Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Tunnel Under The World
    The Tunnel Under The World
    The Tunnel Under The World
    Ebook80 pages51 minutes

    The Tunnel Under The World

    By Ed Emshwiller and Frederik Pohl

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateSep 1, 2010

    Read more from Ed Emshwiller

    Related to The Tunnel Under The World

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Born Slippy

      Jan 16, 2020

      Born Slippy
      14 min read

    • Article

      The Best Little Bar in Manhattan: An experiment in belief versus bourbon.

      Apr 9, 2015

      Let me take you, dear boy,” said McHintry, “to the best little bar in Manhattan.” I could have told him Donna was expecting me home in good time to find out how my first day in the new job had gone. I could have told him that anyway I never drank muc

      13 min read

    • Article

      The Rapture Module

      Aug 10, 2022

      Tucker had to do a double take: The spreadsheet returned the correct result. He could have sworn he had made a mistake—his finger slipped—but the cell displayed the number he thought he wouldn’t see. It occurred to him that this was the first time he

      13 min read

    • Article

      LeTteR Bocks

      Aug 4, 2022

      ◻PLEASE find attached this trademark from a box of eggs, which appears to show a chicken lifting its leg to crack off an eggy one. Susan Butcher, Australia ◻FORMER Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been criticised for meeting an ex-KGB agent without h

      13 min read

    • Article

      Return Of The Bores

      Mar 9, 2022

      All bores are boring but not all boring people are bores. There are plenty of innocent folk who like nothing more than to share their anxieties about the village fête with you – and they’ll do it for 20 minutes you’ll never get back. Yet these are ju

      3 min read

    • Article

      Restless Souls

      Mar 6, 2018

      Restless Souls
      8 min read

    • Article

      AUNT MAUD’S SECRET Part 1

      Sep 1, 2021

      “WHAT! SERIOUSLY?” “Settle down, Martin,” said Ms. Phelps as she poured herself a second mug of coffee that morning. She sat down at the kitchen table, gently blowing on the steam. “Aunt Maud is so excited about her visit and really looking forward

      6 min read

    • Article

      Love Token

      Nov 5, 2021

      Love Token
      5 min read

    • Article

      ANGER Mismanagement

      Feb 9, 2020

      Mr Stable has asked me to pick up his drycleaning, as he’s going to ‘babysit’ at his ex-wife’s apartment, while she attends a tango class. “Maybe she’ll find a new love?” I’m a sucker for happy endings, so I can’t help hoping that his ex-wife will fi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Cruel Means, Bitter Ends

      Nov 10, 2021

      “In order for this speech to mean anything to me, I’ll need to dispense with the usual demagoguery and, instead, make an attempt at honesty. With this in mind, there is one thing I have to make clear. I’m not in this race to serve your interests, but

      12 min read

    • Article

      The Art Of Conversation

      Nov 1, 2023

      The Art Of Conversation
      4 min read

    • Article

      Aunt Maud’s Secret

      Oct 1, 2021

      Martin Phelps is looking forward to spending his fall break playing Warlocks, his favorite online game, with his friends Jiang and Robert. But when his mom tells him that eighty-year-old Aunt Maude is coming for a visit and will be staying in his roo

      9 min read

    • Article

      Pleasure Palace

      Sep 1, 2022

      Pleasure Palace
      15 min read

    • Article

      Bruce Dickinson

      Dec 7, 2021

      Bruce Dickinson
      3 min read

    • Article

      They Got Their Show

      Aug 10, 2021

      It is midnight in Ponderosa and Nick Velasquez can’t sleep. The public doesn’t want him to sleep. It’s been like this ever since it hit all the big streaming platforms. The viewers stay up bingeing and he… well, he has been bingeing in his own way. W

      14 min read

    • Article

      Letterbocks

      Nov 19, 2020

      I HAD my septic tank emptied by an engineer called Thomas Moore. I was about make a very clever play on words by remarking “who will rid me of this turbulent piss,” when I remembered that was Thomas Becket, not Thomas More, and so narrowly avoided a

      9 min read

    • Article

      Six Dart Out

      Sep 10, 2023

      Marc figured the girl was a vegan. Her puke had overflowed the sink and run onto the floor—tomatoes and rice marinated in microbrew lager. He’d told Vegan Girl to slow down, but her friends had won the turning-21-peer-pressure battle. Admittedly, Mar

      9 min read

    • Article

      Reach

      Dec 10, 2023

      Jack Benson stands dissolved in an ocean of strangers, humans he couldn’t have known existed until forced to jostle with them for space and shared odors. He recoils imperceptibly with each touch, eager not to offend or stand out any further. As a mas

      10 min read

    • Article

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • Article

      Woooooo! Reed

      Mar 10, 2022

      MOST OF US think nothing of going to our garden shed, whether it’s to get the lawn mower, to store some tins of paint, or sit and read a few magazines away from the wife. But for Tipton man Jeremy Binlid, every visit is a ‘walk on the wild side’ beca

      2 min read

    • Article

      Reach

      Apr 10, 2021

      Jack Benson stands dissolved in an ocean of strangers, humans he couldn’t have known existed until forced to jostle with them for space and share odors. He recoils imperceptibly with each touch, eager not to offend or stand out any further. As a mass

      10 min read

    • Article

      Memories Of A Miracle

      Dec 1, 2023

      Memories Of A Miracle
      8 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Corner

      Nov 15, 2023

      My wife said, ‘Can my mother come down for the weekend?’ So I said, ‘Why?’ And she said, ‘Well, she's been up on the roof two weeks already.’ Bob Monkhouse When I played drunks, I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was

      1 min read

    Reviews for The Tunnel Under The World

    4/5

    1 rating1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Thanks to subsequent works such as the movie "Dark City", Charles Beaumont's "In His Image", Philip K. Dick's "Ubik", and Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream", this 1954 story is not totally unpredictable, but still has a timely punch and its own personality. Could also be seen as "Groundhog Day" gone very bad.I enjoyed reading the still-sharp nonagenarian author's blog until his death in 2013.

    Book preview

    The Tunnel Under The World - Ed Emshwiller

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Tunnel Under The World, by Frederik Pohl

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

    Title: The Tunnel Under The World

    Author: Frederik Pohl

    Illustrator: Emsh

    Release Date: April 14, 2010 [EBook #31979]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD ***

    Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    Transcriber's Note:

    This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction January 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

    The Tunnel

    Under

    The World

    By FREDERIK POHL

    Illustrated by EMSH

    Pinching yourself is no way to see if you are dreaming. Surgical instruments? Well, yes—but a mechanic's kit is best of all!

    n the morning of June 15th, Guy Burckhardt woke up screaming out of a dream.

    It was more real than any dream he had ever had in his life. He could still hear and feel the sharp, ripping-metal explosion, the violent heave that had tossed him furiously out of bed, the searing wave of heat.

    He sat up convulsively and stared, not believing what he saw, at the quiet room and the bright sunlight coming in the window.

    He croaked, Mary?

    His wife was not in the bed next to him. The covers were tumbled and awry, as though she had just left it, and the memory of the dream was so strong that instinctively he found himself searching the floor to see if the dream explosion had thrown her down.

    But she wasn't there. Of course she wasn't, he told himself, looking at the familiar vanity and slipper chair, the uncracked window, the unbuckled wall. It had only been a dream.

    Guy? His wife was calling him querulously from the foot of the stairs. Guy, dear, are you all right?

    He called weakly, Sure.

    There was a pause. Then Mary said doubtfully, Breakfast is ready. Are you sure you're all right? I thought I heard you yelling—

    Burckhardt said more confidently, I had a bad dream, honey. Be right down.

    n the shower, punching the lukewarm-and-cologne he favored, he told himself that it had been a beaut of a dream. Still, bad dreams weren't unusual, especially bad dreams about explosions. In the past thirty years of H-bomb jitters, who had not dreamed of explosions?

    Even Mary had dreamed of them, it turned out, for he started to tell her about the dream, but she cut him off. "You did? Her voice was astonished. Why, dear, I dreamed the same thing! Well, almost the same thing. I didn't actually hear anything. I dreamed that something woke me up, and then there was a sort of quick bang, and then something hit me on the head. And that was all. Was yours like that?"

    Burckhardt coughed. Well, no, he said. Mary was not one of these strong-as-a-man, brave-as-a-tiger women. It was not necessary, he thought, to tell her all the little details of the dream that made it seem so real. No need to mention the splintered ribs, and the salt bubble in his throat, and the agonized knowledge that this was death. He said, Maybe there really was some kind of explosion downtown. Maybe we heard it and it started us dreaming.

    Mary reached over and patted his hand absently. Maybe, she agreed. It's almost half-past eight, dear. Shouldn't you hurry? You don't want to be late to the office.

    He gulped his food, kissed her and rushed out—not so much to be on time as to see if his guess had been right.

    But downtown Tylerton looked as it always had. Coming in on the bus, Burckhardt watched critically out the window, seeking evidence of an explosion. There wasn't any. If anything, Tylerton looked better than it ever had before: It was a beautiful crisp day, the sky was cloudless, the buildings

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1