Way Station
by Clifford D. Simak
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Book Summary Information
Author: Clifford D. SimakEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-11-30
ISBN: 1882968271
Number of pages: 225
Publisher: Old Earth Books
Book Reviews of Way Station
Book Review: A home at the end of the galaxy
Summary: 4 Stars
It's 1964, and Civil War veteran Enoch Wallace is a youthful 124 years old. His presence in the scarcely populated backwoods of Wisconsin perplexes his neighbors if they think about it much, but Wallace's Dorian Gray syndrome has become a fixture of their limited social landscape.
Instead of hiding a painting in the attic or making a pact with the devil, however, Wallace had been chosen, a century earlier, as the keeper of an intergalactic way station. His nineteenth-century home is now an impenetrable rest stop for extraterrestrial travelers of an untold number of alien species; inside, time's arrow slows to a halt. Although Earth is optimally located for this pit-stop, its human inhabitants are not ready--psychologically or sociologically--for membership in the Galactic confederation. And so the station, and Wallace's role in it, are kept secret--until a CIA agent turns up and starts nosing around.
As he does in his masterpiece, "City," Simak adopts a campfire storytelling style that is suited to the rural setting. Although there's still plenty of action (and violence, for that matter), his pastoral musings are a refreshing change from many of the rockets-and-robots stories of the period. Similarly, his sympathetic portrayal of Lucy Fisher, a neighbor girl who endures physical abuse from her father, is affecting and unexpected. (There's also a fascinating description of a virtual reality shooting gallery that is forty years ahead of its time.)
There are a few bizarrely off-key moments, though, such as when various earthlings encounter, with extraordinary equanimity, an alien being for the first time. And Simak does have a tendency to go a little overboard on his Cold War homilies (not to mention their grammatical gymnastics): "Somewhere, he thought, on the long backtrack of history, the human race has accepted an insanity for a principle and had persisted in it until today that insanity-turned-principle stood ready to wipe out, if not the race itself, at least all of those things, both material and immaterial, that had been fashioned as symbols of humanity through many hard-won centuries."
But "Way Station" compensates for these false notes and Sunday-school sermons with a riveting story, intriguing characters, and a somewhat sentimental ending that leaves nothing that might be mistaken for a loose end. At the close of this extraordinary adventure, Wallace realizes that the world as he knew it "would never be the same again" but that "he had work to do. Now he was ready for it."
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