Customer Reviews

Destiny Doll

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4 star:		(3)
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When I first read this novel more than twenty years ago I just didn't get it. Frankly, I thought that my favorite science fiction author had written a clunker. Then, after rereading it after all these years, I finally got it. This is a spiritual allegory.

What threw me off the first time was the fact that, unique to any other Simak novel, the lead character is absolutely obnoxious. Captain Michael Ross is a completely arrogant, intolerant, and bigoted specimen. We get a hint of his ruthlessness and lack of conscience from his original profession- "planet finder." This means that he locates new worlds for profit and turns them over to developers to subdivide and exploit. That's where he makes his big mistake- he sells an already inhabited planet. This means he has to run and hide on earth to escape the people who are looking for him. Once on earth he is desperate to get into space again. So he becomes part of an expedition that he has absolutely no faith in- but the pay is good. He has total disrespect for every one else in the party (a woman big-game hunter, a blind mystic, and a monk.) He makes it clear that he considers them all to be freaks and defectives to varying degrees.

Then, the expedition begins to collapse under his leadership. He is slowly forced to interact with the people that he has held in such contempt. He finds that just because he doesn't understand the other members of the party, that doesn't mean that they do not have valuable God-given gifts. His own arrogance and certainty that his is the only correct way of seeing and doing things slowly erodes as the party makes it's way through the alien wilderness. Finally, sick and out of his head he has a vision that perhaps there is more to space and time than he ever dreamed of in his limited view of things. Finally, he is left to ponder alone as, one by one, the other members of the expedition find their own higher destinies....

Here we have once again a story based on Simak's sophisticated intuition that there are many universes and many sentient levels at certain space-time intervals. It is just that our sensitivity to these levels have to evolve before we can access them. In other words, the kingdom of heaven is all about us, but we just don't see....

Clifford Simak's books seem so frequently to be about choices-- how you choose to live, how you choose to find salvation. In this book, a planetary expedition looking for a lost hero finds instead a planet at the center of the universe which might be an endless trap or might provide the answers to all the questions that they could ever have. Simak provides his usual combination of off-beat characters-- an outlaw planet finder, a big game hunter, a blind man who hears voices, and an alien being named Hoot. This unlikely party must each find a different path to the secret of the planet.

This book blew my mind and left me speechless.

I am a huge Simak fan, and I snap up whatever is by him that I can find. I bought the only copy of this book that I have ever even seen.

This is an absorbing, evocative, and thought-provoking book, that, as is the status quo for Simak, full of extremely interesting characters. Also, it is short. Short + good = very good.

Have fun coming to terms with an extremely unsympathetic protagonist.

A blind man navigates an interplanetary journey for himself, a priest, a huntress, and a mercenary pilot based on the directions from the imaginary friend in his head. The pilot thinks the blind man is quite mad until a beacon leads guides them onto the planet the blind man has been searching for. The city they land in seems strangely empty. The buildings are all extremely tall and coated in a hard white substance. The trees of the city are even taller. They're soon greeted by robotic hobby horses that lure them away from their space ship just in time for an insect to cover their spaceship with the impenetrable white substance that seems to be on everything in the city.

As with most Simak novels, this one is filled with pastoral scenes and robots which co-exist beside humans. The story also features a dial-a-newly-formed-planet machine, a mile-high tree that throws deadly fruit, an alien with 3 selves, centaurs, a rhyming robot, weeping snails, a sad doll, and a paradise that isn't.

I can never resist a Simak book. This book was quite worn and was broken into at least 6 parts when I got it, but it still read the same. It was a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

"Destiny Doll" is a late classic by a grand master of sci-fi, Clifford Simak. Critical opinion is that his best work was done in the late fifties and early sixties but I find "Destiny Doll" (1972), a flawless mood piece. This is the work of a master who uses all that he knows about writing a story to create a work of art that is perfect from all aristotelian perspectives.
I call this novel a mood piece for it is not a tragedy or a comedy but it is a homeric journey to the centre of humanity's soul. The unity of tone and metaphor are impeccable as is the character development, rise and fall of action, climax and denoument. Not a word seems out of place in the 180 pages. I am amazed at how beautiful and moving this novel is.

There are times when mainline science fiction authors decide to saddle up a banth and go in pursuit of the farn beast and write a surrealistic novel that differs from their usual fare. Ward Moore did it with the much underrated _Transient_ (_Amazing_, 1960). Keith Laumer did it with the disappointing _Knight of Delusions_ (as "Night of Delusions," _Worlds of Tomorrow_, 1972_; 1982).

And then there is Clifford D. Simak with _Destiny Doll_ (1971). The story was first published as a novella in _Worlds of Fantasy_ in 1971 under the title "Reality Doll". It was accompanied by a reddish cover by Jack Gaughan showing a polo playing centaur knocking the brain case of a robot about. There is a scene in which our heroes encounter (and battle) the centaurs.

And there are other scenes throughout the novel as well: the first encounter with the hobbies (talking steeds much like rocking horses), the meeting with the amiable Hoot (a tentacled alien with unusual powers), the confrontation with the loathsome spiderlike monstrosity, the discovery of Roscoe the robot, the journey through the streets of the ancient white city, and the finding of the strange wooden doll with the tragic face.

About midway through the novel, the central characters confront a group of aliens who were living in a giant tree that the hero cut down with a laser. They are lamenting over the loss of their home and for their upcoming death:

[The message] wasn't that way, of course, not all of it flowing together, not a definitive statement, not a structured question. But in bits and pieces of the crying that hammered in on us that is what it meant, that is what those slimy, humping, bereft creatures meant to say to us... (99)

The plot of the novel at first blush seems rather like the original cries of the little tree creatures. When we have finished _Destiny Doll_ and set it aside, we will remember individual scenes. Some will strike us as imaginative and others as a little silly. Some (like the one with the tree creatures) strike an emotional chord. But we probably won't remember events in a particular sequence or order. In the same manner, many of us remember individual scenes in the Alice books. But how many of us can remember the exact order in which they appeared?

And yet, the novel doesn't quite have a dreamlike feel to it. That is because, first impressions to the contrary, there is a plot. Four humans set out on a quest in search of a long-vanished planetary explorer. They are led by the narrator, a bullying, bull-headed, cynical, and obnoxious spaceship captain (one of Simak's least likeable heroes). The others are are a starry-eyed female big game hunter, a self-pitying blind visionary (now _there's_ an oxymoron for you!), and a somewhat unctuous monk named Friar Tuck. They are joined by various others on a distant planet. But one by one, they find the spiritual reality that they desire-- and vanish. It is a kind of religious plot: the story of our search for heaven.

But if the basic plot is really on the rational side, there are nevertheless sections of prose or poetry that display touches of madness. Here is part of a robot's speech:

"The capon burns, the pig falls from the spit. The clock hath stricken twelve upon the bell; my mistress made in one upon my cheek. She is so hot because the meat is cold; the meat is cold because you came not home..." (177)

And here is a section from a journal:

No end to start, no end to come. Foreverness and more. Blue foreverness. Runners after nothingness. Nothingness in emptiness. Emptiness is bare. Talk is nothingness. Deeds are emptiness. (178)

Is _Destiny Doll_ purely surrealistic? Perhaps not. But it is eccentric. And if it is not a complete success, it is nevertheless an experiment that I am glad that Simak conducted.

Surprisingly good. A little slow at first, but it turned out to be one of the best of Simak's books that I've read. Highly recommended. Short length, but deep. Wish there were more books of this quality out there.

When I first read this novel more than twenty years ago I just didn't get it. Frankly, I thought that my favorite science fiction author had written a clunker. Then, after rereading it after all these years, I finally got it. This is a spiritual allegory.

What threw me off the first time was the fact that, unique to any other Simak novel, the lead character is absolutely obnoxious. Captain Michael Ross is a completely arrogant, intolerant, and bigoted specimen. We get a hint of his ruthlessness and lack of conscience from his original profession- "planet finder." This means that he locates new worlds for profit and turns them over to developers to subdivide and exploit. That's where he makes his big mistake- he sells an already inhabited planet. This means he has to run and hide on earth to escape the people who are looking for him. Once on earth he is desperate to get into space again. So he becomes part of an expedition that he has absolutely no faith in- but the pay is good. He has total disrespect for every one else in the party (a woman big-game hunter, a blind mystic, and a monk.) He makes it clear that he considers them all to be freaks and defectives to varying degrees.

Then, the expedition begins to collapse under his leadership. He is slowly forced to interact with the people that he has held in such contempt. He finds that just because he doesn't understand the other members of the party, that doesn't mean that they do not have valuable God-given gifts. His own arrogance and certainty that his is the only correct way of seeing and doing things slowly erodes as the party makes it's way through the alien wilderness. Finally, sick and out of his head he has a vision that perhaps there is more to space and time than he ever dreamed of in his limited view of things. Finally, he is left to ponder alone as, one by one, the other members of the expedition find their own higher destinies....

Here we have once again a story based on Simak's sophisticated intuition that there are many universes and many sentient levels at certain space-time intervals. It is just that our sensitivity to these levels have to evolve before we can access them. In other words, the kingdom of heaven is all about us, but we just don't see....