Destiny Doll

Surprisingly good. A little slow at first, but it turned out to be one of the best of Simak's books that I've read. Highly recommended. Short length, but deep. Wish there were more books of this quality out there.

"Destiny Doll" is a late classic by a grand master of sci-fi, Clifford Simak. Critical opinion is that his best work was done in the late fifties and early sixties but I find "Destiny Doll" (1972), a flawless mood piece. This is the work of a master who uses all that he knows about writing a story to create a work of art that is perfect from all aristotelian perspectives. I call this novel a mood piece for it is not a tragedy or a comedy but it is a homeric journey to the centre of humanity's soul. The unity of tone and metaphor are impeccable as is the character development, rise and fall of action, climax and denoument. Not a word seems out of place in the 180 pages. I am amazed at how beautiful and moving this novel is.

This book blew my mind and left me speechless.I am a huge Simak fan, and I snap up whatever is by him that I can find. I bought the only copy of this book that I have ever even seen.This is an absorbing, evocative, and thought-provoking book, that, as is the status quo for Simak, full of extremely interesting characters. Also, it is short. Short + good = very good.Have fun coming to terms with an extremely unsympathetic protagonist.

When I first read this novel more than twenty years ago I just didn't get it. Frankly, I thought that my favorite science fiction author had written a clunker. Then, after rereading it after all these years, I finally got it. This is a spiritual allegory.What threw me off the first time was the fact that, unique to any other Simak novel, the lead character is absolutely obnoxious. Captain Michael Ross is a completely arrogant, intolerant, and bigoted specimen. We get a hint of his ruthlessness and lack of conscience from his original profession- "planet finder." This means that he locates new worlds for profit and turns them over to developers to subdivide and exploit. That's where he makes his big mistake- he sells an already inhabited planet. This means he has to run and hide on earth to escape the people who are looking for him. Once on earth he is desperate to get into space again. So he becomes part of an expedition that he has absolutely no faith in- but the pay is good. He has total disrespect for every one else in the party (a woman big-game hunter, a blind mystic, and a monk.) He makes it clear that he considers them all to be freaks and defectives to varying degrees.Then, the expedition begins to collapse under his leadership. He is slowly forced to interact with the people that he has held in such contempt. He finds that just because he doesn't understand the other members of the party, that doesn't mean that they do not have valuable God-given gifts. His own arrogance and certainty that his is the only correct way of seeing and doing things slowly erodes as the party makes it's way through the alien wilderness. Finally, sick and out of his head he has a vision that perhaps there is more to space and time than he ever dreamed of in his limited view of things. Finally, he is left to ponder alone as, one by one, the other members of the expedition find their own higher destinies....Here we have once again a story based on Simak's sophisticated intuition that there are many universes and many sentient levels at certain space-time intervals. It is just that our sensitivity to these levels have to evolve before we can access them. In other words, the kingdom of heaven is all about us, but we just don't see....