Books with author Clifford Simak

A handful of humans and a multitude of robots create a new society on a mysteriously abandoned Earth in this breathtaking science fiction classic from one of the genre’s acknowledged mastersWhat if you woke up one morning on Earth . . . and no one else was there? That is the reality that greeted a handful of humans, including Jason Whitney, his wife Martha, and the remnants of a tribe of Native Americans in the year 2135. Their inexplicable abandonment had unexpected benefits: the eventual development of mental telepathy and other extrasensory powers, inner peace, and best of all, near-immortality. Now, five thousand years later, most of the remaining humans live a tranquil, pastoral life, leaving technological and religious exploration to the masses of robot servants who no longer have humans to serve. But the unexpected reappearance of Jason’s brother, who had teleported to the stars many years before, threatens to change everything yet again—for John Whitney is the bearer of startling information about where Earth’s population went and why—and the most disturbing news of all: They may finally be coming home again. Nominated for the Hugo Award when it first appeared in print more than forty years ago, Clifford D. Simak’s brilliant and thought-provoking A Choice of Gods has lost nothing of its power to astonish and intrigue. A masterwork of speculative fiction, intelligent and ingenious, it is classic Simak, standing tall among the very best science fiction that has ever been written.

One day they were there, the next they were gone-all but a small tribe of American Indians, family and friends gathered for a party, and the ubiquitous robots. Whatever mysterious power it was that had snatched up eight billion human souls and spirited them away had overlooked very few. Deprived of a labor force, technology disintegrated. The Indians went back to nature, the others ... something very strange happened to them. In exchange for the overpowering presence of the vanished hordes, they acquired mental powers beyond imagining which whisked them through the stars, extraordinary longevity, and a painfully garnered wisdom. As for the robots, some went to live with the remnants of humanity, though the Indians forthrightly rejected their services; others gathered into a robot community and commenced work on the Project, a work baffling to human understanding, but in all its fantastic electronic complexity an apotheosis of robotry; still others. a very few, stubbornly maintained the old religion and lived as monks, worshiping they knew not what by who knows what right. Then one day a traveler returned from the stars. The people had been found and were planning to return. More important and more dreadful, a Principle had been discovered in the center of the Galaxy, a disembodied intelligence of awesome capacity and godlike indifference. The idyllic existence of the last of Earth's humans was threatened. The carefully composed elegy to mankind was under siege. In this outstanding novel, Clifford D. Simak has revealed a warmth, a charm, and a compassion rare in science fiction. Winner of the Hugo Award for his outstanding novel Way Station and the International Fantasy Award for City, CLIFFORD SIMAK has nineteen published books to his credit. A journalist ever since college, he now writes a science column for the Minneapolis Star and is also in charge of a science education program for the Minneapolis Tribune.

Thousands of years in the future, when the nearly indestructible skulls of destroyed robots litter the forest floors of the American continent, which barely remembers the greatness of the old technological civilization. Tom Cushing sets out on a quest. He treks across the midwest to find the fabled Place of Going to the Stars, from which ancient technological man left earth to travel among the alien civilizations of the galaxy. There reside the strange artifacts of other worlds that humanity brought back and, it is rumored, some of the strange alien beings themselves. His mission is to recover lost knowledge and to regain humanity's lost heritage.

An underrated writer who is worthy or reassessment. Just about any work by Simak deserves to be considered a classic and City is no exception, it's a unique perspective on the race of man and a fantastic read. Being both a dog person and a fan of dystopian and apocalyptic literature, this is by far my favorite Simak story; a powerful and haunting examination of humanity's ultimate self-absorption. Haunting, thought-provoking, and hard to put down, this book underscores the importance of finding what is meaningful in life. This book is not only about what dogs have to teach us about friendship and loyalty, but about the capacity we have to learn from our own experience. About the Author Born in Wisconsin, Clifford Donald Simak (1904-1988) began writing SF in 1931 and was a regular contributor to John W. Campbell's Astounding Stories. He won the Nebula and multiple Hugo Awards, and in 1977 was the third writer to be named a Grand Master by SFWA.