Customer Reviews

The Visitors

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The Visitors has many of the trusted Simak elements-- otherworldly intelligence, a focus on small characters and places, and a folksy kind of diction and tone. Unfortunately, it lacks the focus and clarity that makes books like Way Station and Project Pope such striking books to read.

Still, there are many interesting elements that make The Visitors worth the time to read. Despite the lack of unity, it contains some of Simak's most interesting observations about religion and economics.

If you have not read Simak before, begin with Way Station or Enchanted Pilgrimage. If you are a Simak fan, it is most certainly worth the time to read despite not being his best work.

Clifford Simak tends to write books with fascinating premises which aren't fully developed, leaving the reader to wish for more resolution to the story. Yet, they're such interesting ideas the books are worth reading anyway. I also find that I tend to like his characters, but upon a close re-read I realize he has barely bothered to flesh out the characters, but somehow he manages to make them come across with personality anyway. I think it shows real skill in minimalism in his writing.

This book is no exception to these generalities. Inscrutable black boxes arrive on earth and begin to eat... yet give amazing gifts to humans in return. However, the trustworthiness of these gifts is in question.

If you don't mind a novel that seems to just drift off instead of coming to a conclusion, Simak's books, including this one, are worth it.

I had read "City" and loved it. But, everytime I saw this book on the library shelf I passed it by- just thought it sounded stupid. Eventually I gave in and read it. It was good. I read it in one sitting. I liked the human characters and felt I had a good feel for them. I liked that the aliens were not "typical." I did not even mind the abrupt ending. I thought at first maybe there was a sequel, but no, you just get to guess the future of everything.

The Visitors starts off with a diatribe by a blatantly racist barber who also hates the environment. I'm sure there are people who share this guy's opinions, but it's painfully obvious that he's written as such an indefensible stereotype so that the readers won't feel too sorry when he tries to take a shot at the first alien visitor a few pages later and is promptly blasted into a smoldering corpse in retaliation. Most of the other characters in this book come off as a little more believable, though with many of them, particularly the politicians, they were so unremarkable and irrelevant to the plot that I didn't bother even learning their names.

In this day and age, it's kind of quaint how relatively slowly information about our first contact with an alien race is disseminated. The visitors themselves turn out to be reasonably benign, though they're so far removed from our ken that communication with them on almost any level seems like an impossible feat. They don't exactly seem interested in making friends, but nor have them come to deliberately harm us. They also bear an uncanny resemblance to the monoliths from 2001. I'm not sure Simak realized this when he described them, but it's hard not to notice when viewing the couple different examples of cover artwork I've seen for this book.

Simak does a decent enough job holding my interest, but the most intriguing section of the book occupies only the final 50 pages, which is somewhat frustrating, as it's not enough time to explore the ramifications that result from the visitors' attempts at repaying the human race for its hospitality in a manner that is charmingly offbeat, but also threatens to destroy the United States' economy. As one character briefly speculates, however, perhaps the visitors are unwittingly forcing humanity, or at least America, to reexamine its values. Certainly, the visitors are causing disaster in the short run, but in the end, they could potentially force us kicking and screaming towards a better way of life. Whatever the potential repercussions, Simak leaves it up the reader to imagine what might happen next.

A CLOSE ENCOUNTER OF THE MOST AMAZING KIND...

What looked like a big black box - perhaps fifty feet high, two hundred long - had settled squarly on Jerry Conklin's car. The townspeople of Lone Pine, Minnesota, were the first to see it - and one of them was the first and only human to shoot at it. He paid for his rashness with instant death. Within hours the public knew something strange had happened and was beginning to face the incredible possibility that the Earth harbored something from outer space. A machine? An intelligent being? There was no way to know. But Jerry Conklin knew. The Visitor had scooped him up, held him prisoner for several hours, then let him go. Jerry knew the Visitor was a living, intelligent creature!

This has got to be his worst novel. I gagged my way through it. I was mad at myself for not tossing it aside. I enjoyed some of his other novels, so I kept reading.