The big front yard is one of the masterpieces of Clifford Simak, and probably his more good news. I do not reread the first time, more than 25 years ago, and I appeared aged at all. If anything, some of his passages take on a more complex and complete after a further quarter of a century, plenty of reading behind me and after another quarter of a century of history. It appears - inside - As a simplistic story the reader to post-cyberpunk age (it is a story of 1958), addicted to dancing bits in cyberspace, the virtual computer and the human conscience digitized, it is probably inevitable, but is led astray by an error 'immediate appearance of the countryside, of humanity passes for almost peasant is told in the pages of the novel, guided error of naive perspective at all absent.
The big front yard instead is definitely a story told with simplicity: simplicity acuminata which results from the elimination of layers of complexity with no benefit, the reduction of complexity to its primary operation.
Simak tells of a first contact with an alien species, and prepare to do his story as an architecture that shows all linearity and transparency, talking about daily life in rural America eisenhoweriana: small business, the village idiot, a social and human albeit with difficulty continued to keep the consumer away from the door. Appearance. Below, the story reveals a plot full of reflections on the human condition, nature, the reports that are structured relations power. Almost a hypertext, hypertext appears to us as the structure of the world which comes into contact with the hero Hiram Taine: a portal of worlds to worlds. It is said that science fiction of the past decades did not foresee, or could do so, the phenomenon of the internet, but with just a little 'imagination is not difficult to trace the fundamental structure of the network in the size of the openings in this short novel. Still, The big front yard testifies to the independence and unconventionality of his purposeful author: full decade of the '50s Simak wrote a story that stands out completely from the paranoid climate of the period, exemplified by the Body Snatchers by Jack Finney, developing platform relational opposite and totally devoid of content utopian, moralistic naivete of: rather solidly rooted in rationality. And it is not an angry young man who picks up early warning signs of protest in Berkeley is still to come: no, it was a staid middle-aged man who has plenty of pointing the fifties.
's so that is the way to start quietly, and lying flat with the characterization of the protagonist, his dog and the sparse human environment that surrounds them, for Simak which employs a time that seems excessive, but it is in full to set the mood and pace of the narrative to be taken in the psychological reading, the fold of the initial story, almost fairy-tale, which suggests a reminiscence of Grimm and the shoemaker's poor as it was on his desk every morning to work shoes confezionategli
the gnomes, the emphasis almost random but clearly the strength of the individual to the pervasiveness of the state - almost suddenly Heinlein! All this equipment, such as the traditional emphasis in character, attachment to a primary dimension of human life and feelings, Simak serves to hide, or rather to let emerge slowly, available to those who have eyes e pazienza per svelare il gioco, il suo interesse profondo e tutto centrato sulla relazionalità dei sentimenti umani. L'alieno, come il diverso, in Simak è lo straniero fuori della nostra porta. La relazione con lui implica la ricerca dei punti di contatto, ricerca programmaticamente complessa e laboriosa, e competitiva (il tortuoso modo di comunicare con gli alieni, attraverso un doppio filtro di traduttori esemplifica il fenomeno). Un percorso mai facile, ma sempre fruttuoso, a differenza della sua alternativa aggressiva. E nulla di ingenuo ha la figura dello scemo del villaggio, Beasly, che sembra mutuata da Sturgeon; Beasly, elemento cardine della catena di comunicazione con gli alieni è un memento del valore della diversità culturale e naturale; come un
memento della possibilità che ciascuno di noi si riveli poi il debole svantaggiato rispetto a un altro più forte.
La critica propaganda per solito la vulgata di un Simak cantore del buon tempo andato, del natio Wisconsin campagnolo elevato a paradigma culturale di un Paradiso perduto, di una civiltà primitiva, property, based on a kind of primacy of love and left unexamined feelings of good will to man. The big front yard shows a different reality: Simak theorist is aware of a universe based on relational
cooperation based on very specific objectives (the main character is a Hiram Homo Faber and a merchant are the activities of modern civilization), a solidarity that does not exclude the competition but not with a view to mitigate the loss of profits forces.
The novel has been variously titled in Italy: "The large backyard volume Bompiani in" Extraterrestrials "in which I have read and reread, but the first translation was under the title" The Hague great, then taken over frequently, also in the collections of the Hugo awards (it was in 1959). Finally, it has a translation as "The long backyard."
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