F/SF

Well I love Clifford and he certainly lets it fly in this one, but it doesn't work in the end, nor very much in the middle, and only a little in the beginning. There are a few individual passages that present some interesting ideas, but this is an idea in search of an ending. ( )

A pioneering novel of the "what if the creations of imagination became real" genre.

This review of Out of Their Minds by Clifford Simak takes the form of a summary of the first part of the book, from which it should also become clear that I didn't like it, and to some extent why not.

We start off with the ominous words of the wise old friend of the protagonist shortly before his death in a mysterious car accident: "mankind since its early days in the caves is haunted by primordial fears ...". Our protagonist, Horton Smith, is musing over this as he drives to revisit his childhood home somewhere in the back of beyond, but he is also worried as dusk falls that he has lost his way, as the road is getting worse and worse, but he can't readily turn back, because it's so narrow and on the side of a steep hill. Then he sees a large ceratopsian dinosaur charging towards him along the road. He desperately tries to swerve off the road up the hill but instead gets stuck in a narrow ditch and can't restart the car. Luckily, the dinosaur has disappeared. He then apparently hallucinates an evening with a couple in a nearby house: in the morning, he's in a den of rattlesnakes. Well, the book is called Out of Their Minds, so he's maybe the first of many to go out of his mind? But this is Simak and the title can be read another way, so we have to fear the worst.

He escapes, restarts the car easily and finds his way to his destination. The local store-owner remembers him as a child and brings him up to date date with the local gossip. We are in a small, pretty well isolated community featuring poverty, ignorance, superstition and bigotry, and we are expected to approve of this. So we think, OK, this is how it is, this is where Simak wants to set the story or part of it — get on with it already. But no, just in case we've missed anything, Smith's internal monolog subjects us to a rant about the evils of modern, comfortable, tolerant big-city America as contrasted with the simple virtues of the golden age when everybody grubbed along like the folks here.

He picks up his mail, which he has had forwarded, and takes a room in a motel by the river. The mail contains a large envelope with photocopies of papers written by the deceased wise old friend, which the friend's nephew thought would interest Horton, and he immediately begins to read what seems to be the last one written. "The evolutionary process (the document began) is a phenomenon which has been of special and absorbing interest to me all my life ...". What a pity, then, that he did not trouble to learn anything about it. "... And the thought must occur to one that through all this ... there must have run a single central core of evolution pointing to some final form." He does not, however, believe that man is that final form, but that man will be superseded. In fact: "I believe the superseder is already in existence", namely, the accumulated beliefs and the imaginative products of humanity, which have somehow taken on an independent existence. Horton decides that he needs to use his contacts in Washington to get this vitally important information to the right people.

At a social event that evening he gets to know the town schoolmistress, Kathy Adams, but also experiences antagonism from some local louts. The next day he goes fishing in a canoe on the river. It is becoming clear that the superior entity considers it necessary to keep its existence secret by arranging the deaths of those who suspect its existence: the episode with the rattlesnakes was a sort of pre-emptive strike because the vital letter was waiting for him. Its next attempt is by making it appear that he killed one of the louts so that a lynch mob starts looking for him. The schoolmistress, Kathy, manages to find him first and he sets off down the river to escape, but first he gives her the deadly manuscript for safe keeping, but with a strict warning not to read it — guess whether that works.

After paddling down the river for a while, he is attacked by an imaginary river monster. He is able to seriously discommode it by getting a very nasty fish-hook into its throat. It pulls him along down the river for a while, then disappears. Late at night he reaches a small town and he phones Kathy from a bar which is still open. She has read the paper, so she's in danger, so he urges her to come and pick him up and they will drive to Washington. After he leaves the bar, which is closing, he is approached on the deserted street by more and more wolves, which he recognises as werewolves, though how he knows and why werewolves are worse is not clear. Before they attack, a spokesbeing for the imaginary world tells him that, having escaped three attempts on his life, he is now safe under the rules, unless he wants to volunteer to face three more which would otherwise be for Kathy. Since he blames himself for putting her in danger by giving her the paper, he accepts this deal. While he is just about holding off the wolves with a baseball bat which was luckily lying in the street, Kathy turns up in her car, runs down a few wolves and rescues him.

Now they have more adventures, together and separately, with fantasy scenarios, but Horton eventually reaches Washington and talks to the President and it's all going to be all right.

Simak often goes where no fantasy writer has gone before. this incorporation of cartoon characters as real life people will stay in my mind until death. ( )