The Works of Clifford D. Simak Volume Four: The Big Front Yard and Other Stories, Time Is the Simplest Thing, and The Goblin Reservation

A collection of masterpieces from a Hugo and Nebula Award–winning Grand Master of Science Fiction who “has never written a bad book” (Theodore Sturgeon).

The Big Front Yard and Other Stories: Handyman Hiram likes things he can understand and fix. But he has a true mystery on his hands when a new ceiling appears in his basement—a ceiling with the ability to repair televisions so they’re better than before. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novelette, “The Big Front Yard” is a powerful story about what happens when an ordinary man finds reality coming apart around him. Along with the other stories in this collection, it is some of the most lyrical science fiction ever published.
 
“To read science fiction is to read Simak. A reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all.” —Robert A. Heinlein
 
Time Is the Simplest Thing: Space travel has been deemed too dangerous and expensive, and now the Fishhook company holds a monopoly on interstellar exploration, using telepaths who can expand their minds throughout the universe. But when Fishhook employee Shepherd Blaine is implanted with a copy of an alien consciousness, he becomes something more than human—and soon there is no safe place for him to hide. This Hugo Award finalist is a richly imagined tale of prejudice, corporate greed, oppression, and, ultimately, transcendence.
 
“Simak is the most underrated great science fiction writer alive, and has never written a bad book.” —Theodore Sturgeon
 
The Goblin Reservation: In this unabashedly tongue-in-cheek novel, Professor Peter Maxwell of the College of Supernatural Phenomena is murdered—but he’s even more dismayed when he turns up at a matter transmission station several weeks later and discovers he’s not only dead, but also unemployed. This “alternate” Maxwell soon learns he’s being used as a vessel by a strange alien race to carry knowledge of remarkable technology back to Earth—and it seems someone does not want the information shared . . .
 
“The finest novel in a merry mood that Simak has yet given us.” —Fritz Leiber
 
This brilliant volume represents the genre at its very best, reaffirming that “without Simak, science fiction would have been without its most humane element, its most humane spokesman for the wisdom of the ordinary person and the value of life lived close to the land” (James Gunn).