Over the River and Through the Woods: Table of Contents

Introduction by Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson discusses Simak's fiction, and tells several anecdotes that illustrate Simak's character and values.

A Death in the House

Old Mose Abrams finds an alien who has crashed in the woods near his farm, and carries it back to his house, hoping to help it. But no one else wants to have anything to do with it.

The Big Front Yard

Hiram Taine is a handyman and antique dealer who lives in a house his family has owned for more than a hundred years. But suddenly he notices things he hasn't repaired that are now working, and there's a strange ceiling he didn't build in his basement workshop. And his dog Towser is obsessed with digging outside. It's after they dig up a large glass object in the woods that Taine returns to find his home turned into a doorway to another world.

Good Night, Mr. James

Henderson James is hunting a dangerous alien animal that has escaped. It's about to reproduce, and if it does all life on Earth could be threatened. But when he confronts it, he learns he's not the original Henderson James, but a duplicate, and that he'll be killed himself once he completes his task.

Dusty Zebra

A man notices things are disappearing from his desk. And then alien objects start appearing. Soon, he has a trial-and-error trading enterprise going with the alien on the other side, hoping that he finds something of commercial value to trade for.

Neighbor

A new family buys a long-vacant farm in Coon Valley. Nobody thinks much of it at first, but one night, one of the neighbors notices a tractor driving itself. And later, during a drought, another discovers one night it rained on that one farm, and no others.

Over the River and Through the Woods

Two children show up at the home of Jackson and Ellen Forbes in 1896, claiming to be the couple's grandchildren. Ellen has never seen them before. The children tell her they'll only be there a short while, and that their father, a temporal engineer, will come to get them.

Construction Shack

A trio of astronauts visit Pluto, discovering that it's an artificial world.

The Grotto of the Dancing Deer

An archaeologist studying cave paintings in Spain discovers a secret chamber. The paintings are different -- instead of serious paintings, these show animals dancing and frolicking. A few artifacts remain as well, and lead him to a startling discovery concerning one of his assistants.

ack to Off the Shelf.