Clifford D. Simak: Enchanted Pilgrimage (1975)

Edition: Berkley, 1975
Review number: 906

Like The Goblin Reservation, Enchanted Pilgrimage puts together a large number of ideas in a light fantasy setting. Its plot is a traditional quest by a small group of travellers, who go into the Wasteland, home of magical creatures and a place from where humans are generally barred, to search out the Old Ones. They encounter several strange, and sometimes not completely clear even to the reader, individuals who are none of them quite what they have been led to expect.

All that Enchanted Pilgrimage demands of its readers is that they don't think too hard. Accepting it at its level, the novel is entertaining if not particularly original or memorable.

Clifford D. Simak: The Goblin Reservation (1968)

Edition: Berkley Medallion, 1977 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 891

Simak is best remembered today for serious science fiction like Way Station, but he wrote several more whimsical novels, of which this is one. It is still full of ideas, but these are presented to amuse rather than to make you think.

The invention of a mechanism for time travel has led to some surprising discoveries, not least that creatures such as goblins and trolls had at one time really existed. Peter Maxwell is an expert on them, but an interplanetary trip goes wrong and he is kidnapped by an alien race. Well treated, he is eventually returned to earth, only to find that he is believed dead; a second version of himself came back safe from his trip and then was killed in an accident.

The tone of the novel is something like Robert Heinlein's earlier stories, The Rolling Stones or the short story We Also Walk Dogs. It doesn't have quite the excitement of Heinlein's writing, and also doesn't quite match up to the standard of Simak at his best, but it is still enjoyable.