Special Circumstances

A Choice of Gods by Clifford D. Simak

Clifford Simak was born and raised in south-western Wisconsin and throughout his career he has been careful to allow his rural background to permeate his writings in science-fiction: a trait that is, to my knowledge, singular to Simak within the genre of hard-sf.

This book with its wonderfully ambiguous title (can you pick out more than two alternative interpretations?) is not considered to be his best work (most critics pick "Way Station" as the quintessential Simak book), but I highly recommend this book. It has big ideas, strange robots and stranger post-humans. The blurb on the back of the book has a uncharacteristically good synopsis, so I'll just reproduce it here:

One night in July, 2135, there were some eight billion people on Earth. The next morning there were perhaps 400. There was no clue to what had happened to the world's population -- but, over the centuries that followed, still stranger things occurred.

The human lifespan now stretched to millenia instead of decades, and much of the remaining population developed the ability to move at will among the stars -- and abandoned their homeworld for a life in deep space.

Then, after 3000 years, a star-rover discovered what had happened to Earth's original inhabitants -- and that they were coming to reclaim their heritage. Those who had stayed behind knew, with a growing fear, that the mystery of what had been done to Earth and why it was about to be solved ... in a way that would change humanity forever.

If you liked this novel, try "Way Station" as well.

%T A Choice of Gods
%A Clifford D. Simak
%I Ballantine Books
%D 1972
%G ISBN: 0345298683
%P 190
%K science-fiction

Review written: 1999/08/20