Waystation is a quiet, perhaps lost, gem of science fiction

Last year, I decided to try reading Clifford D. Simak for the first time since I was a teenager. I enjoyed City enough that I decided that I would keep reading Simak. I don’t plan on doing an exhaustive study of his work but I do want hit what has been decided are his highlights.

Waystation won the Hugo Award for best novel in the 1964. And, having now read it, yeah, I can see why.

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Waystation is about Enoch Wallace, an American Civil War veteran, who serves as operator for an intergalactic teleportation station. In this setting, you can only teleport so far so intergalactic civilization needs junction stations. The waystation is located in rural Wisconsin so it’s off the beaten path. Enoch doesn’t age when he’s in the station so a hundred years pass without much change.

Then everything changes.

Earth is on the verge of a nuclear war that will wipe everything out. Surprisingly sympathetic government agents have accidentally desecrated an alien tomb, starting an intergalactic incident which is fascinatingly openly admitted to being actually political. And we learned that intergalactic civilization is having serious issues as well.

Basically, not only is Enoch about to lose everything, everyone else is in pretty bad shape too.

What might be the biggest knock against Waystation, everything ends up working out. A powerful artifact that is required to help restore civilization(all of them) ends up in Enoch’s station and the mysterious local deaf-mute girl turns out to be the one who can use it. 

Having said that, all of that is methodically set up throughout the book. It’s not a Deux ex Mechina.  I am sure that the next generation of science fiction authors would have written the same idea a lot bleaker. But, even as it stands, Waystation is still ultimately a bittersweet work.

And that bittersweet element is why the book works. Enoch is a sympathetic and decent person, but he is also flawed. His experiences have left him apart from the rest of the human race. And, while things work out, so that, you know, civilizations don’t end, there is a cost to it, and he is part of that cost. 

Waystation is a thoughtful work. There is some fascinating elements of alien culture and technology. Teleportation leaves a dead husk behind, which Enoch has to dissolve in acid tanks below the house (Star Trek never showed us that) He has been given gifts of alien items that he never learns what they’re for.

And the book spends a lot of time on alien in philosophy. Quite frankly, it never really conveys it very well, but I do like that Enoch is convinced that thinking differently is going to be the real game changer, not advanced technology.

At times, Waystation can be meandering and slow. It might be a short book, but it takes its time getting to its point, letting ideas simmer. As a teenager, it would have confused me. However, it works for me now.