The Elroom

Sohl, Jerry, 1913-2002Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.5

Word count: 19K words
Chapters: 2

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 Elroom by Jerry SohlAuthor: Sohl, Jerry, 1913-2002,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 29, 2019

Editor's review

The Elroom is a short story by science fiction writer Jerry Sohl, released as an English e-book by Project Gutenberg in 2019. Sohl was active during the golden age of mid-twentieth-century American science fiction magazines; his work often begins in everyday settings before gradually revealing extraordinary premises, making for light, suspenseful reading. This piece is short and serves as an accessible sample of English-language science fiction from the period, suitable for finishing in one or two sittings on a commute or before bed. The English is not especially difficult but carries the flavor of its era; readers may note how it describes space, devices, and characters' psychology, and how early science fiction handled the seam between the unknown and the everyday. As a public-domain e-book, it is better treated as source material or supplementary reading than as a systematic history of science fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to encounter mid-twentieth-century American science fiction through a short original English text
Readers seeking light bilingual or original-language reading material who prefer suspenseful stories
Collectors and researchers interested in Project Gutenberg public-domain e-book resources

Not a good fit for

Science fiction readers looking for a full-length novel or a series with a complete world-building
Beginners whose English reading is not yet proficient and who need sentence-by-sentence annotations

Reading tips

Read through once to grasp the direction of the suspense, then revisit the opening's setup of setting and characters.
Note unfamiliar period expressions separately and look them up after finishing, to avoid frequent interruptions.
Read alongside short stories from contemporary American science fiction magazines to observe common themes and narrative patterns.

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 the Project Gutenberg entry, this is a work by Jerry Sohl: a short English e-text suitable for completing in one or two reading sessions, not something to plan around as a full-length novel.

How difficult is the English?

The original is mid-twentieth-century English-language science fiction. Vocabulary is generally not difficult, but there are period expressions and science fiction terminology. Readers with ordinary English reading ability can get through it with a dictionary; beginners are advised to use annotations or a translation alongside.

Why recommend it as an introductory read?

It is short and tightly structured, quickly showing the typical approach of early science fiction shorts: entering an extraordinary premise from an everyday scene. For readers who want a sense of English-language science fiction of the period, the reading cost is low and it makes an easy springboard to similar works.

Comments

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About the author

Sohl, Jerry, 1913-2002 Author

Jerry Sohl (1913–2002) was an American author of science fiction and suspense, though public information about him is limited and many details of his life remain little known. Five of his works are held in this collection: Brknk's Bounty, The Seventh Order, The Ultroom Error, The Hand, and The Elroom. Judging from their titles and their familiar themes, his writing often centers on technology out of control, unknown forces, and the human condition, and he was skilled at building suspense through tight plotting, combining science-fictional imagination with an atmosphere of suspense. These works show his concern with the ethics of technology and the boundaries of human nature, often using extraordinary situations to probe his characters' choices and fears. Although a fuller account of his life and complete body of work awaits more material, these works still offer readers a window into mid-twentieth-century American genre fiction.