I never expected the Goblin Reservation to be a comedy

 Clifford D. Simak’s Goblin Reservation is a smorgasbord of fay creatures, ghosts, time travel, intergalactic travel, extraterrestrials and biomechanics. Oh and it’s also a slapstick comedy.

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Seriously, Goblin Reservation is a wild ride. Any one idea, including many of which are just off the cuff references, are what other authors have build entire books around.

Professor Peter Maxwell returns from an interstellar teleportation trip to find that he’s dead. But it’s not a time travel gag but duplication by transporter. And this alternate but still living Maxwell has to make a deal with an elder race of extraterrestrials for vast knowledge but the elder race left out all the details. Fortunately he has the help of Alley Oop the time displaced Neanderthal, a ghost named Ghost and time travel faculty member Carol with her biomechanical Sabre-Tooth Tiger Sylvester.

It’s a hoot.

Carol and Sylvester are clearly an homage to Bringing Up Baby, although Carol has more of the Cary Grant role since Oop, Ghost and even Maxwell are all wackier than she is. And, as I’ve already mentioned, there is plenty of slapstick. Bar fights, parties with silly hijinks and museums getting trashed. Why hasn’t there been a film adaptation?!

While the Goblin Reservation is a fairly short book, there are some major subplots, including one about William Shakespeare and another about a mysterious painter. I won’t say anymore because that would really be spoiling the game but either one would easily make for its own book. And we never see the subplots fully resolve themselves. We only see them when they intersect with Maxwell’s story.

Honestly, between the diverse fantastic elements and subplots, it would have been easy for The Goblin Reservation to be an utter mess. Instead, Simak somehow ties everything together to not only tell a coherent story but imply a much wider world than we get to see.

When I decided to actually try and read Simak, I wanted to read City, Way Station and the Goblin Reservation. I’m not saying those are his best works but they are considered notable. I felt if I read them, they’d make a good Simak primer. And they have left me planning on continuing to read his work.

And each one has been very different. I can’t say what the best one is but the Goblin Reservation is easily the most joyful.