Richard Rein Smith

Name: The beast of boredom
Author: Richard Rein Smith

The beast of boredom (1958)

Summary

“The beast of boredom”, published in 1958, is a work by Richard Rein Smith. It explores elements such as cycle, boredom and Martian.

Quotes from The beast of boredom (Richard Rein Smith)

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ Boredom was like a hungry beast that breathed in his ears with a roar of silence while he sat through several succeeding cycles.
Silence. It seemed to echo in his ears as he looked about the apartment. It seemed to whisper that he was losing the duel. The Martian's trap was working: he would sit and wait, and think, and think endlessly until they were wild thoughts and he was insane. And then, the Martian would have his revenge, for insanity was a form of walking death.... ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ So, there were two possibilities: he could attempt to wreck the machine or wait for it to wear itself out and fight boredom while waiting.
It didn't take him long to decide that he should wait for the machine to run down. If the alien devices really drew energy from the space-time continuum, it would be dangerous to tamper with one. A wrong move when fooling with such a tremendous amount of energy might be disastrous, and perhaps that was exactly what the old Martian had planned for him to do! On the other hand, it didn't seem possible that a machine could run forever. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ Mankind had invented atomic energy and then used it to kill millions. Their latest achievement was the marvel of spaceflight and where had that ended? It had also ended in war....
Personally, he didn't believe they were justified in fighting the Martians. If they didn't want anyone intruding on their planet, what right did Earthmen have to force their way? The popular theory that they could help rebuild the dying Martian civilization didn't seem very logical when millions had to be killed in the process. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ Since the machine influenced the space-time continuum and the same ten-minute interval in time was always repeated, all physical things in space were exactly as they had been at the beginning of the cycle. His body had been refreshed at the beginning of the original cycle and it would always be in the same condition. He would never grow older, he would never become hungry and he would never become tired physically.
Desperate for a way to overcome boredom, he used the bottle of whiskey in the kitchen. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ If he could contact the person somehow, he or she could be reached at the beginning of each cycle and would be a tangible individual to help him fight boredom—not a voice on the telephone, an image on the TV screen or a tiny dot of a person fourteen floors below his window. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ It wasn't a long distance, but inching his way on his elbows and knees, and with his face close to the evil-smelling mud, it seemed like a mile. As he crawled, he reflected bitterly that most of mankind's really great achievements always ended in war. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ By drawing energy from the space-time continuum itself, the machine succeeded in thrusting those atoms backward or forward in time, and since that affected the entire probability stream, all physical matter was forced to follow them through the time stream. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Richard Rein Smith, The beast of boredom (1958)

“ He made a decision. He had fought boredom legally and exhausted every method he could think of. If there were no more legal ways, then he would fight boredom illegally. The police couldn't reach him in ten minutes no matter what he did.
Dialing Mary Jeffers' phone number at the beginning of the next cycle, he laid the receiver on the desk, ran across the room and climbed through the window.
The stone ledge just beneath his window wasn't very wide, but by inching his way along it, he reached the open window of apartment 1403. ”

Richard Rein Smith

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Quotes from The beast of boredom (Richard Rein Smith)

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