Tales of nostalgia and loss in a world overrun by technology

Hank is walking home from the bar when the Model T pulls alongside him. It’s been decades since he saw a car this old, and the sound of it takes him right back to his twenties. The door is open, and when he climbs in, the car takes off—without a driver. Before he knows what’s happened, Hank is right back at Big Spring Pavilion, where he spent his youth drinking bootleg whiskey and chasing pretty girls. He will find the past is not quite as he remembered it, but still a lovely place to go for a drive.
 
This collection includes some of the finest short fiction Clifford Simak ever wrote, including “City,” the story that became the basis for his beloved novel of the same name. In the history of science fiction, no author has ever better understood that the Great Plains and the cosmos are closer together than we think.
 
Each story includes an introduction by David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and editor of this book.

“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
 
“Like Olaf Stapledon and SF’s later mystics, Simak could dream on a grand scale. . . . Thoreau or Wordsworth would feel at home in his isolated houses rooted in natural landscapes.” —Locus
 
“Simak is the most underrated great science fiction writer alive, and has never written a bad book.” —Theodore Sturgeon
 
“I read [Simak’s] stories with particular attention, and I couldn’t help but notice the simplicity and directness of the writing—the utter clarity of it. I made up my mind to imitate it, and I labored over the years to make my writing simpler, clearer, more uncluttered, to present my scenes on a bare stage.” —Isaac Asimov
 
“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