Synopsis
Ten tales of wonder, danger, and the future—including the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning title story—from the science fiction Grand Master.
This volume contains ten stellar short stories by Clifford D. Simak, “the most underrated great science fiction writer alive” (Theodore Sturgeon). In “Grotto of the Dancing Deer,” a man carrying an ancient secret finally speaks up, unable to bear any longer the loneliness he has experienced for millennia. In “Over the River,” which Simak wrote in memory of his beloved grandmother Ellen, children from an embattled future are sent back for safekeeping to their ancestors in the peaceful past. And in “Day of Truce,” the inhabitants of a suburban subdivision must barricade themselves against bands of roving attackers. On only one day each year do the gates open wide . . .
Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this book.
About the Author
During his fifty-five-year career, CLIFFORD D. SIMAK produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror Writers Association’s Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
DAVID W. WIXON was a close friend of Clifford D. Simak’s. As Simak’s health declined, Wixon, already familiar with science fiction publishing, began more and more to handle such things as his friend’s business correspondence and contract matters. Named literary executor of the estate after Simak’s death, Wixon began a long-term project to secure the rights to all of Simak’s stories and find a way to make them available to readers who, given the fifty-five-year span of Simak’s writing career, might never have gotten the chance to enjoy all of his short fiction. Along the way, Wixon also read the author’s surviving journals and rejected manuscripts, which made him uniquely able to provide Simak’s readers with interesting and thought-provoking commentary that sheds new light on the work and thought of a great writer.
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