Mammoth Book of Extreme Science Fiction by Mike Ashley

Author:Mike Ashley [Ashley, Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthologies, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9780786717279
Google: imUGHQAACAAJ
Amazon: 0786717270
Goodreads: 381325
Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers
Published: 2006-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

THE CREATOR

Clifford D. Simak

The next story was written about twenty-five years after the previous one. Clifford Simak (1904–88) was one of the truly original practitioners of science fiction. He is probably best known for City (1952), which won him the International Fantasy Award in 1953. This study of the future of human civilization both on and beyond the Earth, though, was not typical of his later work. He created his own niche for depicting strange events in rural settings, such as farmers or small-town residents being visited by aliens or encountering other dimensions. One of his best stories, “The Big Front Yard” (1958), won him the Hugo Award in 1959 and he won it again for his novel Way Station in 1964. You can find a selection of his short works in Strangers in the Universe (1958) and All the Traps of Earth (1962) and currently the American publisher Darkside Press has started to repackage Simak’s Collected Stories under the editorial hand of Philip Stephensen-Payne starting with Eternity Lost (2005).

The following story, though, comes from much earlier in Simak’s career. In the early 1930s the science-fiction magazine was still a new creation and, like all youngsters, it had become a little uncontrollable, with much of its fiction degenerating into little more that wild-west adventures in space. Those who knew that science fiction was capable of much more than this despaired and almost gave up. One fan, William Crawford, decided to try his hand at publishing his own magazine, which became Marvel Tales. His idea was to publish stories of originality and brave ideas. Simak had written “The Creator” on spec, but knew that none of the professional magazines of the day would take it because the subject was so taboo. So its first appearance was in a little magazine with a circulation of only a few hundred. It’s only been reprinted a handful of times since but I think you’ll agree that for a story written over 70 years ago, it is still fairly extreme.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.