From back of dust jacket: "Out of the rose clump, a face stared fixedly at me -- a cat face. The whishers. The owel eyes. The grin. Entranced and frightened, I moved forward slowly, the gun at ready. Iwas close now. Colser, something told me, than I should be. But I took another step, and on that step I stumbled. Recovering from the stumble, I noticed the rose bush was no longer there and neither was the henhouse. I stood on a little slope that was covered with short grass. It was the longer night. The sun was shining, but with little warmth. The cat face was gone. Then suddenly from behind me I heard a shuffling, thumpin sound and I pivoted around. The thumping shurffling thing stood ten feet tall. It had gleaming tusks and a long trunk. A mastadon, I told myself. A mastadon! Aind it was coming straight toward me..."
Clifford Donald Simak (* August 3, 1904 in Milville, Wisconsin, USA / † April 25, 1988 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA) was a journalist and a science fiction writer. Simak was considered as one of the “Grandmasters” of science fiction and he was honoured several times with awards for his contribution to science fiction literature.
Clifford D. Simak wrote continuously science fiction and fantasy for over 55 years (only few other writers worked as long as he did). He never was such a prolific writer like Isak Asimov or Robert Silverberg. Anyhow he managed to publish in these 55 years 28 novels and more than 120 short stories in the genres science fiction and fantasy – and that avocational until his retirement in 1976. He earned his living as a reporter and editor of big newspapers in the American middle west.
There was a time when Simak was considered as one of the most valued SF-writers and there was hardly any standard literature on the history of science fiction which has not dedicate him a separate paragraph or even an own chapter even though he was never in fashion. He stood mostly in the shadow of his more famous colleagues