Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak
"Ring Around the Sun" is a speculative fiction narrative centered on themes of identity, alien influence, and societal upheaval. The story follows Jay Vickers, a writer who is tasked with investigating an influx of mysterious products that threaten the global economy, allegedly created by unknown forces. As Vickers interacts with characters like Crawford, who suggests that these products are linked to mutants with psychic abilities, he is drawn into a world of conspiracy and paranoia. He grapples with memories of a childhood experience involving a spinning top that allows him to traverse parallel worlds.
The plot thickens as Vickers learns he may also be a mutant and that his identity is more complex than he initially believed. His journey takes him to a parallel Earth, where he encounters others who have escaped the societal collapse caused by the new products. The narrative explores themes of deception, the nature of reality, and the search for belonging. Ultimately, Vickers must confront the implications of his identity and his connections to other characters, including Ann, whose ties to his past complicate his quest. This tale weaves together elements of science fiction with existential questions, inviting readers to ponder the fabric of their own realities.
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Subject Terms
Ring Around the Sun
First published: 1953
Type of work: Novel
Type of plot: Science fiction—extrasensory powers
Time of work: 1987
Locale: The New York City area, the Midwest, and an alternate Earth
The Plot
Agent Ann Carter sends writer Jay Vickers to meet a man, Crawford, who says that new products are flooding the marketplace. Such products, including free edible carbohydrates, perpetually sharp razors, and “Forever Cars,” are being made by unknown people to destroy the world economy. Crawford asks Vickers to write a book exposing them, but he refuses.
Vickers’ neighbor Horton Flanders speculates about mentally “listening” to space to learn from aliens. When Flanders vanishes, Vickers flees a lynch mob who believes that he killed Flanders. Confused by memories of a youthful walk in “fairyland” with a girl named Kathleen, he drives a Forever Car to his old house in the Midwest and finds a top. He recalls that as a child he spun the top, watched its stripes spiralling to nowhere, and traveled to another world.
Crawford arrives to tell Vickers that mutants with psychic powers are behind the new products, Vickers is a mutant himself, and the world leaders he represents have a “secret weapon” to defeat them. Vickers drives to New York to warn Ann, who he suspects is a mutant, but he must hide when his parked car is smashed by an angry crowd. Crawford’s people have announced the existence of mutants, who are being hunted and killed. To escape, Vickers spins the top to reach a parallel world that is like Earth but uninhabited.
He walks to that world’s Midwest, hoping to find Kathleen’s house, where his previous visit to the world started. He passes an automated factory where mutant products are manufactured. At the house, a robot has him wait in a room, where he overhears Flanders say that Vickers is really an android. Disillusioned, he leaves. He then meets Asa Andrews, who formerly lived on Earth. When new products eliminated his job, their makers offered to transport him and his family to another world. Like others, they now enjoy a life of farming, hunting, and contemplation, with robots to help with emergencies.
Vickers returns to the house to see Flanders, who tells Vickers that he is a real person. To acquire additional manpower, mutants moved his identity into three android bodies—Vickers, Flanders, and someone Flanders refuses to identify. Flanders explains that Vickers can travel between worlds by willpower—the top only triggers the process—and has the ability to reach correct “hunches” through his intuition. Telepathic mutants are obtaining information from space and working to achieve immortality. Vickers tells Flanders that Crawford’s “secret weapon” must be a contrived war to establish military control of the world and suggests that people like Andrews be sent back to Earth to promote the mutants’ goals—an ideal society achieved by advanced science and colonization of innumerable parallel Earths.
Vickers returns to Earth to contact Ann. He thinks that she is the third person with his identity, so his love for her is futile. “Pretentionists”—people who research and pretend to live in past eras—are joining the mutants’ cause. While he is at Ann’s apartment, Crawford phones, and Vickers demands to meet the people behind Crawford. When Vickers shows a film of a spinning top, the people vanish into the other world, because they were really mutants. Vickers now realizes that Ann is the girl he remembered as Kathleen, and Crawford is the third person with his identity.