A collection of masterpieces from a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction who “has never written a bad book” (Theodore Sturgeon). The Big Front Yard and Other Stories: Handyman Hiram likes things he can understand and fix. But he has a true mystery on his hands when a new ceiling appears in his basement—a ceiling with the ability to repair televisions so they’re better than before. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, “The Big Front Yard” is a powerful story about what happens when an ordinary man finds reality coming apart around him. Along with the other stories in this collection, it is some of the most lyrical science fiction ever published. “To read science fiction is to read Simak. A reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all.” —Robert A. Heinlein Time Is the Simplest Thing: Space travel has been deemed too dangerous and expensive, and now the Fishhook company holds a monopoly on interstellar exploration, using telepaths who can expand their minds throughout the universe. But when Fishhook employee Shepherd Blaine is implanted with a copy of an alien consciousness, he becomes something more than human—and soon there is no safe place for him to hide. This Hugo Award finalist is a richly imagined tale of prejudice, corporate greed, oppression, and, ultimately, transcendence. “Simak is the most underrated great science fiction writer alive, and has never written a bad book.” —Theodore Sturgeon The Goblin Reservation: In this unabashedly tongue-in-cheek novel, Professor Peter Maxwell of the College of Supernatural Phenomena is murdered—but he’s even more dismayed when he turns up at a matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he’s not only dead, but also unemployed. This “alternate” Maxwell soon learns he’s being used as a vessel by a strange alien race to carry knowledge of remarkable technology back to Earth—and it seems someone does not want the information shared . . . “The finest novel in a merry mood that Simak has yet given us.” —Fritz Leiber This brilliant volume represents the genre at its very best, reaffirming that “without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land” (James Gunn).

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?

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.”

Tales of the unknown in which a fix-it man crosses into another dimension—and more Hiram Taine is a handyman who can fix anything. When he isn’t fiddling with his tools, he is roaming through the woods with his dog, Towser, as he has done for as long as he can remember. He likes things that he can understand. But when a new ceiling appears in his basement—a ceiling that appears to have the ability to repair television sets so they’re better than before—he knows he has come up against a mystery that no man can solve. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, “The Big Front Yard” is a powerful story about what happens when an ordinary man finds reality coming apart around him. Along with the other stories in this collection, it is some of the most lyrical science fiction ever published. Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.

A human space traveler trapped on a remote planet must somehow unravel a confounding alien technology—or else surrender himself to a host of incomprehensible horrors For thousands of years, Carter Horton has been traveling across the galaxy toward a distant world capable of supporting human life. At journey’s end, awakened from his millennia-long sleep by a curiously adaptive android, he is informed that his crewmates have all perished due to a system malfunction. But worse is yet to come: Horton’s sentient ship is refusing to return him to Earth, and a strangely cordial predator is waiting for him on the planet’s surface. The repulsive creature, Carnivore, arrived here via a tunnel across the universe, as did his late companion—a human dubbing himself William Shakespeare—whom Carnivore just recently devoured. But the tunnel moves in only one direction, and if Carter is unable to reverse it, he will find himself marooned forever in this incomprehensible world, at the mercy of monsters and a terrifying, mind-freezing alien anomaly that occurs every evening in the “God-hour.” With unparalleled verve, award-winning science fiction Grand Master Clifford D. Simak performs a truly astonishing feat of world-creation in Shakespeare’s Planet. Bursting with intelligence, imagination, and breathtaking invention, this is a gem of speculative fiction from one of the genre’s most revered and innovative artists.

From the Nebula Award–winning author of Way Station: Ten stories—including one never before published—of mystery and imagination in a world that cannot be. People work; folk play. That is how it has been in this country for as long as Sam can remember. He is happy, and he understands that this is the way it should be. People are bigger than folk. They are stronger. They do not need food or water. They do not need the warmth of a fire. All they need are jobs to do and a blacksmith to fix them when they break. The people work so the folk can drink their moonshine, fish a little, and throw horseshoes. But once Sam starts to wonder why the world is like this, his life will never be the same. Along with the other stories in this collection, “I Am Crying All Inside” is a compact marvel—a picture of an impossible reality that is not so different from our own. Also included in this volume is the newly published “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” originally written for Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions.™ Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.

Three stunning works of science fiction from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning grandmaster and author of Way Station. I Am Crying All Inside and Other Stories: Ten stories of mystery and imagination in a world that cannot be, full of plant-based intelligence, robots, aliens, and time-travelers. Includes “I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air,” originally written for Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions.™ Highway of Eternity: The Evans family is hiding in eighteenth-century England from dangerous aliens from the future when they’re discovered by secret agent Jay Corcoran. Now they all must race for survival through space and time—but it’s easier said than done when monstrous beasts, killer robots, and immortal body-destroyers are waiting at every juncture. Project Pope: Sentient robots on the remote planet End of Nothing are working to create a truly universal religion presided over by a pope, a supercomputer fed knowledge by telepathic humans. But everything could be compromised when one of the humans claims she’s found Heaven . . .

In a deluxe collector’s edition, four classic science fiction novels from the genre’s most transformative decade—including the landmark Flowers for Algernon This volume, the first of a two-volume set gathering the best American science fiction from the tumultuous 1960s, opens with Poul Anderson’s immensely popular The High Crusade, in which aliens planning to conquer Earth land in Lincolnshire during the Hundred Years’ War. In Clifford Simak’s Hugo Award-winning Way Station, Enoch Wallace is a spry 124-year-old Civil War veteran whose lifelong job monitoring the intergalactic pit stop inside his home is largely uneventful—until a CIA agent shows up and Cold War hostilities threaten the peaceful harmony of the Galactic confederation. Daniel Keyes’s beloved Flowers for Algernon—winner of the Nebula Award and adapted as the Academy Award-winning movie Charly—is told through the journal entries of Charlie Gordon, a young man with severe learning disabilities who is the test subject for surgery to improve his intelligence. And in the postapocalyptic earthscape of Roger Zelazny’s Hugo Award-winning . . . And Call Me Conrad (also published as This Immortal) Conrad Nomikos reluctantly accepts the responsibility of showing the planet to the governing extraterrestrials’ representative and protecting him from rebellious remnants of the human race. Using early manuscripts and original setting copy, this Library of America volume restores the novel to a version that most closely approximates Zelazny’s original text.

Twelve classic tales of the unknown from the Hugo and Nebula Award–winning author of Way Station. Clifford D. Simak had a sublime ability to evoke a lost way of life. He spent his youth in rural Wisconsin, a landscape filled with mysterious hollows, cliffs, dark forests, and the Wisconsin River flowing in its deep-cut valley. As Simak wandered the countryside and the ridges, he peopled them with imaginary characters who later came to life in his stories. One such individual is Johnny, the orphaned farm boy of “The Contraption,” who stumbles upon a wrecked starship and receives a priceless gift from its owners. Another is the old prospector Eli, whose surprising discoveries on Mercury get him killed in “Spaceship in a Flask.” In “Huddling Place,” a man with paralyzing agoraphobia is the only one who can save the life of a dear friend on Mars—if he can bear to make the trip. And in the title story, aliens slowly take over Earth while humans leave it behind and head for the Homestead Planets. Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this ebook.