The Big Front Yard discussion

I thought that I'd finish this book in a few days, but a busy schedule including traveling out of town has kept me from reading. I also confess that I've been very distracted with the return of Breaking Bad, my favorite television show. New episodes means re-watching old episodes and watching each new episode multiple times while waiting for the next episode.

But, back to Cosmic Engineers...

Things pick up fast in Chapter 2 with the discovery of Caroline. Everything falls into place a little too neatly with these two guys finding a brilliant thousand-year-old mind, who can receive broadcast thoughts, right before showing up on Pluto and being told about crazy alien messages. Even so, it's all fast and fun enough that little (and even big) implausibilities can be forgiven. The idea that the Engineers are the robot remains of a prior glorious civilization and the introduction of completely alien races with completely alien thought processes aren't quite enough to temper Simak's almost jingoistic Humanism. I don't know if it says more about me or about Simak that I can't quite swallow his optimism/humanism about the Human Race being Savior of the Universe.
Maybe things change from here on out. The Hellhounds have just appeared at the end of Chapter 9 and spaceships are exploding in space (I don't have the book in front of me now, but I thought the way Simak described this space battle was surprisingly beautiful).
I'm hoping to read before bed the next couple of nights and finish by this weekend.

I should add that my favorite part of the novel is that Herb, as a character, is there just to make wisecracks throughout. I chuckle each time he says something. I can't help it.

That brings up a point that I was going to mention. One of the hallmarks of older SF is a great story filled with poorly developed characters. Herb is a dopey foil to Gary's macho-misogynistic-spacecowboy-with-all-the- right-answers hero. The other male characters are all exaggerations. They don't "say", they "rumble", "snap", "growl". I get the feeling that Kingsley is going to turn into the Hulk at any minute. Perhaps it is jut my looking back from almost 80 years in the future. Caroline is the most believable character, but she doesn't even talk that much; coincidence, maybe. One thing that holds true in this book and in Simak's work in general, is that the best characters are robots. I'm probably being partial as my favorite SF are robot stories. Simak's robots all are such a good mix of logical machines and moody humans. If I seem overly critical it's because I know that Simak is capable of far greater in works that follow this one.

I love it when characters growl. You know who really gets short shrift here is the hotshot space pilot. I think his name is Evans, but I'm not even sure of that. He's only got a few lines of dialogue. He's there for most of the action, but he only exists as the dude who brought the spaceship. Necessary for that plot point, but otherwise completely unimportant.