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The Loneliest Vigil: Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
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The Loneliest Vigil: Way Station by Clifford D. Simak
An isolated Civil War veteran guards a secret of interplanetary importance.
By Alan Brown
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Published on December 9, 2025
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In this bi-weekly series reviewing classic science fiction and fantasy books, Alan Brown looks at the front lines and frontiers of the field; books about soldiers and spacers, scientists and engineers, explorers and adventurers. Stories full of what Shakespeare used to refer to as “alarums and excursions”: battles, chases, clashes, and the stuff of excitement.
Science fiction usually focuses on technology or an exotic setting, but it is often at its best when it centers on character—as in a story that takes an ordinary person, puts them in an extraordinary situation, and follows what happens from there. That is exactly what Clifford Simak did when he wrote Way Station, the tale of a soldier who survives the U.S. Civil War and finds himself serving an alien civilization in a post that makes him nearly immortal. The result was a novel that wore its heart on its sleeve, and it is no surprise it won a Hugo Award in 1964, the year after it was published.
While I couldn’t find evidence that Way Station had been reviewed on Reactor before now, Simak’s work has been mentioned a number of times by James Davis Nicoll in his always entertaining columns, and it was reported in 2019 that Netflix was working on an adaptation of Way Station.
The copy I’m using for this review is a paperback edition published by Ballantine Books in 1980. It has a cover by artist H.R. Van Dongen, a frequent contributor to the science fiction magazines during the era when Simak was publishing his best work. Unfortunately, it appears an art editor cropped out the background and replaced it with solid black, which makes the cover copy stand out more, but detracts from the painting. I came across the book in my basement recently, and realized I had bought it years ago, really liked it, but then misplaced it before I could finish it. One of the nice things about physical books is that, in addition to the text, they are artifacts that can evoke memories in the reader. I remembered buying the book based on recommendations from readers of this column, who had mentioned Way Station in their comments on my review of Simak’s novel City. It contained a bookmark, a promotional item announcing new entries in Steve Miller and Sharon Lee’s Liaden series appearing in 2019. It also contained a space mission patch, from a fictional Project Starflight and URSS Alabama—a quick Google search told me the ship features in Allen Steele’s Coyote series. At that point, I remembered meeting Steele at a Boskone science fiction convention, and sure enough, found that in 2019 I had been on a panel with him. So, with a little help from the Internet, I discovered exactly when and how this book had come into my possession.
About the Author
Clifford D. Simak (1904-1988) was a career newspaper writer, spending most of his professional life at the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. His science fiction writing career lasted from the early 1930s until the 1980s. He was a favorite author in Astounding/Analog and Galaxy for decades. His writing was notable for its frequent celebration of rural Midwestern values and his wry sense of humor. I have reviewed Simak’s work once before in this column, looking at his classic book City, and you can find more biographical information in that review. Some other works by Simak can be found to read for free on Project Gutenberg.
Lonely and Wounded Protagonists
Way Station, and many other works by Simak, are often raised as an example of what some people call “pastoral science fiction,” a subgenre that generally involves ordinary people in rural settings encountering aliens or supernatural forces. You can find a discussion of pastoral stories here on the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, and an entry on pastoral science fiction here on Wikipedia. Other examples of pastoral science fiction include Zenna Henderson’s stories of the People, human-like telepathic aliens who have fled their homeworld to live on Earth (I’ve discussed a collection of those stories here). Some pastoral stories take place in a post-apocalyptic setting, like Leigh Brackett’s The Long Tomorrow. Some argue that the small Midwestern town setting of Ray Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine qualifies it as a pastoral story. A more recent example of pastoral tales are the delightful Monk and Robot books by Becky Chambers, stories of an unlikely friendship between a wild robot and a lonely human. I have noticed that these stories often have a wistful tone, as the pastoral setting is seen as being threatened by technology or progress, and the protagonists are often isolated, wounded in some way, and often searching for meaning.
Enoch Wallace of Way Station certainly qualifies as a lonely protagonist. He is isolated from humanity not only by personal losses, but by a peculiar profession, and you can feel the keenness of his pain as you read. This loneliness certainly resonated with me. As I said above, books can be a memento that reminds us of the past, and that Boskone convention where I bought Way Station was the only convention I ever attended alone. Previous conventions had always been an opportunity for the family to gather, and I found myself especially missing my late father, who introduced me to science fiction at an early age, and who had been my companion at nearly every other convention I attended. As I read along, I found memories of my own regrets mixing with those of Enoch Wallace.
Another aspect of Way Station that resonated with me is its depiction of what we now call post-traumatic stress. Enoch’s unit, the Iron Brigade, suffered horrendous casualties, among the highest of any brigade in the war, which left him emotionally scarred. This is one of the reasons he has chosen a life apart from other people, and why he has trouble with relationships. I have seen the effects of post-traumatic stress myself. My father fought in World War II from Normandy to Germany; in the Battle of the Bulge, his engineering unit was tasked with holding off a German panzer unit, and took such grievous losses they had to merge with another engineering unit to remain as a combat effective organization. He told many stories about his service, but any attempt to talk about combat generally ended with tears or silence.
Stories of loss, grief, pain, and hope resonate with everyone, as such emotions are part of the human condition. There is power in such tales, and they serve as modern versions of the fables and legends that helped our ancestors come to terms with the world around them.
Way Station
The book opens on a battlefield, in the aftermath of a fierce clash. Soldier Enoch Wallace is stunned, and his rifle is smashed in his hands, but he is alive. The viewpoint then switches to intelligence agent Claude Lewis, who in the present day of 1964, is describing an anomaly to a scientist. He has been watching that same man, Enoch Wallace, who appears to be about thirty years old, living a solitary life at his secluded family home near Millville, Wisconsin. As Enoch was born in 1840, this should be impossible. Enoch fought in the Civil War, where he served in the Iron Brigade, a unit that was on the front lines throughout the conflict. Enoch returned home to find that both his mother and sweetheart had died during the conflict, and his father was killed in a farming accident soon thereafter. He has a garden for subsistence, subscribes to a number of periodicals, and earns money by occasionally selling precious stones garnered from some unknown source. Enoch lives a secluded and self-sufficient life, and is thought strange but ignored by neighbors inclined to mind their own business. Lewis is intrigued, but wants to solve the mystery of Enoch’s existence without scaring him into fleeing.
In the next chapter, Lewis decides to check out Enoch’s house while the man is off on his daily walk through the woods with his hunting rifle, a hike which ends with picking up his mail. There is a shed beside the house, which when opened, proves to be a small but well-equipped dwelling place (although with no trace of the reading material that Enoch receives regularly in the mail). And while the house itself looks normal from a distance, it is coated with some sort of impenetrable substance, its windows are black and opaque, and the doors are locked. Lewis finds three graves near the house, one for Enoch’s father, another for his mother, and the third with inscriptions in some alien language.
We then finally see a scene from Enoch’s viewpoint, inside the house no one else can enter. He is receiving a message about an incoming traveler, who will require special environmental protections upon arrival. It turns out that Enoch is a station master for a node in a galactic teleportation system, where travelers from other worlds located around other stars pause on their way to their ultimate destinations. He is employed by an alien he calls Ulysses, who he sees infrequently, a personable fellow who loves coffee. Enoch knows he is being watched by someone, and is not sure what he should do about it.
The book then begins to alternate between flashbacks and scenes set in the present. We see how Enoch first meets Ulysses (whose real name is unpronounceable, so Enoch names him after the famous general). Ulysses is searching for a human who is intelligent, open minded, and willing to live a solitary existence, and the traumatized Enoch is the perfect candidate. His home is transformed into the way station, and equipped with two teleport pads, communications equipment, and gear that can handle aliens from a variety of environments. We meet Lucy Fisher; the daughter of a disreputable family whose property abuts Enoch’s farm. Lucy is friendly to Enoch, and they often meet on walks, but she is deaf and mute, which limits their communication. She also has strange powers, and once he catches her healing the wing of a butterfly. We also meet Winslowe Grant, the mailman, who is Enoch’s closest friend. He is a wood carver, and alien travelers sometimes leave exotic hardwoods with Enoch, which he shares with Winslowe. We see Enoch interacting with travelers, some friendly, some not, and some of whom leave him with gifts. Enoch has used alien technology to interpret data he gathers from newspapers, and has discovered the Earth is almost certainly headed for a cataclysmic war. We also meet two companions Enoch has created for himself using alien technology, a Civil War officer and a beautiful woman, artificial intelligences he can see and talk to, but not touch. But he has done too good a job creating them: they have become self-aware, and the idea of being enslaved to his wishes is too much for them to bear. So Enoch allows them to shut themselves down, further increasing his loneliness.
There is a lot of background Simak must set up, but he does a beautiful job of it. His prose is simple, but elegant, and his descriptions evocative. The unraveling of the mystery of Enoch’s existence keeps the reader engaged, and even quiet moments in the book are full of energy. As the story develops, we find ourselves caring deeply not only about Enoch, but the characters around him.
A visit from Ulysses brings a crisis. That third grave outside Enoch’s house contained the body of an alien traveler who died during his journey. Someone has stolen the body, and his race knows what has happened, and wants it back. Ulysses also tells Enoch of an additional crisis. The tensions on Earth have parallels in the larger civilizations of the galaxy. An artifact they created to generate harmony, the Talisman, has been stolen, and without it, tensions are rising. Enoch’s lonely but stable life could be destroyed not only by war on Earth, but by conflict among the stars.
He then finds Lucy Fisher on his doorstep, pursued by her family, with whip marks on her back. Enoch hides her in his house, and she is remarkably calm despite its unusual contents. Enoch meets her father and brother on his porch, and they tell him she stopped them from training a hunting dog by teaching it to kill, first by using her mind to temporarily paralyze the dog, and then paralyzing her brother and blinding her father. They try to enter the house, but cannot, even after hitting the doors and windows with an axe. After they leave, Enoch finds that Lucy has been entertaining herself with the devices travelers have left behind as gifts, activating features that he didn’t know existed. Enoch, knowing who took the alien body from its grave, goes out to confront the man who has been watching him, Lewis, and demands the return of the body.
Lewis, who now knows the body is alien, also knows there are forces at work he does not understand, and immediately agrees to comply. Enoch returns Lucy to her home, but while her father and brother promise not to hurt her again, the damage has been done. Her father goes to a local bar and raises a mob, determined to destroy this strange man who haunts their neighborhood and interferes with his life.
And just when it appears things couldn’t get any bleaker, Simak lets a chance for hope enter the narrative. At first, I thought this was one of those coincidences that was going to shatter my suspension of disbelief. But then I realized powerful alien forces were at work that I didn’t understand, and what I saw as fate might instead be the universe working to heal itself. Before the book is over, Enoch must take up his rifle and become a soldier again, this time with not only the fate of the Earth at stake, but the fate of galactic civilizations as well. And after a rousing conclusion, the book ended in a way that, while bittersweet, was utterly satisfying to me.
Final Thoughts
I am glad I finally rediscovered my copy of Way Station and was able to finish it. I have always liked Simak’s work, and this novel turns out to be one of his best, well deserving of its Hugo Award. It is a story that has withstood the test of time, and I would recommend it to any science fiction fan without reservation. The setting is fascinating, but the characters are what really touch the reader’s heart.
And now I’d like to hear from you, especially if you have read Way Station, or the other tales from Simak. And I’d like to hear what other books with pastoral settings or lonely protagonists you would recommend.[end-mark]
The post The Loneliest Vigil: <i>Way Station</i> by Clifford D. Simak appeared first on Reactor.
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