Time is the Simplest Thing

There’s a huge market out there for “golden age” science fiction from the ’50s and ’60s. One book that falls into this category is Clifford D. Simak’s Time is the Simplest Thing.

Simak’s tale probably falls into the category of soft science fiction or science-fantasy by today’s standards. That’s because it deals with telepathy.

The Story of “Time is the Simplest Thing”

Shep Blaine works for an organization called Fishhook which uses machines to catapult a person’s consciousness into the outer reaches of space to discover new knowledge and technologies that can better humanity while also extending the money and power hungry monopoly’s reign.

But Blaine’s life changes forever when he encounters an alien presence that melds its mind with his so that he’s not quite human nor quite alien, but rather a hybrid of the two. Heeding a warning from a former colleague that had a similar experience, Blaine fleas Fishook and goes on the lamb.

The action in this book is non-stop. The pace speeds away, never leaving one bored, and one can easily imagine a lot of the action on the silver screen (although, of course, certain aspects would have to be updated for the modern age since the book was written in the 1960s).

Blaine is an interesting character, since he flees for primarily selfish motives but ends up by the end of the book working toward bettering the place of non-Fishhook telepaths in the world, as they are the victims of irrational fear and prejudice.

Simak’s Novel as Allegory for Civil Rights Era

I can’t help but wonder if the entire book is on some level an allegory for the civil rights movement of African-Americans in the 1960s. It’s not a perfect allegory, but there’s enough parallels to make me think that perhaps Simak was trying to spread a message of tolerance to a world that desperately needed that message at the time.

I suppose it’s a message that we still need to this day. There’s intolerance all around, and while in the United States I think that prejudice certainly hasn’t reached the heights it had during the times of the civil rights movement, other parts of the world are just as bad. So this book can serve not only as an entertaining read, but as a beacon of hope to a world that still is not quite perfect when it comes to treating everyone humanely.