to do. Unfortunately Maxine is also a pessimist who assumes the Kimonians just wanna play an epic prank of their human visitors—not that the Kimonians try hard to disprove this.

To make it in this new world, as surely the Irish and Italians had to in 19th century America, Bishop will have to know a whole new rulebook. “You have to adapt,” he thinks at one point. “You’d have to adapt and play the Kimon game, for they were the ones who would set the rules.” Whatever that game is. Eventually he sucks up his pride and goes to ask for a job, which true enough will have a very healthy paycheck by human standards, though it’s far from glamorous. Occupation? Babysitter.

What I like about “Immigrant” is that it’s too packed to work as a short story but too slight to be stretched to a 50,000-word novel; it’s a fine example of what can be done with the novella mode—specifically the short novella where we’re looking at 17,500 to 25,000 words. I suspect Simak wrote this for Astounding because of the paycheck, but also because Astounding usually ran a novella in each issue, with the only rival to both have such a policy and offer such a healthy paycheck being Galaxy. Still, this is not what I would call “major” Simak. It took me four days to read “Immigrant,” partly due to work but also I was not exactly glued to my screen. It’s hard to call boring, but it also meanders enough that I was not sure, while reading, about the point Simak was trying to make until the end. For those of you who are wary of Simak because of his sentimentality, though, you may be pleasantly surprised at how not sentimental “Immigrant” is.

There Be Spoilers Here

The “babysitting” job turns out to be a lot more taxing than Bishop assumed. For one, the Kimonian children he looks after seem totally capable of taking care of themselves, but worse is that they don’t seem to even acknowledge him as an adult figure; indeed, to the Kimonian children, Bishop is, at best, like a fellow child. When being introduced to the children they give him human names—for the sake of his convenience. “They are approximations,” says one. “They are as close […] as he can pronounce them,” says another. These are Kimonian names which Bishop is not equipped to understand; like with most everything else on the planet it’s a door he’s not allowed to open—at least not yet. Sure, the pay is extravagant, but Bishop finds “babysitting” these kids to be profoundly demeaning.

At first Bishop gets the idea that humans are allowed on Kimon to serve as pets, or at best as playmates for their children, since clearly a Kimonian child is treated as a more advanced being than an adult human with a college education. Most authors writing for most other outlets probably would’ve gone with the “humans are pets” option, predictable as that may sound now, but Simak is not like most authors; he believes, usually, that it’s possible for humans and other sentient races to treat each other with respect. I’m convinced at some point that Simak may have envisioned a downer ending wherein Bishop realizes that he and his fellow humans are mere playthings for the Kimonians—except for the fact that the Kimonians are natural psi users. Now, why would a story published in Astounding depict a “superior” alien race with psi powers while humans come off as a bunch of weaklings? Surely there’s a catch to this—and there is!

While overall I enjoy the previous Simak story I’ve covered, “The Big Front Yard,” (review here) more, I do think the solution to “Immigrant” is more justified, even if it still plays to Campbell’s interest. Simak may well have thought of the ending well in advance of writing the rest of the story; it doesn’t read like a last-minute addition. While I did not know how this story would end, I really should’ve made an educated guess from before the story even officially starts, as there’s a major clue. The opening blurb (probably written by Campbell) is clever in that while with hindsight it’s easy to see as spoiling the whole trajectory of the plot, there’s not enough context given to make a certain guess at the start.

After many years of work, the child graduates from grammar school—and is a freshman, in high school. After more years of work—he gets to be a freshman again. And if he is very, very wise, he might even get to be a
kindergarten student again…

Bishop thinks back on a few things, such as Maxine’s ability to teleport (a rudimentary ability by her estimate) and other strange things that have happened, and realizes something: these psi powers can be learned. Over time, and with the right mindset, humans can evolve to read minds, move objects, and yes, teleport to other places, just as the Kimonians do. “But before you could even start to absorb the culture, before you could start to learn, before you ever went to school, you’d have to admit that you didn’t know.” In order to learn these abilities (in which it would take years to do so), Bishop has to, in a way, become a child again. This 29-year-old man with a high IQ has to start his life over, with a new mindset, with the expectation that he’ll have to think as the Kimonians think if he wants to get to their level. But it can be done. The very last line of the story confirms Bishop’s theory: that the humans bright enough to go to Kimon are going back to school—this time to learn psi powers.

A Step Farther Out

I’m not quite sure how to feel about “Immigrant.” This is a story that ultimately plays to Campbell’s obsessions, namely his thing for psi powers and humanity evolving to a higher state of consciousness. I don’t think Simak’s view of humanity is so optimistic as depicted here and in “The Big Front Yard,” although he certainly wasn’t a misanthrope. On the other hand, much as I wanna think Simak may have had a different ending in mind in the event he could’ve sold it to Galaxy, I do think the ending was as intended from the start. It’s a bit of an eerie story, not horror but a little uneasy with how Kimon is depicted, until its swings upward at the end, like someone waving a flag in triumph. I may question the sincerity of it, but as is typical with Simak I respect the swerving-away from what might’ve been a horrific conclusion and instead choosing an ending that bodes well for everyone involved. Simak probably doesn’t believe humans can evolve into telepathic superbeings in a matter of months, but he may well believe that with some hard work and humility, mankind can redeem itself.

See you next time.