SO BRIGHT THE VISION

Magnum paperback, 1978. Cover artwork by Chris Moore.

Rear cover/synopsis.

CEMETERY WORLD

Berkley Medallion paperback, 1974. Cover artwork by Vincent Di Fate.

COSMIC ENGINEERS

Paperback Library paperback, 1969. Cover artwork by Richard M. Powers.

Rear cover and synopsis.

THEY WALKED LIKE MEN

Macfadden paperback, 1967. Cover artwork by Richard M. Powers.

Rear cover and synopsis.

PROJECT POPE

Sidgewick & Jackson hardback, 1981. Cover illustration by Ian McCaig.

"On the Rim planet fittingly called End of Nothing, a bizarre society of robots and humans toiled for a thousand years to perfect a religion that would create a new and all-embracing faith - no novelty in a galaxy crowded with religions. But one project was hidden from the hordes of pilgrims welcomed at Vatican-17 on End of Nothing. A group of trained human sensitives were sending their minds ranging through all of time and space, gathering information. With that information,a  computer of infinite knowledge, wisdom, and infallibility was being constructed in secret - the ultimate Pope. 

Of the three outsiders allowed residence on End of Nothing, one was tolerated at a distance by Vatican-17, one was welcomed - and one was a threat to be countered. 

Decker hardly mattered. His lifeboat had landed him on the remote planet, and he kept to himself in the wilderness. Neither the human or the robot authorities knew of the unseen companion who whispered constantly in Decker's mind. 

Dr Jason Tennyson had fled the political furies of his homeworld. Here, Vatican-17's physician had died, and Tennyson's skills were desperately needed and well rewarded. 

Jill Roberts was a journalist in quest of a sensational story she had scented. Vatican-17 knew she could not be allowed to break the news of Project Pope before it was completed - and debated two possible ways of stopping her. 

Then one of the Searcher sensitives threw Vatican-17 into turmoil, threatening its very existence and involving the three outsides in a sudden power struggle between human and robot. 

Drifting in unsuspected dimensions, the woman had encountered Heaven!"

SPECIAL DELIVERANCE

Methuen paperback, 1984. Cover illustration: Chris Moore.

"They were six ill-assorted players of the strangest game ever devised. Set on a strange planet, they knew neither its rules or its aim. There was the giant blue cube, the ruined city, the singing tower, the roaring wall of Chaos - all deadly dangerous, all part of the challenge that the unwilling travellers must confront. But what was it all for - and would they survive to find out?"

TIME AND AGAIN

Penguin SF paperback, 1967. Cover design by Alan Aldridge.

"Asher Sutton has a book in his hands - a book that would change the history of the galaxy, a book by himself...that he had never written. Or had he? Or would he? Simak traces this dazzling paradox along paths of terror and through times past, present and far into the distant future..."

THE AUTUMN LAND AND OTHER STORIES

Mandarin paperback, 1990. Cover artist uncredited.

"SIX OF THE BEST FROM SIMAK COUNTRY 

THE AUTUMN LAND 

The Mellow Chimerical county of perpetual autumn where time stands still and its people come as invisibly and unaccountably as they disappear. 

COURTESY 

The basic quality so easy to overlook among the rough and tiny stone-age people so far from Earth. 

RULE 18 

The essential regulation that seems to have stopped Earth from winning the interplanetary football game for the last 67 years. 

JACKPOT 

Buccaneering earthlings think they have hit it when they stumble across the greatest treasure trove in the galaxy. 

CONTRAPTION 

A curiously friendly object stuck in a blackberry bush trades so much good fortune for a poor orphan's pocketknife. 

GLEANERS 

A commercial time-travel organisation that can arrange an interview with Napoleon has a problem with employees who keep defecting."

THE NIGHT OF PUUDLY

NEL/Four Square paperback, Feb 1968. Cover artist uncredited.

"The Puudly was a dangerous thing, not only because it was strong and quick, but because it was intelligent. 

It reasoned and it planned and schemed. It could talk, though not as a human talks...Probably better than a human ever could. For it could not only talk words, but it could talk emotions.

It lured its victims to it by the thoughts it put in their minds; it held them entranced with dreams and visions until it slit their throats. 

It would not hunt for hunger, not the sheer madness of the kill, but because of the compelling conviction that no Puudly would be safe until Earth was wiped clean of life."

Contents:

The Night Of The Puudly

Crying Jag

Instalment Plan

Condition Of Employment

Project Mastodon.

CITY

Methuen paperback, 1988. Cover illustration: Nick Rogers.

"Jenkins was a robot. He was built to be the perfect worker, tireless and uncomplaining, but quite unexpectedly he also became a close companion to generation after generation of his owners as the human race matured, moved beyond the confines of its one tiny planet, and eventually changed beyond all recognition. And then, because he was a good and dutiful servant, Jenkins went on to serve Earth's inheritors.... 

Here is a masterful tale of an Earth overrun by ants, a series of parallel worlds ruled by dogs, and a Jupiter where the human race finds its Golden Age - if human it could still be called."

ENCHANTED PILGRIMAGE

Fontana SF paperback, 1977. Cover illustration by Colin Hay.

"The Enchanted Pilgrimage is a journey back through the centuries - to the present, in an alternate world where the fierce stranglehold of the medieval church has never lost its grip. 

It is a world of fear and repression, where the powers of the inquisition are unquestioned. It is a world from which a young man seeks escape...and finds it in the musty legend of the Wasteland, the mythic haunt of the Old Ones. But such escape is not tolerated, and the consequences are swift and violent. 

Yet out in the drifting mists and fog of the marshes there are those who are willing to help the traveller with his quest, willing to give him the mighty weapon which will save him from the terror of the inquisition, witches and hellhounds which he will face in the lands beyond."

THE WEREWOLF PRINCIPLE

Berkley Medallion paperback, June 1968. Cover by
Richard M. Powers.

"BACK FROM THE STARS 

Andrew Blake, found frozen in a space capsule after 200 years on a wandering asteroid, is brought back to a strangely different Earth. 

In his search for identity he suddenly becomes frighteningly aware of two alien beings that lurk within his body. With this discovery as a clue to his origin, Blake gradually unearths the mystery-shrouded "Werewolf Principle" - a scientific theory buried in the past that promises startling consequences for the future..."

BEST SCIENCE FICTION STORIES OF CLIFFORD D. SIMAK

Paperback Library paperback, first printing, 1972. Cover artist
uncredited, possibly Bob Pepper? (thanks: Egrove).

"A man's discovery of the truth about his travelling companions. A shipboard romance involving a fickle female and three unresponsive crewmen. A young man's dissatisfaction with his new job. A drunken evening that turns into one continuous lost weekend. These are some of the ordinary events that take on quite extraordinary dimensions in these seven unusual takes by a master of science fiction. Highly original and perceptive, each of the stories examines the glamor and mystery of existence and the very real possibilities that lie within the realm of future experience. Together they show Clifford Simak at his entertaining and thought-provoking best."

Contents:

Founding Father
Immigrant
New Folks' Home
Crying Jag
All The Traps Of Earth
Lulu
Neighbor