Everlasting products have started to be released onto the world market and at a price that vastly undercuts their shorter lived rivals. At first the products were small – light bulbs, cigarette lighters, razor blades – but when the mysterious corporation behind these products expands and starts to produce everlasting cars, and modular houses and then clothing for ridiculously low prices, businessmen begin to see this as a deliberate attack on the world's economy.

Soon afterwards more and more people begin to see these as threats to their livelihoods and violence against these and their mysterious manufacturers begins to start.

Jay Vickers is a writer. He is approached by a businessman to write propaganda material to help traditional industries fight the infiltration of these products. But Vickers declines and sets off on his own personal quest to discover if there is any truth in a memory he has from his childhood of a kind of fairyland, and whether this has any connection to what is happening in the world.

Clifford Simak has one of the easiest to read writing styles I have ever read. His plotlines are always presented in a very straightforward manner, not obscuring the narrative in excess background detail or overly elaborate phrasing.

This might not be one of Simak's best but it of a good standard and thoroughly enjoyable.