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Destiny Doll Clifford D Simak 9780425021033 Books

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Destiny Doll Clifford D Simak 9780425021033 Books

It stays in your mind. Somehow you don't remember the whole plot, but you keep a sense of mystery, of unexplained events, of strange places that stick in your mind. This novel plus City and Halfway House are the ones I could never forget. I'm grateful that they are again as accessible through Kindle books. I warmly recommend this book!!


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Destiny Doll Clifford D Simak 9780425021033 Books Reviews

Destiny Doll - Clifford D. Simak

Clifford D. Simak [1904-88] wrote 26 novels in his career all of which have been out of print for many years. My goal has been to first acquire all his novels - a challenge in it's self; read them naturally; and then post a few subjective comments here on for anyone who may care to know about the book and what a long time reader of science-fiction thought of it. With "Destiny Doll" I have read my 20th Simak novel. Just as an aside I note certain reoccurring themes and author ruminations in his books and sometimes share them in these amateur jottings. Some of his themes are quite profound but, we readers must not to loose sight of the fact that Mr. Simak was a writer, who understandably wanted to sell lots of books to as large an audience as possible so could not pontificated to any great extend without alienating or confusing some of his fan base. Nonetheless in "Destiny Doll" (1971) Simak veers into a story brimming with inscrutable characters, enigmatic events and lots of mysticism most of which is left up to the reader to decode. No wonder it was last printed in 1982 and there have only been a few editions. I loved the book but would be reluctant to push it on new readers.

Simak novels usually follow the formula of assembling a band of improbable characters, persuade them to proceed on a bizarre quest with uncertain goals and then relate how the whole muddle somehow gets itself resolved.

Our crew consist of a wealthy huntress married to her rifle that is her constant companion, a down and out space ship pilot who is possible the most cynical character ever to grace a science-fiction novel, a blind mystic that hears voices and a wimpy monk that leads the blind man. The huntress is convinced that the blind mystic can guide them to the mother-load of planetary fortune and will pay whatever required for the pilot to use the mystic as a kind of spiritual navigator. Our pilot, Mike Ross, tells them they are all crazy but for money he will do almost anything. We quickly shift to the strangest planet you could possible conceive of. A beam of some sort of guides the ship to a large, white, seamless spaceport. Our crew is greeted by several "hobbies" like in hobbyhorses that talk and rock back and forth. Seems something awful will happen very soon so gather up your gear, say the hobbies, and lets hightail it for the city. The city consists of massive white building apparently uninhabited by all appearances. With some reluctance the crew agrees. As they exit the spaceport a mechanism completely coats and seals the ship with what appears to be the same white material used to build the port and the city.

The crew gets railroaded to a desert like planet by a gnome they meet in the city. Ross befriends an alien, another victim of the gnome. The alien, we learn, is a mass of tentacles with eyestalks who talks passable space-lingo so communication is not a problem. He is a 3 in 1 being and has some mystical life restoring powers. A good companion to have says I.

A wheeled some-thing-or-other kicks them back to the City, the nasty gnome and the Hobbies. Well, I guess you could say it's now showdown time. An agreement of sorts is reached. The hobbies will carry the party to wherever the mystic points so it's off to who knows where. The trees, oh yes the trees. Outside the city are trees planted in a uniform arrangement. These are special trees, many miles high that shoot nasty seeds at any who venture too close. There are rodents-like creatures that gather the seeds into huge underground bins. The speculation is that the trees are intelligent and are listening for voices from outer space. The seeds are information packets that are stored for harvesting by the gardeners who are presumably the creators of the city but where are they?

Actually it is quite an interesting and entertaining story with pleanty of questions left unanswered. Simak in interviews has stated his great reluctance to write sequels and, in fact, he never did. This is one book where I wish he had.

Getting back to the trees. These are several other Simak novels where sentinel trees play a role in the story. In one book trees are the last stage in Earth's evolution of intelligent beings after man and dogs - see Highway To Eternity (1986) his last published novel.
I first found my wonderful Clifford D. Simak when I was a kid, perusing the adult Science Fiction section of my local library, back in the seventies. Mind BLOWN.
Even at that tender age, I immediately VOWED that when I became a mom, I could do my little lovies no greater service than raise them in the happy glow the the great Clifford D., and no greater happiness than Destiny Doll.
Destiny Doll has been the gift that keeps on giving- I had a little brother who didn't fancy reading (well, except for differential equations textbooks, for pleasure). I knew I had ONE chance to tempt him into reading; I chose Destiny Doll, read it to him every single night, until the climax, then suddenly became too busy to read the next nightly installment, until at last he picked up the book himself- and loved it.
Same thing later, my boyfriend that wasn't a reader, in his twenties- same result.
I finally had a son almost 20 years later, and was doubly happy in that it was SO much easier procuring a hardback, non-crumbling (paperback) copy of this epic tome. I read it to him, and the magic was a little gone, only because since the 1971 publication of this little gem, there had been wholesale looting of all Clifford D.'s imaginative inventions and flights of fancy. And in every appropriation, there had been degradation, like a xerox of a xerox of a xerox of, say, the Mona Lisa, where one didn't fully attend the beauty presented, because the inferior copy was leached of all the magic.
Yet through the decades, I have used this book as a reliable litmus test of a certain sensibility, and let's face it, COOLNESS, and a reliable portal to the delights of reading.
Dammit, I would have loved to meet the man, Clifford D., all adorable, gentle Midwestern in his spiffy suit and hornrimmed glasses- he epitomizes the 'sneak attack'- those whose imaginations are gentle fractal universes of pure imagination- no sensationalism, all substance, no cheap veneer.
If you enjoy him, don't miss anything by Philip K. Dick, Frek And The Elixir by Rudy Rucker, or any and all of Andrew Lang's Fairy Tale Colour books- all hard to find until recently- makes me wonder what else I could by missing.
He put together a fascinating and logical tale, but didn't write a proper ending. On page 221 of my paperpack copy (end page was 223) the hero and his surviving companions were about to be trampled by "monstrous beasts charging in", but at this point he just ends the story by means of a magical transport of all of them to an interstellar version of 1925 Wisconsin. In other words, Heaven. In 1971 Simak wouldn't have had a word processor for a word count, but perhaps he weighed the manuscript and said "enough!" This book is a very good one, but with just a little more work it could have been considerably better.
It stays in your mind. Somehow you don't remember the whole plot, but you keep a sense of mystery, of unexplained events, of strange places that stick in your mind. This novel plus City and Halfway House are the ones I could never forget. I'm grateful that they are again as accessible through books. I warmly recommend this book!!