Books with author Clifford Simak

This award-winning science fiction classic explores a far-future world inhabited by intelligent canines who pass down the tales of their human forefathers. Thousands of years have passed since humankind abandoned the city-first for the countryside, then for the stars, and ultimately for oblivion-leaving their most loyal animal companions alone on Earth. Granted the power of speech centuries earlier by the revered Bruce Webster, the intelligent, pacifist dogs are the last keepers of human history, raising their pups with bedtime stories, passed down through generations, of the lost "websters" who gave them so much but will never return. With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. But they now face serious threats from their own and other dimensions, perhaps the most dangerous of all being the reawakened remnants of a warlike race called "Man." In the Golden Age of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, Clifford D. Simak's writing blazed as brightly as anyone's in the science fiction firmament. Winner of the International Fantasy Award, City is a magnificent literary metropolis filled with an astonishing array of interlinked stories and structures-at once dystopian, transcendent, compassionate, and visionary.

A man hunts for lost knowledge in a future society that’s reverted to a primitive tribal state in this novel by the author of Way Station. More than a thousand years have passed since humankind intentionally destroyed its treacherous technology, choosing to revert back to a primitive tribal state. In this society the rusting brain cases of long-inert robots are considered trophies, and the scant knowledge that has survived is doled out to an inquisitive few in monastery-like “universities.” It is at one such center of learning that young Tom Cushing first reads of the legendary “Place of Going to the Stars,” rumored to exist on a high butte somewhere in the western part of the land. Driven by enthusiasm and an insatiable need to track the myth to its source, Tom sets out on an amazing trek across what was once called “America,” teaming up with a witch, the world’s last remaining robot, and other odd companions. But all the astonishing discoveries and dangers they encounter along the way will pale before the revelations that await them at journey’s end. Clifford D. Simak, award-winning science fiction Grand Master, offers a breathtaking vision of the future that is both dystopian and hopeful in equal measure. In A Heritage of Stars, he boldly displays the heart, intelligence, and awesome imaginative powers that have established him as one of the all-time greatest authors of speculative fiction.

Second Berkley edition. The strange but beautiful purple blossoms now grew wild in his backyard. Brad Carter hadn't paid them any attention for years, since his father died. But one day he tripped, and fell into an alternate world --- a world peopled by these very flowers! Was the beguiling "other" world connected to the peculiar events which had suddenly begun occurring in Millville? The town had become surrounded by an invisible barrier that no human could pass through. Cordless, dial-less telephones communicated with a single voice with three distinct personalities. And some of the town's most "reputable" citizens had adopted most bizarre behavior.

Jenkins was a robot. He was built to be the perfect worker, tireless and uncomplaining. But, quite unexpectedly, he also became a close companion to generation after generation of his owners as the human race matured, moved beyond the confines of its once tiny planet, and eventually changed beyond all recognition. And then, because he was a good and dutiful servant, Jenkins went on to serve Earth's inheritors.Here is a masterful tale of an Earth overrun by ants, a series of parallel worlds ruled by dogs, and a Jupiter where the human race finds its Gold Age - if "human" it could still be called.BONUS AUDIO: City includes an exclusive introduction by Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author Mike Resnick.