Book 4: Time is the Simplest Thing - Novel, 1961
To cut to the chase, I enjoyed this novel very much. I'll need to read a lot more Simak to know if it's one of his best, but from my reading so far I would suggest it may well be. In style, it is quite distinct from the two later novels I've read from the 1970's - those are lighter, stylistically. By contrast, Time is the Simplest Thing is a denser book, with much more descriptive prose. The writing is still smooth and clear but it does read as a longer more substantial book, though it is still relatively short by page count. One gets the impression that Simak was trying to write 'great SF' at this stage of career.
The title is perhaps a little disinenguous, as there is little time travel involved. Time travel does feature, but this is really a book about the evolution of the human race to a psychic stage of development. Simak is clearly interested in what he calls in this book psychokinetic or PK abilities. It was mentioned I think earlier in this thread that Campbell was nuts for 'psionics' and he encouraged many contributors to Astounding to write stories about psychic protagonists and the evolution of psychic powers. This is a good example of that influence, another famous example probably being the Mule in Asimov's Foundation stories. It's interesting to note that the only SF concept in this book is psychic power, because, in a sense, that's not very scientific! However, we have to remember that in the 1950's and 1960's there was a lot of interest in psychic phenomena and it was normal to write such stories in SF. This interest famously extended to other art forms around that time, of course, such as Miles Davis' 1965 LP recording, ESP.
Simak described how he approached novel writing in various interviews, suggesting that he planned the first half very tightly, then let the second half more or less evolve as it would. I think this can lead to books that start very strongly and go slightly off track toward the end. Cemetery World is one I'd put in this category. However, although the first half is slightly tighter in this novel than the second half, it concludes very satisfyingly indeed. Simak wraps his story up well, and the overall sense when I put the book down at the end, was "What a cracker!". Again, as I found with Shakespeare's Planet, I had my doubts as to how satisfyingly the book could possibly be concluded when I got to within 20 pages off the end. I need to start having a bit more faith in our Clifford though, as he managed just fine.
Next up, I am excited to start in on what may be Simak's finest novel (judging from various comments on this thread and others): Way Station, from 1963.
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