The beast of boredom by Richard Rein Smith
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"The Beast of Boredom" by Richard R. Smith is a science fiction short story written in the mid-20th century. The narrative explores themes of time travel and psychological tension through the lens of a man's encounter with an alien artifact that traps him in a repeating ten-minute cycle. This fascinating work examines the psychological effects of confinement and boredom, ultimately illustrating how the human mind wrestles with the concept of time and
the overwhelming weight of existence. The story centers around a protagonist who, after a violent encounter with a Martian, brings back a mysterious globe embedded with precious jewels, which he soon discovers to be a time trap. As he removes one of the jewels, he inadvertently triggers a mechanism that confines him to relive the same ten minutes perpetually. Throughout the story, he fights against the encroaching madness brought upon by his unchanging reality, seeking ways to escape the monotony. His desperate attempts lead him to interact with a woman in the neighboring apartment, injecting moments of excitement into his dreary existence. Ultimately, however, he realizes that the time trap is not merely an inconvenience but rather a torturous imprisonment that could last for centuries, culminating in an intense psychological breakdown as he grapples with the eternal burden of an ever-expanding memory. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
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About this eBook
| Author | Smith, Richard Rein, 1930- |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Kluga, Richard |
| Title | The beast of boredom |
| Original Publication | New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc., 1958. |
| Series Title | Produced from Infinity April 1958 |
| Credits | Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net |
| Reading Level | Reading ease score: 71.5 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Time travel -- Fiction |
| Subject | Martians -- Fiction |
| Subject | Mars (Planet) -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| eBook-No. | 71857 |
| ISBN (HTML) | 979-8-238-71857-6 |
| Release Date | Oct 12, 2023 |
| Copyright | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 183 downloads in the last 30 days. |
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