The World That Couldn't Be
5/5
()
About this ebook
Clifford D. Simak
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.
Read more from Clifford D. Simak
City Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5They Walked Like Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Way Station Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Heritage of Stars Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Time and Again Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ring Around the Sun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Visitors Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5All Flesh Is Grass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why Call Them Back from Heaven? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Mastodonia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enchanted Pilgrimage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Goblin Reservation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Highway of Eternity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Choice of Gods Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship of the Talisman Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Where the Evil Dwells Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Time Is the Simplest Thing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Special Deliverance Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Project Pope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Werewolf Principle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cemetery World and Destiny Doll Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEmpire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Out of Their Minds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Trouble with Tycho and Cosmic Engineers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Science Fiction Novel Super Pack No. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOur Children's Children Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shakespeare's Planet Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Street That Wasn't There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to The World That Couldn't Be
Related ebooks
Out of Their Minds Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Street That Wasn't There Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Video Star (Voice of the Whirlwind) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Message from Mars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecond Childhood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDusty Zebra: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Space Opera: All New Stories of Science Fiction Adventure Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Stone That Never Came Down Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Starrigger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragon Space: A Star Rigger Omnibus Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Project Mastodon Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lazarus Curiosity: Michael Magister & Phoebe Le Breton, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Vulcan's Hammer Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Ghost of a Model T: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Maze of Stars Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Exiles' Escape Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Seas of Ernathe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Deathworld Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Widowmaker Series Volume Two: The Widowmaker Unleashed * A Gathering of Widowmakers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRetief: The Yillian Way Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fantastic Stories Presents the Planet Stories Super Pack Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNew Folks' Home: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Angels' Keep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Planet explorer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Science Fiction Novel Super Pack No. 1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHellhounds of the Cosmos Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Hugo Stories -- Volume 2: The Hugo Stories, #2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsProject Pope Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Science Fiction For You
Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Am Legend Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cryptonomicon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stories of Ray Bradbury Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Shift: Book Two of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Firestarter Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roadside Picnic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The World That Couldn't Be
2 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
The World That Couldn't Be - Clifford D. Simak
I
The tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows the vua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the west side of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off into the bush—and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickled down into the great pug marks, sunk deep into the finely cultivated loam.
Somewhere a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in one of the thorn-choked ravines, a choir of chatterers was clicking through a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of a day. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the ground and the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leaves of the hula-trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with a million flashing mirrors.
Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face.
No, mister,
pleaded Zikkara, the native foreman of the farm. You cannot do it, mister. You do not hunt a Cytha.
The hell I don't,
said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not the native tongue.
He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grass interspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasional groves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with infrequent waterholes.
It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn't take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its pre-dawn feeding and he'd overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.
Dangerous,
Zikkara pointed out. No one hunts the Cytha.
I do,
Duncan said, speaking now in the native language. I hunt anything that damages my crop. A few nights more of this and there would be nothing left.
*
Jamming the bandanna back into his pocket, he tilted his hat lower across his eyes against the sun.
"It might be a long chase, mister. It is the skun season now. If you were caught out there...."
Now listen,
Duncan told it sharply. Before I came, you'd feast one day, then starve for days on end; but now you eat each day. And you like the doctoring. Before, when you got sick, you died. Now you get sick, I doctor you, and you live. You like staying in one place, instead of wandering all around.
Mister, we like all this,
said Zikkara, but we do not hunt the Cytha.
If we do not hunt the Cytha, we lose all this,
Duncan pointed out. If I don't make a crop, I'm licked. I'll have to go away. Then what happens to you?
We will grow the corn ourselves.
That's a laugh,
said Duncan, and you know it is. If I didn't kick your backsides all day long, you wouldn't do a lick of work. If I leave, you go back to the bush. Now let's go and get that Cytha.
But it is such a little one, mister! It is such a young one! It is scarcely worth the trouble. It would be a shame to kill it.
Probably just slightly smaller than a horse, thought Duncan, watching the native closely.
It's scared, he told himself. It's scared dry and spitless.
Besides, it must have been most hungry. Surely, mister, even a Cytha has the right to eat.
Not from my crop,
said Duncan savagely. "You know why we grow the vua, don't you? You know it is great medicine. The berries that it grows cures those who are sick inside their heads. My people need that medicine—need it very badly. And what is more, out there— he swept his arm toward the sky—
out there they pay very much for it."
But, mister....
I tell you this,
said Duncan gently, you either dig me up a bush-runner to do the tracking for me or you can all get out, the kit and caboodle of you. I can get other tribes to work the farm.
No, mister!
Zikkara screamed in desperation.
"You have