A Hugo award winner, this novel is classic sci-fi through and through and a fond callback to when sci-fi stories were less focused on immense world-shattering or convoluted epics and were instead more grounded while presenting various “what if’s”. While there is a plot involving the status and future of Way Station, an intergalactic stop/rest point similar in purpose to a bus transfer station, the bulk of the book is more abstract in nature. Rather than immediately delving into Enoch Wallace’s tale of an “immortal” Civil War veteran chosen as a caretaker for this Way Station, it presents various short stories of Enoch’s counters with both the extraterrestrial and (surprisingly more threatening) humans that encourage you to think about what it is that makes up the human existence and frame of mind. As an 120+ yr old veteran (returned my library copy, can’t recall exactly what yr this took place) who has had more interactions with intergalactic travelers vs humans, there’s a lot of interesting commentary layered with each story that cover topics from language, isolation, culture, bits of existential crisis, and the self-destructive nature of of human kind and war. Despite the topics, Simak’s writing style is still an…
