City

In the distant future, Man and his works may be no more than a memory... The years had moved too fast. Years that had brought the family plane and helicopter, leaving the auto to rust in some forgotten place, the unused roads to fall into disrepair. Years that had virtually wiped out the tilling of the soil with the rise of hydroponics. Years that had brought cheap land with the disappearance of the farm as an economic unit, had sent city people scurrying out into the country where each man, for less than the price of a city lot, might own broad acres. Years that had revolutionized the construction of homes to a point where families simply walked away from their old homes to the new ones that could be bought, custom-made, for less than half the price of a prewar structure and could be changed, at small cost, to accommodate need of additional space or just a passing whim...

Earth was very different without its cities. There were no more wars, because the population centers which had formerly been prime targets no longer existed. Among the people who left the cities and their descendants, some took to the stars and met beings from other worlds; some took to the woods, and let their primitive lifestyle carry them further and further from the basic design of society. And some simply remained on the land their families originally bought, growing ever more deeply ensconced in those pockets of tradition.

It was Bruce Webster, from the pocket known as Webster House, who first changed the dogs. Recognizing that the differences between humans and canines might be an advantage--dogs, with their own brand of intelligence, would be able to comprehend things people could not--he reasoned that two thinking races would have to be better than one. So he surgically altered a few dogs' throats and tongues, enabling them to mimic the words he taught them. Special contact lenses were invented, changing canine eyesight enough to allow them to learn to read. As time went on, the traits Bruce initiated were passed on to each successive generation of dogs.

And as the Dogs developed and advanced--aided by robots that humans had built ages ago--Man ceased to be the dominant species on Earth and became a creature of legend. A legend the Dogs still tell on winter nights, when the wind is from the north and the fires burn high...

A collection of 8 stories by Clifford D. Simak, each preceded by an explanatory prologue. On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense: artificially intelligent robots (the good and the wild robots), genetically uplifted animals, the legends and history of the ascendancy of Dogs who take over the earth, the emergence of the cobblies and the insistence on the law of not killing, interplanetary travel, genetic modification of the human form itself.

The cities of the world are deserted and automation has invaded every aspect of human life; the robots make spaceships; the ants create huge buildings on the remains of old towns. 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...?

Contents:

Introduction / essay by Gwyneth Jones (2010);
Editor's Preface: Clifford D. Simak himself edited and bridged the stories with specially written, framing notes from the perspective of a future historian;
Notes on the First Tale • City (1944);
Notes on the Second Tale • Huddling Place (1944);
Notes on the Third Tale • Census (1944);
Notes on the Fourth Tale • Desertion (1944);
Notes on the Fifth Tale • Paradise (1946);
Notes on the Sixth Tale • Hobbies (1946);
Notes on the Seventh Tale • Aesop (1947);
Notes on the Eighth Tale • The Simple Way (1952).

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