I honestly haven’t been ignoring these Retro Hugo posts.  I’ve just been swamped. Trying to coordinate labs for four different courses plus teach a lecture, all in online format, is a bit time consuming. I’ve been making videos of myself lecturing to empty rooms or collecting data for labs and posting the videos to YouTube. (No, I won’t provide links.) I read this story over a week ago. I’ve just been too brain dead to get it written. Since Worldcon is in two weeks, I doubt I’ll get all of the nominees read. But I’m going to give it the ol’ college try.

“Huddling Place” is the second story that made up the mosaic novel City. It was first published in the July 1944 issue of Astounding. It is currently available in City or No Life of Their Own.

The tale concerns Jerome A. Webster, now the patriarch of the Webster family following the death of his father. There’s not much of a family left. Just he and his son. A once proud and successful line is dying, with only their faithful robot servants to remember their achievements within a few more years.

Jerome has noticed something. Agoraphobia or something very much like it is starting to spread among mankind. It seems to hit people around middle age, a desire to stay home and not venture out.

Jerome is a doctor who wrote a groundbreaking book on Martian brain physiology. The Martians have made an exact science out of philosophy. A Martian friend of Jerome has made a major breakthrough in philosophy, something that will change the history of both Mars and Earth. Only the Martian has been injured before he can share the details of his breakthrough and needs Jerome’s help. Jerome has to return to Mars.

Jerome argues against it, and against all the powerful people who contact him. He reluctantly agrees to try.

Clifford D. Simak

Sometimes a faithful robot servant can be a little too faithful…

This was a dark and depressing story, told as only Simak can tell it. I liked it a lot in spite of the overall depressing tone.

There is one more story left on the final ballot for short story, and that’s “Desertion”, another story that went into City.  It’s not the next story in the series, though.  That would be “Census”. I’m going to read it first, and once I’m done with the Retro Hugos reread the remaining stories in City.