The Age of Ants

This cycle of stories is written in a style so sparse and economic that it's hard to imagine the action covers tens of thousands of years, and yet Simak's City blasts ahead into an unimaginably distant future where Man is long gone and robots and genetically modified dogs are all that remain of his legacy. Faulty Landscape recommended this and after I began the first tale I remembered vividly one of my parents' Xmas parties from the mid-eighties where I was talking to one of their Westinghouse co-workers who'd also recommended City. Reading it gave me a powerful nostalgia for old Asimov and R. Daneel Olivaw and those other great books and characters and worlds visited as a teen. I blew through it in a couple hours and was left tingling with an odd remorse--there's too much good shit to read/watch/listen to and not nearly enough free time to do so.