Clifford D. Simak 17 min read

Marooned and doomed on an uninhabited backwoods planet, con man Cheviot Sherwood has given up on miracles, until a very unusual ship comes down out of the sky.

Clifford D. Simak's 1963 story is a wry, humane AI-and-space-opera tale. Warm, ironic, superbly told. Read it for classic Simak, a cornered rogue's unexpected rescue by an intelligent ship, in a genial story about loneliness, machines, and getting exactly what you wished for.

In its time

Published in 1963, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

17 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Jackson