On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense: artificially intelligent robots, genetically uplifted animals, interplanetary travel, genetic modification of the human form itself. But nothing comes without a cost. Humanity is tired, its vigour all but gone. Society is breaking down into smaller communities, dispersing into the countryside and abandoning the great cities of the world. As the human race dwindles and declines, which of its great creations will inherit the Earth? And which will claim the stars?

An enormous, mysterious box descends upon smalltown Minnesota, spelling trouble for the world, in this classic adventure from a Science Fiction Grand Master. Forestry student Jerry Conklin is fly-fishing when something huge lands on his car, crushing it into the earth. It looks like a big black box--about fifty feet high and two hundred feet long--and the object stirs up quite a commotion among the townspeople of Lone Pine, Minnesota. One of them even shoots at it--and quickly pays for it with his life. Around the country, people scramble to determine what exactly the box is. Is it a machine? Or maybe a sentient being? What does it want? They have no way of knowing. Jerry, meanwhile, has firsthand knowledge after the visitor abducts him. Then, just as he discovers it is a living, intelligent creature, it releases him into the darkness of night. As Jerry searches for a way back to civilization, more visitors descend upon Earth. They seem harmless enough. Then they begin eating trees, and that's only the beginning . . . Praise for The Visitors "One of the most engaging novels of alien invasion ever written." --Library Journal

Two present-day investigators race across time to escape malevolent aliens from the future and their terrible "gift" of immortality in this novel by a Nebula Award-winning author. What is the price of eternal life? Secret agent Jay Corcoran is about to learn the answer when his investigation into an inexplicable disappearance carries him and journalist friend Tom Boone hundreds of years into the past. Corcoran and Boone's powerful extrasensory abilities lead them to an advanced transportation system through time, and back to the bucolic eighteenth-century English countryside. There, they discover a family from the distant future hiding from the Immortals--an alien race that, many centuries on, is seducing human subjects with the promise of eternal life. But at the cost of the corporeal self, there is no place in the aliens' future for anyone unwilling to exist as mind alone. Now that the Evans family's sanctuary has been breached, escape is the only answer--for Boone and Corcoran as well--and the only way out is forward . . . far forward. But racing through space and time can be a hazardous occupation, especially with monstrous beasts, killer robots, and Immortal body-destroyers waiting at every juncture. The last novel from acclaimed science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak, winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and numerous other awards, Highway of Eternity combines breathtaking action with provocative ideas and unparalleled ingenuity, the hallmarks of Simak's exceptional art. It is a fitting finale for the man who stands alongside Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury, and Clarke as one of the true giants of speculative fiction's Golden Age.

The Anthology of Sci-Fi V21 is a collection of eleven Sci-fi stories from some of the best writers of the past century. Included are: Out Around Rigel by Robert H. Wilson, The Space Rover by Edwin K. Sloat, The Einstein See-Saw by Miles J. Breuer, Hellhounds of the Cosmos by Clifford D. Simak, Raiders of the Universes by Donald Wandrei, Loot of the Void by Edwin K. Sloat, The Moon Destroyers by Monroe K. Ruch, The Martian by Allen Glasser & A. Rowley Hilliard, The Floating Island of Madness by Jason Kirby, The Worshippers by Damon Knight, Special Delivery by Damon Knight.

Hugo Award Winner: In backwoods Wisconsin, an ageless hermit welcomes alien visitors--and foresees the end of humanity . . . Enoch Wallace is not like other humans. Living a secluded life in the backwoods of Wisconsin, he carries a nineteenth-century rifle and never seems to age--a fact that has recently caught the attention of prying government eyes. The truth is, Enoch is the last surviving veteran of the American Civil War and, for close to a century, he has operated a secret way station for aliens passing through on journeys to other stars. But the gifts of knowledge and immortality that his intergalactic guests have bestowed upon him are proving to be a nightmarish burden, for they have opened Enoch's eyes to humanity's impending destruction. Still, one final hope remains for the human race . . . though the cure could ultimately prove more terrible than the disease. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, Way Station is a magnificent example of the fine art of science fiction as practiced by a revered Grand Master. A cautionary tale that is at once ingenious, evocative, and compassionately human, it brilliantly supports the contention of the late, great Robert A. Heinlein that "to read science-fiction is to read Simak."

His body hosting a pair of strange alien presences, an amnesiac space traveler returns home to an unrecognizable Earth Many centuries in the future, a two-hundred-year-old man is discovered hibernating in a space capsule orbiting a distant star. Transported back to his home planet, Andrew Blake awakens to an Earth he does not recognize--a world of flying cars and sentient floating houses--with no memory whatsoever of his history or purpose. But he has not returned alone. The last survivor of a radical experiment abandoned more than a century earlier, Blake was genetically altered to be able to adapt to extreme alien environments, and now he can sense other presences inhabiting his mind and body. One is a biological computer of astonishing power; the other is a powerful creature akin to a large wolf. And Blake is definitely not the one in control. With his sanity hanging in the balance, Blake's only option is to set out in frantic pursuit of his past, the truth, his destiny--and quite possibly the fate of humankind. A bravura demonstration of unparalleled imagination, intelligence, and heart, The Werewolf Principle addresses weighty issues of genetic manipulation that are as relevant today as when the novel first appeared in print. One of the all-time best and brightest in speculative fiction, Grand Master Clifford D. Simak offers a moving, stunning, witty, and thought-provoking exploration of what it means to be human.

After two decades in space, a man returns to Earth as something new and not completely human, in this "enormously inventive" novel by a Nebula Award winner (Galaxy Science Fiction). Twenty years ago, Asher Sutton vanished somewhere in the star system 61 Cygni, an inaccessible corner of the universe that humankind has thus far been unable to explore. Now Asher has returned to Earth, having impossibly survived catastrophic damage to his spacecraft. But the star-traveler is not the same man he was when he began his journey two decades earlier. He is, in fact, no longer completely human. And he is not alone. But he has a message to convey that could have reality-altering consequences for the human galaxy-conquerors who consider themselves almost gods, and for the nearly human androids they create, enslave, and oppress. It is Asher's destiny to change everything. His mission has made him a hero to some, a pariah to others--and a target for determined time-traveling assassins from the future whose mission it is to silence him at all costs before everything they cherish is obliterated. A true science fiction visionary, SFWA Grand Master Clifford D. Simak infused thrilling stories of time travel, space exploration, artificial intelligence, and alien contact with powerful, thought-provoking ideas. An enthralling masterwork of speculative fiction that astonishes while exploring humanity in all its disparate aspects, Time and Again can be counted among the prolific, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author's most brilliantly imagined and successfully realized creations.

A scholar, a goblin, and a gnome, among others, pursue the secrets of a vanished ancient race through a wasteland of dark magic in this enthralling fantasy quest adventure On an Earth that is different from ours, the young scholar Mark Cornwall becomes a target of the Inquisition, and specifically its most evil and obsessed agent, Beckett. Damned for asking questions, Mark is forced to escape over the border into the Wastelands, a magical realm that is home to all manner of flesh-devouring monsters. Luckily he will not have to make his journey alone. He is accompanied by a cadre of stalwart companions, including the rafter goblin Oliver, Snively the gnome, and secretive Mary from one of three parallel planes. Somewhere beyond the vengeful, blood-hungry Hellhounds, somewhere past the horrific legacy of the now-destroyed Chaos Beast, the mysteries of the Old Ones are waiting to be revealed--and only those with the courage to seek them will be able to alter the destiny of their worlds. In Enchanted Pilgrimage, Clifford D. Simak ingeniously blends elements of science fiction into a savory fantasy stew. The award-winning Grand Master of science fiction spreads his wings and takes glorious flight into a bold new realm of magic and adventure, demonstrating why he remains one of the most acclaimed storytellers in the literature of the remarkable.

A handful of humans and a multitude of robots create a new society on an abandoned Earth in this novel by the Nebula Award-winning author of Way Station. What 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.

From science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak, an interstellar adventure of aliens, fairies, and time travel. Until the day he was murdered, Professor Peter Maxwell was a respected faculty member of the College of Supernatural Phenomena. Imagine his chagrin when he turns up at a Wisconsin matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he's not only dead but unemployed. During an interstellar mission to investigate rumors of dragon activity, this alternate Maxwell was intercepted by a strange alien race that wanted him to carry knowledge of a remarkable technology back to Earth, and it seems someone does not want the information shared. Suddenly, it's essential for Maxwell to find his own killer. He enlists the aid of Carol Hampton of the Time College, along with her pet saber-tooth tiger, a ghost with memory issues, and the intelligent Neanderthal Man recently rescued from a prehistoric cooking pot. But the search is pointing them toward the goblins, fairies, and assorted Little Folk living in reservations on campus, and into the dangerous heart of an interspecies blood feud that has been raging for millions of years. Ingeniously inventive and unabashedly tongue-in-cheek, this novel demonstrates multi-award-winning fantasy and science fiction favorite Clifford D. Simak operating at the imaginative peak of his considerable powers.