Book description
The Earth's population was more than eight billion. One day they were
there, the next they were gone - all except the guests at a family
birthday party, a small tribe of American Indians, and, of course, the
robots. Technology disintegrated, the Indians went back to nature, and
the rest developed new and extraordinary powers. As for the robots, some
went to live with the remnants of humanity, others gathered in their own
community and commenced work on the Project, work which was baffling in
all its fantastic electronic complexity. Then one day a traveller
returned from the stars - and the idyllic existence of the last of
Earth's humans was threatened. 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.
