Laboratory
Tags
Summary
Editor's review
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Fans of short science fiction who want to finish a complete story quickly
- English learners looking for short, plot-driven original texts
- Readers and researchers interested in short fiction from the golden age of American science fiction
- Commuters or fragmented-time readers who prefer to finish in one sitting
Not a good fit for
- Readers who prefer long-form worldbuilding and complex character arcs
- Readers expecting rigorous scientific argument or hard science fiction detail
- Beginners unfamiliar with mid-twentieth-century English usage
Reading tips
- Read it straight through first, then return to the clues and twist set up at the beginning
- After reading, look into Bixby's background in short fiction to understand the genre context
- Mark unfamiliar period expressions, infer from context, then check them
- Read alongside short science fiction of the same era and compare treatments of the laboratory theme
About the publisher
Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.
Contents
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FAQ
Is this novel a full-length work or a short story?
Can I understand it without a background in science fiction?
Why is this story available as a public-domain ebook?
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About the author
Jerome Bixby (1923–1998) was an American science fiction writer, though public information about him is limited. Nine of his works are held in this collection, including The Draw, Where There's Hope, The God-Plllnk, Zen, The Holes Around Mars, Little Boy, Laboratory and Our Town. Judging from these titles, he wrote mainly short science fiction, often building his imaginative premises around space exploration, strange devices and everyday settings. His titles tend to carry an ironic or suspenseful edge, and his narratives are concise, frequently closing with an unexpected twist. Among his stories, It's a Good Life became widely known through its television adaptation, but since that piece is not included here, it is not discussed further. On the whole, Bixby belonged to the mid-twentieth-century circle of American short science fiction writers; his output was modest, yet he was noted for ingenious conceptions and clean, brisk storytelling, and he exerted some influence on later short science fiction.
