Guest Expert by Allen Kim Lang
Read now or download (free!)
| Choose how to read this book | Url | Size | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read online (web) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.html.images | 30 kB | ||||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.epub3.images | 379 kB | ||||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.epub.images | 378 kB | ||||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.epub.noimages | 67 kB | ||||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.kf8.images | 411 kB | ||||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.kindle.images | 403 kB | ||||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63931.txt.utf-8 | 24 kB | ||||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/63931/pg63931-h.zip | 501 kB | ||||
| There may be more files related to this item. | ||||||
About this eBook
| Author | Lang, Allen Kim, 1928- |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Orban, Paul, 1896-1974 |
| Title | Guest Expert |
| Note | Reading ease score: 76.1 (7th grade). Fairly easy to read. |
| Credits |
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net |
| Summary | "Guest Expert" by Allen K. Lang is a science fiction short story written in the early 1950s. The narrative explores the dark moral dilemmas surrounding overpopulation and the drastic measures proposed to resolve it through the perspective of a Martian visitor. The story examines themes of survival, ethics, and the consequences of human choices. In this chilling tale, Earth faces severe issues due to overpopulation, prompting a Martian visitor to propose a radical solution: culling the human population by half. The protagonist, a Secretary, grapples with the moral implications of this proposal while hearing the Martian's justification based on historical suffering caused by famine, war, and disease. After a vote among his colleagues, the Secretary ultimately consents, leading to a horrifying conclusion where each woman and girl on the planet inexplicably dies, leaving behind a stark reality that starkly contrasts the Martian's promise of survival through sacrifice, effectively addressing the immediate population crisis at an unfathomable cost. (This is an automatically generated summary.) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | PS: Language and Literatures: American and Canadian literature |
| Subject | Science fiction |
| Subject | Short stories |
| Subject | Martians -- Fiction |
| Subject | Overpopulation -- Fiction |
| Subject | Earth (Planet) -- Fiction |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 63931 |
| Release Date | Dec 1, 2020 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 77 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |
