“Earth for Inspiration” is a comic science fiction story by Clifford Simak set millions of years into the future about a science fiction writer and his robot visiting a forgotten Earth. The pair go there hoping to find inspiration to write new science fiction stories. You can read it online in the April 1941 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.
I read “Earth for Inspiration” by Clifford D. Simak because I read When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is From the North: The Pastoral Science Fiction of Clifford D. Simak by Robert J. Ewald. I bought that book after I read and reviewed A Heritage of Stars by Simak which made me want to know more about Clifford D. Simak. I mentioned my interest in Simak on the Clifford Donald Simak Facebook group and the Ewald book was one of two books about Simak that was recommended. I forgot I already owned the second book, Clifford Donald Simak: An Affectionate Appreciation by Francis Lyall. I haven’t read that one yet because I leant it to my friend Mike who had recently read the twelve volumes of Simak’s short stories. Mike is who got me to read A Heritage of Stars in the first place. I guess that puts me into some kind of inspiration loop.
A Heritage of Stars involved a post-apocalyptic America with few humans and some robots. In that story, most robots had been destroyed except for their brain cases which were saved as trophies after a war with the robots. Unknown to the humans, the robots continued to be conscious inside their brain cases for a thousand years. That idea of a conscious mind without outside sensory data intrigued me. Then I read in the Ewald monograph about “Earth for Inspiration,” involved a dying Earth, robots, and isolated robot brain cases. I had to read it. The story is also included in Simak’s collection Earth for Inspiration and Other Stories: The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Volume Nine. Amazon now sells 14 volumes in the complete stories. Audible.com now offers ten of those volumes in audiobook editions.
Most of the famous science fiction short stories we remember from the 1940s were first published in Astounding Science Fiction. Thrilling Wonder Stories was aimed at younger, less educated science fiction fans, and we seldom see reprints from that pulp magazine. For the most part, its stories are less sophisticated with far more action. And that’s true for “Earth for Inspiration.” I thought it was a funny story, but somewhat simple and hyper paced. It has an old fashion voice because of all old-timey colloquialisms. Simak is known for his pastoral prose and midwest settings.
“Earth for Inspiration” was more fun than I expected to find in Thrilling Wonder. Usually, when we think about robots in science fiction, we think of Isaac Asimov, but I’m seeing how important robots were to Simak stories.
When I read it with my eyes, “Earth is Inspiration” felt like cliched pulp science fiction from the 1930s. However, when I listened to the story after buying the audiobook edition, I thought the writing was much better than my first impression, except for all the saidisms. (I think the worse was — “Look at that, will you!” he jubilated.) The second reading with my ears made me notice how many ideas Simak was using to develop the story. It’s a satire on writing science fiction, maybe even the first example of recursive science fiction.
However, “Earth for Inspirations” gives us a few clues about how Clifford D. Simak thought when comparing them to his other work. The more Simak I read, the more I spot common ideas, characters, and elements that he used and reused.
The Ewald monograph has a few pages of biographical information, almost just a list of dates. Most of the 155 pages describe Simak’s stories and novels. I was hoping to find a biography of Simak, something like William H. Patterson did for Heinlein, but such a book doesn’t exist as a far as I can tell for Simak. Second to that, I was hoping to find an analysis of the impact of Simak’s stories, like what Alexei and Cory Panshin did for Heinlein, Asimov, and van Vogt in The World Beyond the Hill. It’s not that either. When the Fires Burn High and the Wind is From the North, is a standalone journal, volume 73 of The Milford Series: Popular Writers of Today. The content is like Alva Rogers A Requiem for Astounding, which is a description of the stories in all the issues of Astounding Science Fiction in chronological order.
I thought it fascinating that Simak was thinking of robots in the same way in 1941 and 1977. He obviously had a fondness for the idea of robots and had developed an idea of what they would be like early in his career and stuck with it until he died. Robots were faithful servants who were also friends. Simak imagines them with bodies that can break down, but with nearly indestructible brain cases. I assume those brain cases have an internal power supply that could last for millions of years. A couple years ago I read a collection called The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov. I wonder if Simak has enough robot stories to warrant such a collection?
Reading Simak, we can assume he didn’t like cities or corporations and had a low opinion of mankind’s ability to survive in the long run. Although, “Earth for Inspiration” is set millions of years in the future after humans have colonized the galaxy, but long after we’ve used up Earth’s resources and abandoned it.
The first scene of “Earth for Inspiration” opens with a short tale about a robot named Philbert who became inert after his body rusted up. Eventually, his body rusted away and Philbert lived inside his braincase for millions of years. This reminds me of the Tin Woodsman of Oz.
The second scenes jumps to Jerome Duncan, a once successful science fiction writer who is again getting rejection slips after a successful career. Duncan lives millions of years from now. It’s amusing that Simak thinks science fiction will last that long.
Anyway, Duncan’s robot Jenkins suggests going to Earth to get inspiration for writing a new story. Jenkins is also the name of the robot in City, Simak’s most famous book, a fix-up-novel. Duncan is famous for writing Robots Triumphant. I won’t tell you what it was about because it becomes part of the story.
The next scene has Duncan and Jenkins arriving on Earth with a lot of camping equipment and meeting an old-timer, Hank Wallace, who has been waiting for new tourists for over a thousand years. He manages the Galactic Trainsport station, but no one informed him that the line had been shut down a thousand years earlier. Duncan and Jenkins had hired a private rocket. This points to another idea that Simak loved, that humans would eventually have very long lives. In this story, we last for ten thousand years. And his second most famous novel, Way Station, is about an old-timer who manages a transport station and who doesn’t age. By the way, the old-timer in that novel was named Enoch Wallace.
Should we assume that Simak had been thinking about writing his most famous novels for years?
I don’t think I should tell you any more of “Earth for Inspiration.” It’s a fun enough story so that I shouldn’t spoil it for you. I’ll just hint at a few more scenes. Earth in the far future is dry, and has lost most of its air. There’s a confrontation with humans living in primitive tribes in dry deep sea canyons where the air is thicker. That makes it a dying Earth story. There are slapstick scenes with a crazy robot and another confrontation with horde of runaway robots.
“Earth for Inspiration” has decent humor, although not sophisticated. It would make a great humorous episode for Love Death & Robots. The humor is slapstick Sheckley with a touch of Frederic Brown’s ironic weirdness. I’m not sure if Simak intended it to be entirely comic, although, he probably did, but I bet a lot of young readers in 1941 took it straight realistic action.
James Wallace Harris
