Story: 6 / 10
Characters: 7
Setting: 7
Prose: 7 ( )

Another good book by Simak. As usual his engaging and comfortable style make for good reading. This story is good but as always the aliens are unexpected. ( )

A flawed, dissappointing rehash of Ring Around The Sun (and a bit of Way Station). It has its moments, but for the most part it's a bit of a drag, a bit silly and rather sloppy. Not Simak's best. ( )

It's 1965, so there's a general sense of small town glorification and everymen are everywhere. This novel happens to be one of Simak's most firmly grounded in modern ('60's modern) society, and that's the expectations I had when I began reading.

And then we've got our WTH moment. How many impenetrable domes encapsulate small towns in SF, anyway? Stephen King did it twice, first in Tommyknockers and then in The Dome, but is there a direct line connection to this tale or how far back does the concept go? I was worried that I've already read this book before, albeit from later incarnations by later authors, but... I shouldn't have worried. Simak won't lead me astray and won't disappoint.

Suffice to say, it's full of lots of surprises and a wild alien invasion and discovery, time travel, alternate earths, action, betrayal, and a satisfactory end. The title may be referring to a bible passage, but I wouldn't take too much *stalk* in that. There are plenty of grassy knolls to stroll down, idea-wise, and enough new horticultural discoveries to confound any social scientist. Sense a theme? Yar, the aliens quite grow on you.

I give this novel full props for taking the SF in odd and cool ways, for staying grounded in '60's character tropes, and being immensely readable like all the rest of his novels. Its not the individual ideas, though, that make this great. It's the way he mixes the pot and grows the flowers. :) ( )

This SF novel from 1965 centers on one Bradshaw Carter, a down-on-his-luck small-town guy who finds himself in the middle of a series of strange events, including an impassable barrier around the town, calls for him on telephones that should not actually function as telephones, and a wealthy businessman giving him fifteen hundred dollars because mysterious voices told him to. All of which turns out to be courtesy of intelligent extra-dimensional alien flowers who either want to invade the Earth or to be humanity's friends. It's not at all clear which.

It's all pleasantly ridiculous, and although it's not played as humor, there's a sort of charmingly droll feeling to it all. And I was genuinely interested by the question of whether the alien flowers were friend or foe. It's a question that gets resolved at the end in an odd and rather abrupt fashion, admittedly, but I found enjoyable, anyway.

Simak was a very prolific writer, and his stuff ranged from the really good to the entirely forgettable. I feel like this is one that ought to be remembered more than it maybe is, because it's still fun. ( )