(A few other humans become mutants with strange abilities, possibly also due to the societal shift.) The issue is compacted by a summons to save the live of one of his friends, a Martian philosopher, and the story is a decent psychological tale as Webster struggles to overcome his fears. “Huddling Place” deals with the fallout of this shift-the Webster of the next generation is a brilliant surgeon with an acute case of agoraphobia despite the pastoral beginnings, Simak seems to be implying that the fiction flight to rural life had unintended consequences. “City” starts off strong with its pastoral, mournful atmosphere in a predicted post-War future, where cheap atomic-powered aircraft sees decentralized population centers end the Cold War-why live in a city when you can live in the beautiful country and commute in a ten-minute plane ride? “City” imagines the decline of the city, with the Webster family one of the last inhabitants of a dying town it’s followed up by “Huddling Place,” one of the most effective stories in the collection. And each of the stories follows some humans of the Webster family, telling of the Websters’ roles across human history, both successes and failures. Readers who see SF as an attempt at prediction/prophecy will be disappointed with the direction Simak takes his future history those of us more interested in the story’s insights or context have a wealth of material at hand.īruna (Dutch) – 1965 – cover by Dick Bruna.

Each of City‘s stories are part of the dogs’ oral history, myths passed down from generation to generation of a race called humans-whose existence is hotly contested.

Campbell, who had published all but one of the others in Astounding Science Fiction.) It remains something of a minor classic to this day, having made quite an impact in introducing Simak’s pastoral and mournful themes to science fiction.Ĭity‘s frame story comes in the form of academic notes left by humanity’s successor, intelligent dogs uplifted by a man named Webster. (One more was added in 1971 in a volume honoring editor John W. He continued writing them through 1947, then published one final tale in 1951, at which point they were joined together and sold as the fixup novel City. Clifford Simak’s fame has waned in the years after his death, and he never was one of the more well-known or popular SF authors to begin with. He broke onto the SF scene in 1944 with a series of semi-linked short stories and novellas, a future-history that took humanity out of its near-future cites, into star-studded galaxies, even beyond mere homo sapiens.

City simak