Why Call Them Back From Heaven? by Clifford Simak (book review)
There are some titles that deserve to have stories that are worthy of the title. I’ve done it myself with ‘Nanny State’ for SFC, giving something you wouldn’t expect but upped the ante to make it ‘worthy’.
Back in 1967, Clifford Simak did this with ‘Why Call Them Back From Heaven?’ It’s the slogan painted on walls throughout the city showing the nature of this reality. The biggest building is the Forever Center. Created in 1964, it has the means to put people into hibernation to revived later for a second life when extended life could be guaranteed. Considering when Simek wrote the book and released in 1967, it was a hot topic back then.
In the year, 2148, if medic Franklin Chapman, didn’t arrive at an accident in time to save a victim could and was forbidden a second life himself as punishment. This meant he couldn’t go into hibernation until medications for extended life was available, effectively having only one life. His lawyer, Ann Harrison, tries to get his off on a technicality, being on trial to a robot, and fails. This opening chapter meant Simak was developing the reality for you, the reader, to build up as you read. He sucks you in to a world of inequality if you get a criminal conviction and how extreme this reality got.
When you compare this to his other works, Simak is doing a massive world-building here. He throws this reality up in the air when this apparent utopia is thrown when Daniel Frost, one of the bosses of the Forever Center, is quickly convicted of coercion and chucked out on the streets totally ostracised, face tattoos to identify him with only the clothing he was wearing and that was for modesty’s sake. No second life for him neither. Without going too spoiler there is a conspiracy going on behind the scenes and Frost’s boss, Marcus Appleton, is after a secret document and doesn’t care whom he discredits or kills to get it.
Simak packs a lot of story into 190 pages and part of me wonders why no one has thought to adapt it into a film because it has all the right elements. People in peril and a conspiracy while trying to give mankind prolonged life with various research. The characters are nicely developed and Simak gives them all a kicking along the way. Lessons to learn how to have a fascinating backdrop but depend on a different problem associated with it.
GF Willmetts
August 2025
(pub: Methuen, 1967. 191 page paperback. Price: varies. ISBN: 0-413-55600-X)
