The Call From Beyond: Secrets At The Edge Of Space

Frederick West is running from a future chosen for him. Branded a mutant because his mind works faster than it should, he escapes to the one place no one is supposed to go—Pluto. What he finds there is stranger than anything he left behind: vanished scientists, impossible creatures, a mysterious singer whose voice has captivated Earth, and a doorway to somewhere beyond the known universe.

The deeper West goes, the more dangerous the abandoned Pluto experiment becomes. Men once sent there to improve the human race have discovered something far more powerful, and their plans are already reaching across the Solar System. West came looking for a place to disappear. Instead, he may be the only man who can stop what has already begun.

Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) spent more than five decades writing science fiction while also building a long career in journalism. His first published story, “The World of the Red Sun,” appeared in Wonder Stories in 1931, and his fiction became a familiar presence in Astounding Science-Fiction. His best-known works include City, Way Station, Time and Again, and The Goblin Reservation. Way Station won the 1964 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and Simak was named the third SFWA Grand Master in 1977.

In The Call From Beyond, Simak sends his hero to Pluto and then pushes beyond the familiar boundaries of space travel. Mutants, experimental hormones, telepathy, alien creatures, and a machine capable of opening another universe collide in a story that keeps getting stranger as West discovers what the scientists have been hiding.