While humans would have been quick to eliminate this threat, dogs do not believe in killing for any reason and so they must come up with a different solution. Thousand of years pass by and the dogs are now dealing with another rising species, ants. A different life-form then rises to become the dominant species and in this story that species is a pacifist society of dogs.

These stories are progressive and tell of a world where humans have developed technology to a point where society becomes more and more isolated until eventually mankind simply dies out because of loneliness and isolation.

In 1973, a further story called “Epilog” was written and later added. These notes were written in order to link the stories into one novel. Simak is a collection of science fiction stories that were originally published separately between 19, along with brief notes on each of the stories.

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. Simak’s writing blazed as brightly as anyone’s in the science fiction firmament. In the Golden Age of Isaac Asimov and Robert A. 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.” With the aid of Jenkins, an ageless service robot, the dogs live in a world of harmony and peace. 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.

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. This award-winning science fiction classic explores a far-future world inhabited by intelligent canines who pass down the tales of their human forefathers.

City clifford simak