Just Finished Reading Empire by Clifford Simak

Clifford D. Simak (1904-88) was primarily a short story science fiction and western writer for about twenty years before he began to tackle the longer novel form...Empire was his third published novel, from 1951.  The story's premise is simple and understandable enough...that is, until the author gets bogged down with his presentation of the "science" behind the outlandish discoveries dictating its resolution.  Humanity is sometime off in the not-too-distant future and has settled several planets and moons in our solar system.  But the kind of explosive progress in space exploration and settlement that could happen is being stymied by one company's monopoly on energy throughout the system. Two pipe-smoking scientists, however, are working on a discovery that promises to revolutionize the extraction of energy and shift the rules of the game away from the monopolist and put them into the hands of the people.  Spoiler warning: I'm now going to discuss the novel's ending, so if you're planning to read it you might want to stop here. Empire's characters were okay but the way the two hero scientists manipulate time and distance to defeat their monopolistic foe reminded me of TV shows like Bewitched in which ordinary people are made to look like fools whenever Samantha decides to twitch her little nose.  The ending made little sense to me...the way was made open for folks to freely settle the planets and other star systems and establish their mines: for what?  For with their "two fields" theory, the scientists can instantaneously provide essentially free energy, instantaneously see and hear anywhere (in the universe), instantaneously go anywhere (in the universe), and travel in time.  And they're going to make these gifts available to everybody: sounds like a nightmare scenario to me instead of a happy ending.  I like Clifford Simak's writing, with The Big Front Yard and City ranking high among my favorite science fiction short stories and novels, respectively.  Empire, though, represented a step backward from his deserved greatness.  Still, it's a short read and you might find yourself laughing at it as I did...