he eight stories that comprise this award-winning classic from the pen of pastoralist Clifford Simak originally appeared mainly in the digest magazines of the '40s and '50s. They were assembled into this "fix-up" volume, along with linking passages, in 1952. But even though the arrival of the segments was piecemeal, the concepts and vision behind them are cohesive, overarching and impressive. Together, they form a magnificent, unrivaled portrait of the strange destiny of humanity.
First, consider the frametale: At some far-future date, a scholar belonging to the race of intelligent dogs who are the inheritors of our planet is assembling the oral narratives that recount some of the planet's history. This unnamed canine narrator, with his gaps of knowledge and unwitting assumptions and alien perspective, provides amusing context and commentary on the events, characters and themes of the individual tales. And it's a valuable frame, since the chronological jumps between installments are so large and shocking.
Also helping to maintain continuity are a single character and a lineage of humans. The single character is the robot named Jenkins, who eventually lives to be 12,000 years old. Jenkins starts out working for the Webster family, a clan that finds itself at the symbolic and actual center of the most significant events of the various eras. The Webster males (women, alas, figure little in this saga) come and go, but Jenkins is eternal.
The first story is titled "City," and occurs close to our time period. Thanks to improved communications (something very much like the Internet and World Wide Web exists), improved transportation and decreased birthrate, the cities of the world are dying, as their remaining inhabitants spread out into separated countryside estates. John Webster, a city resident, struggles to maintain his dying civilization, but a future retreat is in the cards even for him and his family. In "Huddling Place," set some 100 years further ahead, the Websters have indeed established their country estate somewhere in North America. The current scion is Jerome Webster, a doctor who holds the key to a surgery that could save the life of a Martian genius, who in turn would incredibly benefit humanity. But Jerome is locked into his ancestral home by agoraphobia, doomed to fail in his mission. Jenkins appears here for the first time.
"Census," the third piece, introduces Joe, a mutant superman roaming the hills around the Webster manse, and Nathaniel, the first of the genetically engineered dogs who will play so large a part in the stories to come. The fourth and fifth tales are the most intimately linked. "Desertion," perhaps the most famous story from the cycle, chronicles the attempts of humanity to colonize Jupiter by adapting the human form to local conditions. One man, Kent Fowler, finally succeeds, but he learns a startling truth. Five years later, in "Paradise," Fowler is back on Earth, arguing with government official Tyler Webster about whether to inform humanity that Jupiter is a heavenly alternative to Earth. The actions of this story result in the massive depopulation of Earth seen in the next story, "Hobbies." One thousand years from Fowler's time, mankind is reduced to 5,000 people living in Geneva, while dogs, mutants and robots follow their own destiny. Seeing that humanity is now just a millstone around the necks of these inheritors, Jon Webster seals off the last redoubt of mankind behind an impenetrable dome.
In "Aesop," an elderly Jenkins rules over a small colony of humans, descendants of those few people accidentally left outside the Geneva dome. Dogs call all humans "websters" without realizing that these odd creatures were once their deities. The dogs are busy exploring the science of alternate universes reached through psi powers. When one of the humans, Peter Webster, accidentally reintroduces murder into the canine utopia, Jenkins, in a new metal body, takes all the humans to another dimension, leaving Earth entirely at last free of Homo sapiens. Finally, in "The Simple Way" (originally published as "The Trouble with Ants"), even the dogs are driven from their homeworld by the race of aggressive super-ants bred long ago by the mutant named Joe.
A melancholy future history
Despite the evidence of Simak's earning the SFWA's Grand Master Award in 1977, only third in line after Robert Heinlein and Jack Williamson, I've always felt that he was overlooked and underappreciated. Judging by how few of his books remain in print today, 16 years after his death, he certainly has fallen out of the ken of most readers. This reissue from Old Earth Books of his most famous book provides a good chance for new fans and old alike to acquaint or reacquaint themselves with his charms.
Simak was famous for his "pastoral" approach to SF, a kind of emphasis on Norman Rockwell virtues, venues and concerns. An attitude and approach similar at times to Ray Bradbury's. Consider the descriptions of the Webster estate and the land around it, and the attractions of the domestic in "Huddling Place." But like Bradbury, Simak also exhibited a melancholy streak, an easy familiarity with death and disappointment. City is not a sunny book. The Websters end up seeing themselves as cursed, a jinx on humanity, despite their many achievements. Neither do the dogs know pure triumph. The canines are driven from the Earth by ants, after all. And the dogs repudiate the "myth" of humanity in the end, failing to live up to any specific dreams mankind might have foisted on them. Likewise, the mutant humans that arise are cruel and disdainful of their cousins. Finally, the mock-academic frametale is a sophisticated metafictional trick. The image of Simak as a cheerful naive yokel hardly stands up to reality.
The sophistication of Simak's speculations puts paid to that false image of him as well. Genetic engineering, cybernetics, environmentalism, cultural trends, psychology—Simak was savvy about all this, weaving his many strands into a unique portrait of the future that remains eerily prophetic in this day of urban sprawl and teleconferencing. True, he had his blind spots. This book ignores every part of the globe but North America and Europe. What happened in India and China, Africa and Brazil, we wonder? Are we to assume that such different cultures followed the same route as the West? The aforementioned lack of any female characters is more glaring nowadays than it once obviously was. And the way the government blithely lets Kent Fowler loose to destroy civilization doesn't ring true in this age of X-Files and Homeland Security.
But within his necessarily circumscribed vision of existence, Simak achieved brilliant effects. Reading this book, with its exponential timejumps blended with intense small-scale details, the macroscopic with the microscopic, is akin to reading a work co-written by Olaf Stapledon and John Crowley. (The latter's Engine Summer [1979] is a book that couldn't have existed without City to point the way.) Simak's unforgettable compassion and affection for all creation shines through.
An addendum: Simak wrote 140 stories in his lifetime, most of them uncollected. But not for long. Dark Side Press is planning to publish a 12-volume set of them soon. Smart readers will jump on board right at the start.
