“City” by Clifford Simak is a science fiction classic whose echoes can be heard in numerous books and movies over the years. Originally published as short stories in science fiction magazines, it was later bundled together with introductions to each chapter with talking dogs literally sitting around a campfire and debating whether man or cities ever really existed or if the stories were simply allegories not to be taken too literally. An epilogue was eventually added. The novel, as you could now call it, was published and republished countless times with numerous book covers.
Although it falls into the category of science fiction with robots and space travel, it is primarily thoughtful and philosophical in outlook.
The story starts out with people now living in the countryside, taking private planes and helicopters to work if need be. The cities have been largely abandoned and the decaying buildings are housing squatters. Little by little, people, now served by automatic machines and eventually robots have less and less to do with each other. The result, of course, is agoraphobia where people are unable to leave their homes even if the future of civilization is at stake.
Moreover, people have been leaving Earth for Jupiter where they are transformed into Lopers, who have no desire to ever return, having found satisfaction in the new beings they have become. Left behind are the dogs, who have been taught to talk and can communicate with each other and who teach other animals. Also left behind are the robots and some are wild robots. And the ants who, since their heated anthills no longer cause them to hibernate, are growing in intellectual ability and piece by piece building a building that threatens to cover the world.
But the main story is the question of whether the human race has stagnated and been surpassed by all manner of creatures whose intellectual curiosity has not been sated.
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