THE MARATHON PHOTOGRAPH AND OTHER STORIES (1986) by Clifford D. Simak

This time out, we have a single author collection of short fiction by one of my favourite authors, Clifford D. Simak, in which all of the stories have an underlying thematic link dealing with the mysterious paradox of time.

It\’s quite a short collection, at only 171 pages, and only four stories (making it a relatively quick and easy read compared to most of the modern brick-sized entities masquerading as books). But one of those stories is a long novella, and there are also two novelettes and a single short story making up the rest of the book. And what stories they are.

TITLE: THE MARATHON PHOTOGRAPH AND OTHER STORIES
AUTHOR: Clifford D. Simak
EDITOR: Francis Lyall
CATEGORY: Short Fiction
SUB-CATEGORY: Single Author Collection
FORMAT: Hardback, 171 pages
PUBLISHER: Severn House (SH), London, 1986
ISBN: 0 7278 1221 1

• The Introduction
• \”The Birch Clump Cylinder\” (from Stellar #1, edited by Judy-Lynn del Rey, Ballantine, 1974)
• \”The Whistling Well\” (from Dark Forces), edited by Kirby McCauley, Viking, 1980
• \”The Marathon Photograph\” (from Threads of Time), edited by Robert Silverberg, Nelson, 1974
• \”The Grotto Of The Dancing Deer\” (from Analog, April 1980)

The stories are all quite long. Even the shortest, \”The Grotto of the Dancing Deer\”, comes in at just over twenty-one pages. This story is a good one, first published in Analog back in April 1980, and winning the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for that year. It\’s a lovely story, and one which I recall enjoying a lot when I first read it twenty or so years ago.

\”The Marathon Photograph\” at seventy pages, is the longest story in the collection. I read this one many years ago on its original publication in Threads of Time, edited by Robert Silverberg (1974). I loved it then, and still do. It\’s my favourite of the four stories in this collection.

The other stories in the collection, \”The Birch Clump Cylinder\” and \”The Whistling Well\”, are two that I haven\’t read before. From what I\’ve read of both stories so far, I\’m quite sure that I\’ll enjoy them just as must as I did the other two.

Simak had his first SF story published in Astounding way back in 1931 (\”World of the Red Sun\”), and most of my favourite Simak short fiction came from much earlier in his career – \”The World of the Red Sun\” (1931), \”Sunspot Purge\” (1940), \”Beachhead\” aka \”You\’ll Never Go Home Again\” (1951), \”The Trouble with Ants\” (1951), \”Small Deer\” (1965), and a few others – and I haven\’t read a lot of his later stuff. By contrast, the stories in this collection are all from quite late in Simak\’s career (he died in 1988, at the age of 83), the earliest two being written when he was almost 70, and the other two during his mid-70\’s.

It\’ll be interesting to compare and contrast with his earlier material. \”The Marathon Photograph\” already rates as one of my favourite Simak tales, if not my overall favourite.

Definitely a nice little collection, from a pretty much forgotten (except by the oldies) and greatly underappreciated author.