Skirmish

The Big Front Yard is the best (in my subjective opinion) SF short story ever! Skirmish is way up there, too! Mr. Simak is a great writer and describer of human idiosyncracies. He represents an alternative to "in-your-face" factoid reporting, to the less-than-subtle writers so prevalent in this day and age of laxity in education. For more in this vein, read Kornbluth's "The Marching Morons" and "The Space Merchants" -- more thoughtful Speculative Fiction (a/k/a SF) from one of the most thoughtful of authors. Luckily for us, Mr. Simak lived a long, full life; Mr. Kornbluth, however, left this world in his 30s, way before his time!