When the Mountain Shook

Robert Harwood AbernathyProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.0

Word count: 31K 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.When the Mountain Shook by Robert AbernathyAuthor: Abernathy, Robert, 1924-1990,Language: English, Class: PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature, Release Date: Jun 16, 2010

Editor's review

"When the Mountain Shook" is a science fiction short story by Robert Abernathy, reissued in digital form by Project Gutenberg. Abernathy was active in mid-twentieth-century science fiction magazines, and his work often sets up an unsettling premise with economical prose before resolving the plot swiftly within a limited space. This story centers on the concrete event of a shaking mountain, creating a reading experience that combines suspense with genre pleasure; the language is direct, the pace brisk, and there is almost no redundant exposition. Its strength lies in the small revealing the large: an anomalous phenomenon drives the characters' reactions and in turn reflects on the unknown and on order. It suits a single sitting on a commute or before bed, and also serves as a pace model for short science fiction writing. While reading, note how the author builds tension with a few details, and how the ending leaves an aftertaste without over-explaining; this restraint is the typical charm of old-school magazine science fiction.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who enjoy suspenseful, fast-paced science fiction short stories
Writers who want to study the narrative structure of old-school magazine science fiction
Readers who need short English materials for reading practice

Not a good fit for

Hard science fiction fans who want a complete world and complex settings
Readers who prefer slow-paced literary exposition
Beginners unfamiliar with mid-twentieth-century English usage

Reading tips

Read through the plot the first time; on the second pass, mark the specific words and sentences the author uses to build tension.
After finishing, summarize the cause and effect of the events in three sentences to test how tightly the short story is structured.
Read it alongside other short stories by the same author to observe his habitual ways of setting up suspense.

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 story suitable for classroom use?

It works well as short reading material. The length is short and the plot concentrated, making timed classroom reading easy; discussions can focus on how suspense is built and how the ending is brought together, with a low threshold for student participation.

Does the story contain horror elements?

The work relies mainly on suspense and a sense of the unknown, creating tension through anomalous phenomena rather than bloodshed or scare tactics. The reading experience leans toward genre pleasure and reflection rather than horror.

Do I need to know the author's background to understand it?

No. The story stands on its own; reading it directly is enough to grasp the plot and atmosphere. For deeper understanding, you can look into the writing conventions of mid-twentieth-century science fiction magazines to help interpret its narrative choices.

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About the author

Robert Harwood Abernathy Author · American · 1924–1990

Robert Harwood Abernathy (1924–1990) was an American science fiction writer and, by profession, a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Colorado. Active in the short fiction field during the 1940s and 1950s, he published about forty short stories in magazines such as Planet Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Galaxy, with representative works including "Pyramid" and "Junior." Five of his works are held in this collection, among them "The Record of Currupira," "When the Mountain Shook," "The Rotifers," and "World of the Drone." His fiction, mostly in the magazine short-story form, deals with alien life, strange natural phenomena, and scientific speculation; the stories are tightly structured and often close with suspense and unexpected turns. Because public information is limited, details of his life and the full range of his work remain to be studied, yet his steady output in the science fiction magazines of the Golden Age left a recognizable mark on the short fiction scene of the time.