The Goblin Reservation
Ratings8
Average rating3.2
15
Ratings8
Average rating3.2
From science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak, an interstellar adventure of aliens, fairies, and time travel. Until the day he was murdered, Professor Peter Maxwell was a respected faculty member of the College of Supernatural Phenomena. Imagine his chagrin when he turns up at a Wisconsin matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he’s not only dead but unemployed. During an interstellar mission to investigate rumors of dragon activity, this alternate Maxwell was intercepted by a strange alien race that wanted him to carry knowledge of a remarkable technology back to Earth, and it seems someone does not want the information shared. Suddenly, it’s essential for Maxwell to find his own killer. He enlists the aid of Carol Hampton of the Time College, along with her pet saber-tooth tiger, a ghost with memory issues, and the intelligent Neanderthal Man recently rescued from a prehistoric cooking pot. But the search is pointing them toward the goblins, fairies, and assorted Little Folk living in reservations on campus, and into the dangerous heart of an interspecies blood feud that has been raging for millions of years. Ingeniously inventive and unabashedly tongue-in-cheek, this novel demonstrates multi-award-winning fantasy and science fiction favorite Clifford D. Simak operating at the imaginative peak of his considerable powers.
Reviews with the most likes.
I bought this book back in 1977, having already read it previously. But somehow I came to remember it later as a dud, so I haven't reread it for decades. Coming back to it eventually, I find it's not really a dud, it's quite readable and amiable, but it seems an oddly aimless story; the kind of story you might tell when you've been drinking multiple doses of strong liquor distilled by a Neanderthal, in company with a ghost and a friendly sabre-toothed tiger. In those circumstances, it would surely seem like a great story that needs to be told.Maybe Simak wrote it all down and sent it for publication before he sobered up.The typical Simak hero is lonely, alienated, more or less outcast from humanity. The hero of this story, Peter Maxwell, falls into this category in some ways, but only through temporary circumstance. For most of his life, he seems to have been friendly, sociable, and very much accepted by his fellows; and he still has friends, even in his temporary difficulties. This is a relatively mellow Simak story.It reminds me of Zelazny's [b:Doorways in the Sand 61998 Doorways in the Sand Roger Zelazny https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327915592l/61998.SY75.jpg 759315]: both books are pleasantly zany and involve a university, and aliens in quest of a mysterious artifact. I think Zelazny's book is better, but I wonder whether it might have been partly inspired by Simak's (published 8 years earlier).
