Abbr
Unknown
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Description
Frank Riley wrote Abbr, a science fiction story printed in Worlds of If in February nineteen fifty seven. A mock head note sets the theme: brevity was the new watchword. The story opens with Walther Von Koenigsburg waking on an earth shuttle that has just passed Venus. In minutes he will walk down the ramp and set foot on it.
A stewardess speaks to him in the clipped speech of the day. Her words sound like a string of letters, and Walther cannot follow them. She sees his trouble and switches to full, stiff, careful speech. The joke of the tale is plain from this first talk. A world that cut every word down now finds plain speech strange and slow. Science fiction readers get a short satire on shorthand talk, told through a homecoming to Earth.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Unknown |
|---|---|
| COLLECTION | BOOKS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 126 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | Public Domain |
| RIGHTS | PUBLIC DOMAIN |
| SOURCE | Project Gutenberg |