City

Author: Clifford D. Simak

One persistent aspect of posthuman science fiction is that the future may not belong to humanity. It might be our creations, robots, that inherit the Earth; or it may be another creature that evolves to take over our ecological niche. Both appear in Simakâ€™s best work. As humanity becomes ever more isolated and eventually dies out, their robot servants become ever more important, until it is the robots who eventually lead the few surviving humans to a new world. Meanwhile, it is the dogs left behind who build up a new, more peaceful civilisation, and whose stories about the near-mythical humans form the substance of this book. And all along, the ants are building up their own industrialised society. Why itâ€™s on the list: The winner of the International Fantasy Award, City expresses a view common in the science fiction immediately after the Second World War that humanity would never be able to get along peacefully together. The idea that others might take our place is therefore a hopeful vision of the future.

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Alternative Choice
Another contender for the title of Simak's best novel has to be Way Station, which displays all the features characteristic of his best work: a love of the pastoral, a preference for quiet country people who relish their isolation, and a sense that humanity is inherently violent. In this case a Civil War veteran who has a small farm in Wisconsin has been given immortality in return for allowing his farm to be used as a way station, a transit point for aliens travelling across the galaxy by matter transmission. Nobody notices this until, a hundred years later, the government begins to wonder why he hasn't aged. Government action reveals factions among the aliens, while an alien gift to the farmer allows him to foresee the possibility of nuclear war. Winner of the Hugo Award, and regularly placed among the best all-time sf novels, Way Station is typically quiet and engaging while raising some very thorny questions.