Book description
Having just returned to Earth from an intergalactic research mission,
Professor Peter Maxwell, specialist in Supernatural Phenomena, finds
himself in desperate straits. Earth, as he is aware, is well advanced in
many areas; perfected time travel, for instance, enables all creatures
(goblins, dinosaurs, and Shakespeare!) to coexist. But Maxwell has
accidentally discovered a mysterious crystal planet containing a
storehouse of secret information not yet known to Earth. Knowing the
value of the planet for the future of Earth, he attempts to convince
those in power that they must, at any cost, get control of it. But his
efforts are thwarted by a startling fact: Maxwell was ingeniously
duplicated on his return trip. The 'other' him came back before he did,
and was soon after 'accidentally' killed. Now no one will believe the
original Maxwell exists. Clifford D. Simak (1904 -1988) Clifford
Donald Simak was born in Wisconsin, in 1904. He attended the University
of Wisconsin and spent his working life in the newspaper business. He
flirted briefly with science fiction in the early '30s but did not start
to write seriously until John W. Campbell's Astounding Stories began to
rejuvenate the field in 1937. Simak was a regular contributor to
Astounding throughout the Golden Age, producing a body of well regarded
work. He won the Nebula and multiple Hugo Awards, and in 1977 was the
third writer to be named a Grand Master by SFWA. He died in 1988.
