Just Finished Rereading City by Clifford Simak

City is a 1952 science fiction novel written by acclaimed writer Clifford Simak (1904-88), one of my favorites and someone whom I've read from back in my childhood.  I read City five years ago...click HERE to read my lengthier review on this blog from back then.  This novel is more or less a connected series of related short stories, two of which, Huddling Place and Desertion, I enjoyed and stand well as classics on their own: click on those titles to read further reviews from me.  The premise of City, while injecting a diversity of creative themes like intelligent and talking dogs, very sophisticated and feeling robots, the possibility transfer of identity between bodies, psychic mutant humans, other dimensions of reality, intelligent indigenous Martians and a spreading creed of nonviolence, is simple enough: much of it was written during World War II, with humanity presented as incurably violent and destructive, ultimately enemy to what is good in the universe.  The robot Jenkins, who served the Webster family for generations, is the unifying character in the novel, and who deliberates at crucial moments on the fate of just about all life on Earth...including man.  Simak wrote an epilogue to City in 1973 that has been included in later editions as a fitting conclusion to it all.  I loved the dialogue and personalities of this book's various characters, be they human, robot, animal or alien...I've always sensed an endearing tenderness in Simak's writing and an earnest attempt to empathize with the other guy's point of view: that's a virtue sadly lacking in today's "double-down" culture.  If you can pick up a copy of City, I recommend it.  If none are available, you can listen to the audiobook version on YouTube...