Our Children's Children

Clifford D. Simak

Language: English

Publisher: DAW

Published: Nov 2, 1983

Description:

An adventure of the near future - brought on by a catastrophe in the far future. On a summer's day like any other, holes appeared in the air and people from nowhere walked through them into our world. They came, and they kept coming, until they numbered in the millions. They said they came from the future - they were our children's children. They said there was trouble "up there". They knew they were a terrible burden on our economy, and all, but - well, we couldn't just let them starve, could we? Then more facts became apparent.The "holes in the air" were time tunnels, one-way tunnels from the future. The trouble up there was in the form of alien creatures - ravening beasts with teeth, claws, and tentacles, that reproduced like bacteria and were intelligent.They were utterly uncontrollable and so our children's children fled through the time tunnels, which, they claimed, were securely guarded. The beasts, whatever or whoever they were, couldn't get through. So they claimed. But then somebody up there slipped and the beasts were abroad.

An adventure of the near future - brought on by a catastrophe in the far future. On a summer's day like any other, holes appeared in the air and people from nowhere walked through them into our world.

They came, and they kept coming, until they numbered in the millions. They said they came from the future - they were our children's children. They said there was trouble "up there". They knew they were a terrible burden on our economy, and all, but - well, we couldn't just let them starve, could we?

Then more facts became apparent.The "holes in the air" were time tunnels, one-way tunnels from the future. The trouble up there was in the form of alien creatures - ravening beasts with teeth, claws, and tentacles, that reproduced like bacteria and were intelligent.They were utterly uncontrollable and so our children's children fled through the time tunnels, which, they claimed, were securely guarded. The beasts, whatever or whoever they were, couldn't get through. So they claimed.

But then somebody up there slipped and the beasts were abroad.

**

Review

Praise for Clifford D. Simak
“One of the best-loved authors in SF.” —Publishers Weekly

“Just about any work by Simak deserves to be considered a classic.” —SFBook.com

“To read science fiction is to read Simak. The reader who does not like Simak stories does not like science fiction at all.” —Robert A. Heinlein

About the Author

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.