THE CITY AT WORLD’S END [The Two Thousand Centuries] by Edmond Hamilton

"The City at World's End finds the pleasant little American city of Middletown victim to the first punch of an atomic war, a super-hydrogen bomb which explodes a thousand yards above the city. Instead of blowing Middletown to smithereens, the blast blows it right off the map—to somewhere else.

"First there is the new thin coldness of the air, the blazing corona and dullness of the sun, the visibility of the stars in high daylight. Then comes the inhabitants' terrifying discovery that Middletown is a twentieth-century oasis of paved streets and houses and shops and trees and gardens—in a desolate brown world without trees, without water, apparently without life, in unimaginably far-distant future Earth which lies abandoned and dying. To survive, the citizens of Middletown realize they will have to abandon their city, migrate to the alien city beyond the hills, and try to master the secrets of its long-abandoned, incredibly advanced machinery.

"But the people of old Earth face their greatest crisis when they receive a communication from their own descendants, who have formed a Galactic Empire among the stars and long since evacuated Earth as uninhabitable for humans and have passed laws that it is to be preserved as a museum world and never repopulated again. If they are live in this future world, the men and women of Middletown will have to agree to leave Earth and migrate among the stars.

"The City at World's End is a human story of the reactions of men and women and boys and girls, people like you, suddenly thrust into an unprecedented situation. In its suspense, its intense humanity, its unexpected denouement, it is perhaps Mr. Edmond Hamilton's finest novel. We are sure you will agree. A most impressive example of understatement in science fiction. The author has made a largely successful effort to keep the major components of his story within the bounds of the human. Quite an accomplishment in view of the cosmic nature of the plot."
—Galaxy Magazine

Part of Hamilton's epic future history chronicles, The Two Thousand Centuries.