"The Big Front Yard" is a science fiction short story by American writer Clifford D. Simak which won a 1959 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.

[2] The story is about the conversion of an ordinary house into an interplanetary portal or stargate by mysterious alien beings who apparently have taken up the task of exploring space for habitable planets and connecting them to each other, thus allowing civilizations to swap ideas easily.

A little exploration in the desert reveals the existence of another similar house which opens to a rainy planet and some spaceships identical to the one unearthed in the backyard sitting in launch cradles next to some other empty launch cradles, implying several other similar houses.

The story ends with the arrival of some aliens of either the desert planet or one of those connected to it, who are eager to trade ideas with the new member of the universal "planet-network".

More detail on the story's publication history can be found at its listing in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (for which see the External Links section below).