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A review by the_scribbling_man
Cosmic Engineers by Clifford D. Simak
2.0
This was Simak's first novel(la), and it painfully shows. There are paper thin characters, and there are superfluous names on a page... Cosmic Engineers has both. The writing also makes this feel like a first draft, and is littered with rookie grammar errors.
The plot is rushed, dull and only unpredictable when making unreasonable leaps in logic. It tries to come across as hard Sci fi, but really it's mostly nonsensical. Still, this is classic Simak in many respects; time travel, utopian ideals and benevolent aliens are all classic tropes of his present here. It can make for an enjoyable little space opera at times, but at the end of the day, it's just very average.
Maybe not technically the worst of Simak that I've read, but certainly the least interesting in terms of ideas, and probably the least entertaining.
The plot is rushed, dull and only unpredictable when making unreasonable leaps in logic. It tries to come across as hard Sci fi, but really it's mostly nonsensical. Still, this is classic Simak in many respects; time travel, utopian ideals and benevolent aliens are all classic tropes of his present here. It can make for an enjoyable little space opera at times, but at the end of the day, it's just very average.
Maybe not technically the worst of Simak that I've read, but certainly the least interesting in terms of ideas, and probably the least entertaining.