Time Is The Simplest Thing by Clifford D. Simak (book review).
Back in 1962, Clifford Simak had this book, ‘Time Is The Simplest Thing’, with an intriguing premise. Unable to survive past the various radiation belts around the Earth, the few available telepaths explored the cosmos with their minds, assisted by a star machine made at Fishhook. Although the details of how their bodies are cared for while they do these trips are unknown, they are drawn back to Earth after 30 hours.
This time, it turned out too soon, as Shepherd Blaine makes first contact with an entity he calls Pinkness. The Fishhook unit he belongs to isn’t happy with Blaine’s rebellion, so they force him to flee from their leader, Kirby Rand, and he finds that time seems to slow down, but he is actually accelerated, allowing him to disable his pursuers in the building. Outside, his friend and reporter Harriet Quimby has a car, and they flee together.
Out in the real world, they sneak away from pursuit but encounter a village that doesn’t like ‘parries’ and wants to hang him. We also discover that psionics in this reality is called ‘paranormal kinetics’, covering all the main ESP talents. Harriet is free to go and flees, but Blaine is arrested by the sheriff but refuses to shoot. He gets away again and helps lorry driver Riley, who is using an outmoded engine trying to deliver his load for transport and who is afraid of being attacked at night. Blaine, without his wallet, depends on Riley for not only transport but also food. That would have gone well until they encountered witches/levitators, and Riley took a pot shot, wounding one of them. Fortunately, Blaine defuses the situation but consequently gets dumped.
Blaine does meet up again with Harriet and gets clued into what is going on and the discovery of an obsolete Fishhook star machine for interstellar telepathy about to be revealed to the public. Getting to stop that, Blaine is captured by his nemesis Kirby Rand.
Without revealing too many spoilers, the story becomes confusing regarding who is aligned with whom and how Blaine can protect himself on Earth, which is unfortunate. His connection with the Pinkness could have been explored and used more. Back in the day, SF authors had to keep their stories under 200 pages, and I get the feeling some of the subplots were removed to ensure that happened, and the ending isn’t as neat as it could be.
Like many American SF authors of the time, Simek would use old USA villages and such in his stories. One could assume that this choice was intended to create a stronger connection with the ideals of contemporary readers. What is unusual about Simek’s depiction is telepathic speech, including projected imagery. The closest I’ve seen to this is in John Wyndham’s ‘The Chrysalids’, which was totally that. As such, although telepathy isn’t used as much as it could have been, it does make this story worth a read to see how he does the imagery. I suspect, at the time, Simek didn’t want to push it too far.
GF Willmetts
January 2026
(pub: Pan, 1964, from Gollancz, 1962. 190-page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-413-36950-1. Other imprints are available).
