Clifford D. Simak. Our Children’s Children (1974)

    Clifford D. Simak. Our Children’s Children (1974) The what-if: Suppose our descendants 500 years in the future come back, trying to escape aliens that are killing them off. Simak plots a movie-like story, focussing on the US government’s response, with meanwhile-elsewhere scenes to keep us up to date on the overall picture. The structure of the novel, the style, and the characterisation are strictly pulp, but well done. The story has a cop-out ending: the monsters have somehow found a way to move in time also, and do so whenever threatened. So they disappear. Simak wrote himself into a corner, making the monsters such efficient killing machines that some such resolution was the only way out. With careful development of the characters and some of the subplots, the book would make a good B movie. ** (2008)