Mirage

Richard Webb searched Mars for an ancient city, but found six “ancients” of Martian origin—who were searching, in vain, for the Seventh…

Clifford Donald Simak (1904–1988) is one of the few American science-fiction writers who received the title “Great Master” from his peers. Isaac Asimov admitted that he always dreamed of learning to write the way Simak wrote. “Anyone who’s read even one of his books can’t help but love Simak,” Paul Anderson claimed. “If you don’t like Simak, you can’t like science fiction at all,” Robert Heinlein declared categorically. Some critics accused Simak of conservatism, others—of an unshakable faith in progress; some thought his style was replaced too actively by action, while others called him “the last pastoral science-fiction writer,” admiring the elegance of his style and the perfection of his unhurried descriptions… But no one ever denied either his great mastery or his great soul.