Customer Reviews

All the Traps of Earth

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In the title story a 600 year old robot without a master escapes reprogramming by escaping Earth by clinging to the outside skin of a rocket and has to cope with new and dangerous psychic abilities where he's able to visualize machines and people as schematics and change them. The robot's name, Robert Daniel, may be a nod to Asimov's R. Daneel Olivaw, or vica versa, depending on when the respective stories were written.

Good Night Mr. James - a psychologist accidentally releases a dangerous and hungry life form and sends out a clone to reel it in, but finds himself in a game of wits with himself.

Drop Dead - a group of planetary explorers find a planet with no life but a type of grass and a single species - a shmoo like entity which obligingly will serve itself up for your meal. Yet there is more than truth to the saying that you are what you eat.

No Life of Their Own looks at luck, farming and a mixed community of aliens and earthlings along with a not quite working time machine as seen through the eyes of boyhood pranks and friendships.

The Sitters and Crying Jag both take place in the middle American town of Millville. In the former aliens brought home by a former ne'er do well make a living babysitting the town's children, however the children are growing up too quickly and the price may be too high. In the latter we are visited by an alien who gets drunk on the stories of human suffering. Confession may be good for the soul but custodian Sam may have bargained for more than he can handle.

Installment Plan is an interesting look at interstellar monopolies and capitalism. An expedition from Central Trading shows up too late to pick up a planet sized consignment of podhars, potato like vegetables with unique medicinal qualities, only to find a new competitor has got there first. However the interesting aspect of the story is the relationship between the human leader of the expedition and the team of robots that accompanies him.

Condition of Employment is the shortest story in the book, and least complex - it looks at the psychological factors that will drive man to the planets. Unlike the others its a one note story - OK but not as complex as the others.

In Project Mastadon a team of 3 men attempt to get rich by claiming North America by traveling 150,000 years into the past and demanding recognition as a country. However things get complicated when they find that they are trapped and need to be rescued.

All of the stories appeared individually in SF magazines between 1951 and '62. The writing is excellent and Simak tosses out concepts like rose petals at a wedding - a must read for fans of good SF.

Perhaps it would be best to start with a few observations about the version of this collection that I am reviewing. There are several books by Clifford D. Simak titled _All the Traps of Earth_ (1962). But not all of them are complete. Some might be more accurately titled "Stories From _All the Traps of Earth_". I am reviewing the original, complete version (the Doubleday hardback or the Avon paperback) consisting of nine (count 'em, 9) stories. The title story was originally published in _Fantasy and Science Fiction_ in 1960. The remaining eight tales all came from _Galaxy_ between 1951 and 1960. All of the stories range in quality from good to excellent.

I believe that it was Alfred Bester who first pointed out that one of the virtues of a Simak story is its _unpredictability_. Usually, it is hard to look at the beginning of a Simak story and accurately predict exactly how it will end. There are usually zigs and zags, twists and turns, and unexpected angles before the stories are all logically resolved. Mind you, the resolutions are solidly connected to the beginnings. But they are not _predictable_ from the beginning.

Let us look at the beginnings of several of the stories in this collection. In "All the Traps of Earth," a robot who is the last member of the aristocratic Barrington family is closing up the family accounts. Because he is legally "property," his memory will be erased and replaced by another robot personality. In "Good Night, Mr. James," a man named Henderson James wakes up on a hillside on Earth packing a gun and has a mission to fulfill that he cannot remember. What is it? In "The Sitters," a high school principal patiently listens as his coach bewails the loss of his star football players. It couldn't be really important... Could it? In "Project Mastodon," we see a man talking to the Secretary of State. The man claims to be a representative from the country of Mastodonia. And here is the opening to "Crying Jag" verbatim:

It was Saturday evening and I was working up a jag. I had my jug beside me, handy, and I was feeling good and fixing to feel better, when this alien and his robot came tramping up the driveway. (163)

Engaging openings every one. But I'll bet that even armed with the information that I have given you, you will not be able to see where Simak is going with these stories the first time that you read them. But sharp-eyed readers may have noticed my earlier qualifier of "usually". One story, "Condition of Employment," is shorter, much less elaborately plotted, and a touch more predictable. It's not a bad story-- simplicity is not always a vice in fiction-- but it doesn't have quite the dazzle of most of the other tales.

In case you haven't guessed by this time, I am a great lover of Simak's fiction. This is one of his best collections.

Wonderful stories, all nine. In Simak's typical fashion, they mix a sense of rural/suburban hominess with the alien and cosmically vast. Roughly half end on a happy or hopeful note, while the rest are blackly humorous or outright horror. Oddly enough, even these latter manage to retain the "homey" feel, something which few authors indeed could infuse into a dark short story (without making a mess of things, anyway). My favorite tale is "No Life of Their Own," about a boy on a Wisconsin farm, his alien neighbors and a race of wispy personality parasites that give good luck to one at the cost of bad luck for everyone else.

Magical collection of Saimak's short stories!!! Saimak is definitely is one of the best sci-fi writers of all-times, but unfortunately he is the most unappreciated one in my opinion. If you haven't read Saimak before - this collection is a wonderful way to get acquainted with his works - incredibly humane, compassionate, inventive and original. There is not a single one bad story in this collection, so it's definitely worth getting.