Ten stories of mystery and imagination in a world that cannot
be-including the never-before-published "I Had No Head and My Eyes Were
Floating Way Up in the Air," originally written for Harlan Ellison's The
Last Dangerous Visions (TM) People work. Folk play. That is the way it
has been in this country as long as Sam can remember. He is happy, and
he understands that this is the way it should be. People are bigger than
folk. They are stronger. They do not need food or water. They do not
need the warmth of a fire. All they need is a job to do and a blacksmith
to fix them when they break. The people work so the folk can drink their
moonshine, fish a little, throw a horseshoe. But when Sam starts to
wonder about why the world is this way, his life will never be the same.
Along with the other stories in this collection, "I Am Crying All
Inside" is a compact marvel: a picture of an impossible reality that is
not so different from our own. Each story includes an introduction by
David W. Wixon, literary executor of the Clifford D. Simak estate and
editor of this ebook. "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 "Like Olaf Stapledon and SF's later mystics,
Simak could dream on a grand scale. . . . Thoreau or Wordsworth would
feel at home in his isolated houses rooted in natural landscapes."
-Locus "Simak is the most underrated great science fiction writer alive,
and has never written a bad book." -Theodore Sturgeon "I read
[Simak's] stories with particular attention, and I couldn't help but
notice the simplicity and directness of the writing-the utter clarity of
it. I made up my mind to imitate it, and I labored over the years to
make my writing simpler, clearer, more uncluttered, to present my scenes
on a bare stage." -Isaac Asimov "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 During his fifty-five-year career, Clifford D.
Simak produced some of the most iconic science fiction stories ever
written. Born in 1904 on a farm in southwestern Wisconsin, Simak got a
job at a small-town newspaper in 1929 and eventually became news editor
of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, writing fiction in his spare time.
Simak was best known for the book City, a reaction to the horrors of
World War II, and for his novel Way Station. In 1953 City was awarded
the International Fantasy Award, and in following years, Simak won three
Hugo Awards and a Nebula Award. In 1977 he became the third Grand Master
of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and before his
death in 1988, he was named one of three inaugural winners of the Horror
Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement.
