Nothing

audiobook

Nothing

by Donald A. Wollheim

EN·~8 minutes

Chapters

Description

In the wreckage of a bomb‑scarred city, a young survivor and a grey‑bearded old man find themselves sealed inside a crumbling cellar. With the street above a chaotic scene of fire and rescue crews, their only company is the dim glow of a pocket flashlight and the weight of tons of brick pressing down. As panic threatens to overtake them, the two strangers cling to each other’s presence, searching for any sliver of hope.

The elder, a quiet scientist, begins to explain a radical idea: that all matter is essentially empty space, a tangle of energy that could be mentally dissolved. He proposes a daring experiment—visualizing themselves as “nothing” and using the power of will to slip through solid rock like smoke. The younger man, terrified yet desperate, agrees to try the untested mental escape, setting the stage for a tense battle between fear and imagination.

Listeners are drawn into a claustrophobic world where physics and survival intertwine, offering a thought‑provoking glimpse into how far the human mind might go when faced with the ultimate choice between surrender and daring ingenuity.

Details

Language

en

Duration

~8 minutes (7K characters)

Publisher of text edition

Project Gutenberg

Original publisher

United States: Fictioneers, Inc.,1942.

Credits

Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Release date

2022-10-12

Rights

Public domain in the USA.

About the author

Donald A. Wollheim

Donald A. Wollheim

1914–1990

A driving force in American science fiction, this editor, publisher, and writer helped shape what generations of readers found on bookstore shelves. He was especially influential through Ace Books and later as the founder of DAW Books, the first U.S. publishing company devoted entirely to science fiction and fantasy.

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