Why Call Them Back From Heaven by Clifford D. Simak
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1967
Clifford Simak is one of the most important voices of 20th-century
science fiction, and he is largely forgotten outside of serious SF circles. His
books crowd the shelves at used bookstores, and several are considered
classics. I prefer his work to Ray Bradbury but he doesn’t have the cultural
impact or name recognition. Not even as well-known as Heinlein or Asimov whom
he inspired. Bradbury’s reputation for pastoral fantasy comes from a
short part of his childhood in the Midwest but he was a Los Angelino really.
Simak on the other hand was a lifelong Midwesterner.
Simak was publishing SF when Asimov was a teenager. He went to high
school on a horse before his Wisconsin village had roads for cars. His
very far-out idea-driven SF has a unique feel because of how midwestern his
point of view was. His novel City is one of the most singular novels
about our species dying because the end was inspired by Simak’s loathing of
city life.
SWCTBH was written and released five decades into his SF
career, an amazing accomplishment for any writer. So one of the reasons
this book was ALREADY on my TBR was a desire for a picture of what Simak was
doing in 1967, a time when the New Wave dominated. Philip K. Dick wrote
Galactic Pot Healer that year, and Brunner was doing edits on Stand on
Zanzibar. Leguin was two years from releasing Left Hand of
Darkness, and Vonnegut was moving mainstream. Heinlein won the Hugo
for Moon is a Harsh Mistress beating a more deserving Babel-17 by
Delany (in my opinion) Exciting time in SF and mostly in the next
generation.
Three years after winning the Hugo award himself for the pastoral Way
Station Simak wrote a thought-provoking philosophical surrealist SF novel
Why Call Them Back From Heaven? It is not an action novel, it doesn’t
have the pulp strength of City, and for my money, this might be my
second favorite of Simak’s novels.
I read this novel because fellow Sci-fi historian Jochim Boaz
brought up this novel during a podcast we recorded about Simak, and I knew I
was going to bump it up my list of stuff to read. The Link to that episode is
here… You can hear the moment that I decided to read this book, and of course
get lots of Simak talk.
WCTBFH is about immortality, and more specifically economics and
capitalism. The details of how immortality reminds me of the current affordable
housing crisis in the U.S. Tons of people are having children but no one is
building housing for them.
The Forever Center in the context of the novel has not figured out
how immortality works, but it is close. This starts a race for people to put
themselves on ice, the problem is there are not enough resources to wake them
up. This presents the core conflict of the novel. Unlike the majority of his
novels, the future is not natural or pastoral. The society is urban and
overcrowded. Worse much like our society is a capitalist race towards acquiring
things. In this future, it is about amassing capital for your death/afterlife.
“A man had to live, this first life, as long as he was able, it
was the only opportunity that he had to lay away competence for his second
wife. And when every effort of the society in which he lived was bent towards
the end of the prolongation of his life, it would never do to let a piece of
carelessness or an exaggerated sense of economy (such as flinching at the cost
of a piece of padding or the reorganizing of a buffer) to rob him of the years
needed to talk away the capital he would need in the life to come.”
Much of the novel is built around the impacts of a world trying to adapt
to civilization, think about how hard we have to work for our short lives now
live thousands of years. Of course, the novel touches briefly on the resources
it would take.
“… it doesn't matter that it's a little swampy. The human race will need
every foot of land there is upon the earth. There will come a time perhaps,
when the earth will be just one big building and…”
“But there's space travel, too.” the woman said. “All those planets out
there…”
“Madam,” said the salesman, “let's be realistic for a moment they've been
out there 100 years or more and they have found no planets that a man could
live on…”
Simak doesn’t often idealize the space frontier, this trap even the
typically pessimistic PKD fell into in the fifties. But much like Kim Stanley
Robinson made the point recently in Aurora, Simak suggests that Earth is rare
in the ability to support human life, and the price or immorality may be a
crowded Earth.
The collection of wealth takes on a whole new meaning when life never
ends.
“No! No! Protested Gibbons. “Not apply for death they'd suspect something
if you did arrange your death. A very natural death. Give me ten thousand of
the loot and I'll get it done for you. That's the going rate. Very neat and
easy. And the investment, of course, couldn't be in forever center stock.
Something you could stash away a bunch of paintings, maybe.”
Another interesting part of this equation that Simak builds is the divide
that would develop between those who would engineer a death that preserved them
for immortality and those born to it.
“And now I understand, said the grizzled man, “that in just a few years a
man need not even go through the ritual of death to attain immortality. Once
Forever Center has this immortality business all written down and the methods
all worked out, a man will be made immortal out of hand. So just stay young and
go on living and there won't be any death once you get born, then you will live
forever.”
The writing itself is great, and playful at times. Chapter 9 is a single
sentence that doesn’t get paid off or explained until nearly the end. Chapter
23 is a beautiful meditation on the whole scope of the novel through the
eyes of an older woman in a rocking chair thinking about the next thousand.
“Would the lilacs smell as sweet, Mona Campbell wondered, when spring
came around a thousand years from now? Could one still catch the breath in
wonder at the sight of a meadow filled with daffodils a thousand years from
now. If it were a thousand years from now would any room remain on earth for
lilac or for daffodil?”
I mean the entire chapter is beautiful. I kind of wanted to post the
whole thing. I don’t think most Sci-fi critics or fans consider this top-tier
Simak, but I love this novel. This is a must-read for any fans of 20th-century
SF who want to read works from a more literary angle.
