The Very Black

Dean EvansProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

2.8

Word count: 33K words
Chapters: 4

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 Very Black by Dean EvansAuthor: Evans, Dean,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Mar 10, 2010

Editor's review

The Very Black is a short work by Dean Evans, made available as a free eBook by Project Gutenberg and classified under American and Canadian literature. Judging from its title and genre context, it belongs to the mid-twentieth-century pulp-magazine tradition of science fiction and fantasy short stories: brief, quick to establish momentum, built around a strange premise or concept, and often ending with a twist or a cold, stark note. The value of such work lies not in depth of character but in the freshness of the concept and the efficiency of the short-story structure, making it a useful sample of the flavor of genre magazines of the period. Given the limited available information, readers should not approach it expecting a long epic but should treat it as a short read of some ten to thirty minutes, attending to how the author builds suspense and drives the turn with very few words. For readers studying public-domain electronic texts or doing extensive reading of English short stories, it also offers a light entry point.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want to finish a genre short story in a short time
Readers interested in mid-twentieth-century magazine science fiction and fantasy
Intermediate learners doing extensive English short-story reading to build language intuition
Researchers interested in public-domain texts from Project Gutenberg

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting long-form character growth and complex plots
Readers who prefer contemporary science fiction and cutting-edge premises
Readers seeking detailed author background and scholarly materials

Reading tips

Read it in one sitting, first sensing the suspense rhythm of the short story, then revisiting the foreshadowing at the opening.
While reading, note how the title's imagery corresponds to specific passages and make brief annotations.
For extensive English reading, do not look up every word; grasp the plot first, then organize key vocabulary.
Read it alongside other Project Gutenberg short stories from the same batch and compare common opening conventions of magazine science fiction.

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

About how long does this work take to read?

As a magazine-style short story, it is fairly short: about ten to twenty minutes in Chinese, while English reading depends on proficiency, usually about half an hour for one full pass.

Is there any other material available on the author Dean Evans?

The available information gives only the author's name and work details, with no detailed biography. It is advisable to focus on the text itself rather than relying on the author's biographical background to understand this short story.

Is it suitable as material for intensive English reading?

It can serve as light intensive reading material: short, with a complete structure, convenient for analyzing the opening, the turn, and the ending. However, it contains many period expressions, so a dictionary is recommended and overall plot comprehension should come first.

Comments

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About the author

Dean Evans Author · American · 1911–1963

Dean Evans (1911–1963) was a pen name used by an American writer of popular fiction, whose real name was George F. Krull. Public information about the man himself is limited, and his writing career was concentrated mainly in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Between 1948 and 1954, he published detective and science fiction short stories in popular magazines such as Black Mask and Galaxy Science Fiction, works that combine the tight pacing of genre fiction with a sense of the fantastic. His representative works include The Very Black, The Furious Rose, The Moons of Mars, and Not a Creature Was Stirring. His short stories generally revolve around suspense and science-fictional imagination, serving the reading tastes of the mass magazines popular at the time, and he was one of the many genre writers of that era.