Simak's distinguished career as a science fiction writer spanned 50 years; he has been called the dean of science fiction writers. His first story, "The World of the Red Sun," was published in 1931, in the early years of the development of the genre. Simak studied journalism and worked as a reporter, but his main love was always science fiction. He often used, in fantasy form, his own boyhood Wisconsin landscape. The critic Thomas D. Clareson notes that, "Simak seems to have realized that, aesthetically, the use of the village-rural midwestern setting not only ties his work to the main body of American fiction but also helps his reader to make the necessary transition from a familiar, everyday world to the unknown world or worlds of science fiction."
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