000 02639cam a22003853u 4500
001 71857
003 UtSlPG
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040 _aUtSlPG
041 7 _aen
_2iso639-1
050 4 _aPS
100 1 _aSmith, Richard Rein,
_d1930-
245 1 4 _aThe beast of boredom
264 1 _aSalt Lake City, UT :
_bProject Gutenberg,
_c2023
300 _a1 online resource :
_bmultiple file formats
336 _atext
_btxt
_2rdacontent
337 _acomputer
_bc
_2rdamedia
338 _aonline resource
_bcr
_2rdacarrier
490 1 _aProduced from Infinity April 1958
500 _aRelease date is 2023-10-12
508 _aGreg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
520 _a"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.)
534 _pOriginally published:
_cNew York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc., 1958
653 _aScience fiction
653 _aShort stories
653 _aTime travel -- Fiction
653 _aMartians -- Fiction
653 _aMars (Planet) -- Fiction
700 1 _aKluga, Richard
830 0 _aProduced from Infinity April 1958
856 4 0 _uhttps://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71857
999 _c112583
_d112583