Status
Available
Call number
Publication
New York, Putnam (1972)
Description
A handful of humans and a multitude of robots create a new society on a mysteriously abandoned Earth in this breathtaking science fiction classic from one of the genre's acknowledged masters. What if you woke up one morning on Earth... and no one else was there? That is the reality that greeted a handful of humans, including Jason Whitney, his wife Martha, and the remnants of a tribe of Native Americans in the year 2135. Their inexplicable abandonment had unexpected benefits: the eventual development of mental telepathy and other extrasensory powers, inner peace, and best of all, near-immortality. Now, five thousand years later, most of the remaining humans live a tranquil, pastoral life, leaving technological and religious exploration to the masses of robot servants who no longer have humans to serve. But the unexpected reappearance of Jason's brother, who had teleported to the stars many years before, threatens to change everything yet again - for John Whitney is the bearer of startling information about where Earth's population went and why - and the most disturbing news of all: They may finally be coming home again. Nominated for the Hugo Award when it first appeared in print more than forty years ago, Clifford D. Simak's brilliant and thought-provoking A Choice of Gods has lost nothing of its power to astonish and intrigue. A masterwork of speculative fiction, intelligent and ingenious, it is classic Simak, standing tall among the very best science fiction that has ever been written.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member EmScape
Most of the people of Earth have disappeared leaving only a rich, white family, a tribe of Native Americans, and another small group of people who are not really introduced. And, the robots. Of course, the robots who were only ever made to serve humans. The remaining whites, the Whitneys, have
The book is mostly philosophical discussion of the how and why of the universe. Why are we still here? Where’s everyone else? How come we no longer suffer from illness? Where did our new abilities come from and what’s the next evolutionary step? What are the robots building? Is a robot who worships God a blasphemy? Sometimes this can seem heavy, but it is so steeped in narrative, that it’s mostly digestible (although, I spent a lot of time with the book open in my hands, staring off into space, considering just these questions).
The conflict comes when the People who disappeared are located and are threatening to come back. What does that mean for those still on Earth?
All I know is, I’d like to have 8,000 years to live with an abandoned library at my disposal and a fleet of robots to serve my basic needs. (Though, I’m quite sure, this is not the impression the author meant to leave with the reader…)
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developed parapsychic abilities and now travel among the stars without the aid of any machinery. The Natives have returned to the old way of nomadic communion with the Earth. Of the robots, some serve the Whitneys, some are trying to figure out Christianity, and the rest are engaged in the Project. All of the humans now live about 8,000 years and never get sick.The book is mostly philosophical discussion of the how and why of the universe. Why are we still here? Where’s everyone else? How come we no longer suffer from illness? Where did our new abilities come from and what’s the next evolutionary step? What are the robots building? Is a robot who worships God a blasphemy? Sometimes this can seem heavy, but it is so steeped in narrative, that it’s mostly digestible (although, I spent a lot of time with the book open in my hands, staring off into space, considering just these questions).
The conflict comes when the People who disappeared are located and are threatening to come back. What does that mean for those still on Earth?
All I know is, I’d like to have 8,000 years to live with an abandoned library at my disposal and a fleet of robots to serve my basic needs. (Though, I’m quite sure, this is not the impression the author meant to leave with the reader…)
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LibraryThing member grundlecat
Wow! The Grand Master was in rare form on this one. Though if you're looking for space battles and intergalactic wars this is not the book for you. It's a very profound, contemplative book on what the few hundred remaining people do - and become - on Earth after some unknown power suddenly removes
My favorite quote is on page 107 of the Ballantine/Del Rey paperback 1982 printing: "And how much had he and the others lost when they turned their backs on magic? Belief, of course, and there might be some value to belief, although there was, as well, delusion, and did a man want to pay for the value of belief in the coinage of delusion?" A lot of thought went into this book, and I'm very sorry Mr. Simak is no longer with us to continue prodding our brains.
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all the rest of the (then) 8 billion. I actually feel like writing a paper about this book. How weird is that? But this book goes to the core of what the best SF is about: what it really means to be human, is there a cosmic order to things, and where do we fall within it? My favorite quote is on page 107 of the Ballantine/Del Rey paperback 1982 printing: "And how much had he and the others lost when they turned their backs on magic? Belief, of course, and there might be some value to belief, although there was, as well, delusion, and did a man want to pay for the value of belief in the coinage of delusion?" A lot of thought went into this book, and I'm very sorry Mr. Simak is no longer with us to continue prodding our brains.
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LibraryThing member majackson
The plot line: Everyone, except for a handful, disappears from Earth. The few remaining people live for several thousand years and develop telepathy and teleportation.
This story didn’t go anywhere I expected, by starting 50 years after the disappearance, with one of the remaining few starting to
The real tension comes when the Disappeared are discovered and look like they’re returning to Earth.
It’s certainly an intriguing story line. In fact, I see elements of Olaf Stapledon’s “Starmaker” in the musings of the protagonist…and the use of Stapledon’s extended paragraphs. This makes for some occasional stodgy internal dialogue contemplating the purpose of life, religion, existence, the soul: “...in a strange way [the elderly] become sufficient to themselves. They need so very little and they care so very little. They climb the mountain [of years] no one else can see and as they climb the old, once-valued things they’ve carried all their lives tend to drop away and as they climb the higher the knapsack that they carry becomes emptier, but perhaps no less in weight than it had ever been, and the few things that are left in it, they find, with some amusement are those few indispensable belongings which they’ve gathered in a long lifetime of effort and of seeking.”
But fortunately Simak doesn’t overdo it. I can easily see how this story could have been spun out into much more than its almost 200 pages. But the author said what he wanted to say and left it there.
This story didn’t go anywhere I expected, by starting 50 years after the disappearance, with one of the remaining few starting to
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keep a diary. The next surprise was not reading any of the entries until about 5,000 years later. At this point the actual story intersperses some relevant pages of the diary, lending some context to the current action. The current action involves a) the remaining Native Americans, who have returned to their roots and are now in emotional communion with nature—plants and animals; b) one group of robots that are captivated by the concept of “a soul” and are trying to consolidate all remaining religious information into a coherent concept of God/religion/soul; c) another group of robots who are constructing a super-robot to contain all knowledge—and basically come up with the answer to “life, the universe, etc.”; d) the husband and wife who have settled into their lives as the only remnants of a faded technological civilization and are content with a life lived with the aid of those robots that feel a desperate need to serve them; and e) the prodigy of the remaining Anglo-Americans who have teleported to, and settled, other star systems. The real tension comes when the Disappeared are discovered and look like they’re returning to Earth.
It’s certainly an intriguing story line. In fact, I see elements of Olaf Stapledon’s “Starmaker” in the musings of the protagonist…and the use of Stapledon’s extended paragraphs. This makes for some occasional stodgy internal dialogue contemplating the purpose of life, religion, existence, the soul: “...in a strange way [the elderly] become sufficient to themselves. They need so very little and they care so very little. They climb the mountain [of years] no one else can see and as they climb the old, once-valued things they’ve carried all their lives tend to drop away and as they climb the higher the knapsack that they carry becomes emptier, but perhaps no less in weight than it had ever been, and the few things that are left in it, they find, with some amusement are those few indispensable belongings which they’ve gathered in a long lifetime of effort and of seeking.”
But fortunately Simak doesn’t overdo it. I can easily see how this story could have been spun out into much more than its almost 200 pages. But the author said what he wanted to say and left it there.
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LibraryThing member andyray
This fantasy novel gives the reader a choice of an unknowable indifferent entity omniscient and eternal, and a robot-built "super-machine"." Neither of Simak's choices bear a resemblance to my Loving God, the Lord of the Universe, but the premise does entertain.
LibraryThing member helver
Most of the humans from earth are dead. Of the handful that did not die or disappear, there are two groups - Native Americans that have gone back to their roots and the others that have developed a means of transgalactic travel simply using the power of the mind. And, oh by the way, there are the
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robots. Some of the robots have decided that their life's work should be the study of religion - while most are content to service the basic needs of the remaining humans and to work on their project. But there are, in fact, more humans in the galaxy - taken from earth and not killed. And now they want to come home. Show Less
LibraryThing member unclebob53703
Got this because it seemed it would be similar to his City, and on a superficial level it is. It's low key to a fault, very static, almost nothing happens and when something finally does it's over in a couple pages. As usual, the descriptions of the rural setting are lovely, but this one left me
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largely unsatisfied--I think it would have made a better short story. Show Less
LibraryThing member Paul_S
What an unusual book. The set up of humanity being yanked off the planet and put on another where they have to start from scratch (which they indeed do against all odds) would be an interesting settings but this story is about a group of feebleminded people left behind on earth. They manage to
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survive because they are being taken care of by all the benign robots left behind and in time they evolve amazing abilities while the robots embark on a search for the soul and god. Show Less
LibraryThing member MaowangVater
This is a very thought provoking piece of speculative fiction told in short chapters about several different characters living on earth at a time in the distant future when most humans have left the planet. The humans that remain are scattered far from each other and have extraordinary longevity.
Nearby Jason’s stone house is also a small community of robots living and working hard to do what they can to help humans while struggling to keep Christianity from becoming extinct by living a monastic life and pondering theology. Occasionally, a tribe of local indigenous Americas stops by to visit with Jason, and there is a young woman who stops by to make use of his library; she’s been having mystical encounters with an oak tree. Into this woodland setting comes an indigenous pilgrim from the West Coast traveling east compelled by a desire to seek something, but he is unclear about his goal until he encounters the young woman and they both come upon an extraterrestrial alien that looks and acts like a can of squirming worms.
One of Simak’s repeated motifs in his fiction is presenting sentient robots who wonder if they have a soul, and in this late work of his, he provides a possible answer.
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The story’s setting is somewhere in a wooded part of North America. There is a couple of descendants of European Americans living in an old stone house lined with bookshelves and full of books, and one of them, Jason Whitley, is keeping a journal that spans millennia, the reader get to read a few passages some from 2185 and one from 5152. Nearby Jason’s stone house is also a small community of robots living and working hard to do what they can to help humans while struggling to keep Christianity from becoming extinct by living a monastic life and pondering theology. Occasionally, a tribe of local indigenous Americas stops by to visit with Jason, and there is a young woman who stops by to make use of his library; she’s been having mystical encounters with an oak tree. Into this woodland setting comes an indigenous pilgrim from the West Coast traveling east compelled by a desire to seek something, but he is unclear about his goal until he encounters the young woman and they both come upon an extraterrestrial alien that looks and acts like a can of squirming worms.
One of Simak’s repeated motifs in his fiction is presenting sentient robots who wonder if they have a soul, and in this late work of his, he provides a possible answer.
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Subjects
Awards
Hugo Award (Nominee — Novel — 1973)
Original publication date
1972