The Drug

C. C. MacAppProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 27K words
Chapters: 3

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The Drug by C. C. MacAppAuthor: MacApp, C. C., 1917-1971,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 21, 2016

Editor's review

The Drug is a short English-language work by C. C. MacApp, available in the Project Gutenberg public-domain ebook collection. MacApp was active in mid-twentieth-century science fiction and fantasy magazines, and his work often unfolds speculative premises within a compact length. This book is short and moderate in language difficulty, suitable as an introduction or next step for reading English originals. Readers can finish the whole piece in a single commute or an afternoon and get a feel for the narrative pacing and imagination of early genre fiction. As a public-domain ebook, it is free to obtain and reread, and it works well for extensive reading practice in English study, short-story analysis in a literature class, or browsing mid-twentieth-century English-language genre writing as reference material for science fiction fans. Note that this is not a long, ambitious work and comes without an introduction or notes, so readers need to orient themselves to the background on their own.

Who it's for

A good fit for

English learners who want to practice extensive reading with short English originals
Readers interested in mid-twentieth-century English-language genre literature
Teachers who need free public-domain texts for short-story analysis in class
Readers who want to finish a story during a commute or in spare moments

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a full-length, fully built world and deep character development
Beginning readers who need a Chinese translation or detailed notes
Readers who prefer contemporary science fiction styles and fast-paced storytelling

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the plot, then revisit key passages to sort out characters and premises.
When you hit unfamiliar words, guess from context first, then look them up and note them after finishing.
Read alongside other public-domain short stories to compare how genre writing of the same period worked.
After reading, write a hundred-word English summary to check whether you grasped the core premise.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

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.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a short story?

According to Project Gutenberg's listing, this is a relatively short work that can be finished in one or two sittings. It is not a long, ambitious work, so it is not suited to readers expecting a complex world and multiple storylines.

How difficult is the English? Is it suitable for beginners?

The work is in the original English, short and relatively focused in structure, so readers with basic vocabulary and grammar can try it. But the book has no notes or translation, and readers with no foundation at all may struggle; using a dictionary or reading a Chinese summary before the original is recommended.

Why is this book available for free?

The book is released by Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg was an early provider of free ebooks, founded by Michael Hart in 1971, dedicated to compiling and offering public-domain electronic texts, so readers can read and download it for free.

Do I need to know the author's background before reading?

Not necessarily. You can grasp the story by reading the original directly. But if you want to understand the era's context, briefly learning about the writing habits of mid-twentieth-century English-language genre magazines before entering the text will make its narrative choices easier to appreciate.

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About the author

C. C. MacApp Author · American · 1917–1971

C. C. MacApp (1917–1971), whose real name was Carroll Mather Capps, was an American science fiction writer. After retiring from work due to illness, he began publishing around 1960 and wrote for magazines such as Worlds of If over many years, steadily producing work for the pulp science fiction market of the 1960s. His fiction often draws on alien invasion and space opera, with tight plotting, bold imagination, and a distinct flavor of genre entertainment. His representative works include Omha Abides, Worlds of the Wall, and Recall Not Earth, and his novella The Mercurymen was nominated for the Nebula Award. Four of his works are held in the collection, including A Guest of Ganymede, Tulan, And All the Earth a Grave, and The Drug; classification information is limited, and public material on him is also scarce, leaving some biographical details to be confirmed. He was also a longtime patron of the chess world in San Francisco.