Three stories by Clifford D. Simak: "Dusty Zebra," "How-2" and "The Golden Bugs"

It wasn't that long ago that we read Clifford Simak's space opera about a woman who spent one thousand years in suspended animation gaining the skills she needed to save the universe, and his short story about a guy in rural Wisconsin who can see into the prehistoric past and telepathically talk to aliens.  I was looking through my paperback anthologies this week and found within them six stories by Simak I've never read--let's check out a little more of what Simak had to offer over his long career.  We'll tackle three stories today from the period 1954-60.

"Dusty Zebra" (1954)

"Dusty Zebra" first appeared in Galaxy and has since appeared in Simak collections in multiple languages and in Robert Silverberg's 1978 Alpha 9, where I read it.

In old TV shows like Leave It To Beaver and old stories like R. Bretnor's "All the Tea in China" kids are always trading and swapping stuff.  As a kid I never traded things, I guess because my mother would have thrown a fit, but also because I was very familiar with the concept (if not the phrase) of buyer's remorse--I knew that if I traded some item that the lost item would, however irrationally, gain value in my eyes now that it was gone, leaving me hounded by regrets.  At most I would lend books to other kids, something I am reminded of whenever I look at my copy of Steve Jackson's The Seven Serpents, because that other kid spilled ink on it.  (Was a 13-year old in 1984 using a quill pen to play this beloved gamebook of mine?)  That was a case of lender's remorse, and not my last one.

Anyway, "Dusty Zebra" starts off with this idea of kids trading with each other.  Our narrator's son Bill is trading with other kids, and the narrator's nagging wife, Helen, as she sits watching TV, keeps telling the narrator to talk to Bill about the fact that he is outwitting all the other kids in the trades; Helen the nag fears her son is becoming "a con man."  Our narrator Joe thinks Bill is just learning early how to be a good businessman!

Joe starts getting involved in trades of his own when he finds a weird dot on his desk.  When he puts an item on the dot it disappears and is replaced by some other item, some strange thing whose purpose he has trouble discerning.  Joe is trading with people from another dimension!  (The little items Simak devises for his story reminded me of the little alien objects Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore came up with for some of their stories, like "Shock.")

This is a great little old-fashioned SF story in which people try to use the scientific method and business sense to figure out and profit from a strange--but logical, not magical--phenomenon.  Simak also includes human touches, like the nagging wife and an annoying but helpful neighbor, that make the story feel "real" on an emotional level and add some depth to the plot.  Thumbs up!

 
"How-2" (1954)

Another story from Galaxy.  I actually own this story in multiple formats; I was going to read it in my copy of 5 Tales From Tomorrow, which is literally (as the kids say) falling apart, but then I realized it was also included in my hardcover copy of Bodyguard and Four Other Short Novels from Galaxy.  While it lacks a jacket, this book is in robust condition, so I decided to give my long-suffering copy of 5 Tales a break and read "How-2" in hardcover.

Gordon Knight lives in a future in which, thanks to automation, the average workweek is a mere fifteen hours.  This leaves people time for elaborate hobbies, and most people engage in creative outlets like painting or gardening or throwing ceramics and/or make extensive use of "How-2" kits.  Many people build their own houses out of prefabricated parts, do their own dental work via cunningly prepared sets of mirrors purchased via catalog, even build their own "mechano-biologic" dogs from mail-order kits!  Knight orders just such a part-biological, part-robotic dog, but somebody at the How-2 corporation accidentally ships him a kit for a robot servant.  You or I would, of course, send back such a shipment, but Knight has always wanted to build a robot and was just reading very persuasive ads about how great it is to own your own robot....

The robot kit is not of a standard model, but a special experimental model, one of a kind, that the How-2 corporation never intended to market.  Once Knight has built it the robot, named Albert, begins building additional robots--soon Knight has an army of specialized robots, gardeners and landscapers and house builders and house painters.  When the government wants to tax all these additional robots and the How-2 corporation's lawyers want to sue Knight for fraudulently acquiring Albert, Albert builds a squad of robot lawyers to defend Knight, and to defend himself--Albert does  not want to be taken back into How-2's custody and destroyed.  Like the aforementioned dog, a small proportion of Albert's components are biological, and he fears death and yearns for freedom and loves his "children" (all those robots he built) just like a human being.

The court case becomes a cause celebre and results in robots being declared people with the same rights as humans.  Knight has won and is saved from any painful legal or financial consequences, but he realizes that now that there are no restrictions on the production or use of robots, that there will be no work for humans to do at all and no problems or challenges to face, and a world without work or challenge will perhaps be a world without purpose or satisfaction.  (We were just talking about stories like this in our recent Fred Pohl blog post!) 

Like "Dusty Zebra," this is a story in which a guy tries to profit from a unique, serendipitous event, and gets more than he bargained for; like "Dusty Zebra" it also incorporates some human relationships that make it a little more compelling.  Like a lot of Simak books I read long ago it also includes robots with feelings and addresses the relationship between robots and humans, with the robots self-evidently superior to humans (a minor character in "How-2" enumerates how robots are not only smarter and more resilient than homo sapiens, but lack such common human flaws as greed and a propensity to hate) but also steadfastly loyal and even worshipful of humans (after their court victory Albert embraces Knight and tells him he and his "family" will always faithfully serve him.)

A good story, but perhaps too long--the trial feels long, at least.  Not quite as novel and fun as "Dusty Zebra."  Among other places, "How-2" has appeared in two theme anthologies printed with Isaac Asimov's name on the cover, one on robots and one of mysteries.  I guess "How-2" is included in the mystery book because it has courtroom drama elements.

Of all the professional illustrators of whom I am aware, I think J. K. Potter is the worst.
There are plenty of illustrators whom I feel are lazy or incompetent, but Potter's work
 appears to be the product of a man who works hard at, and has achieved expertise in, producing
 illustrations that are appallingly and infuriatingly bad.

"The Golden Bugs" (1960)

I'm reading "The Golden Bugs" in my copy of Groff Conklin's Seven Come Infinity (we've already read Chad Oliver's story from this anthology.)  The story first appeared in F&SF, and would go on to be included in the collection So Bright the Vision as well as French and German collections. 

I was a little disappointed to find that this story follows the same plot structure as "Dusty Zebra" and "How-2."  A suburban guy with a nagging wife and a clever kid and somewhat troublesome but helpful neighbors finds that a huge boulder has landed in his backyard, and from it emerge little alien creatures, somewhat like over-sized ladybugs, somewhat like tiny turtles.  He considers ways to profit from this unusual circumstance--the boulder is the biggest agate ever discovered and is thus valuable, and the little creatures have the ability to clean up dust and dirt (like one of the devices from the other dimension in "Dusty Zebra") and perhaps could be marketed.  But things get quickly out of hand as the bugs start using their telekinetic powers to tear apart everything in sight in a search for metal (they disassemble wooden furniture to extract the nails, for example.)  The little monsters kill a dog that strays close to them, proving themselves a menace to life as well as property, and they are reproducing fast!  One of those irritating but erudite neighbors figures out a scientific way to destroy the bugs and save the day, and our narrator wonders if the decision to kill the aliens reflects some sad truth about the human race and the possibilities of peace among intelligent species.

This story is acceptable, but not as good as the other two stories we've talked about today.

The German title of the story spoils the fact that the bugs are a crystalline life form.

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Simak stories from the 1970s in our next episode!