Brknk's Bounty — Reading Notes

(12 User reviews) 1414

In Category - Science Fiction Utopias

Authors: Sohl, Jerry, 1913-2002, Kossin, Sandy [Illustrator] Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2010 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Science fiction; Short stories; Human-alien encounters -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 6,076

Reading time 27 min

Text sections 1

This digital edition of Brknk's Bounty — Reading Notes is described by source-level measurements including 6,076 words, 27 min estimated reading time, and 1 detected text section.

The text analysis averages about 14.2 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Science fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #31964

A newspaperman's typewriter is sabotaged by a tiny alien who forces him to compose alliterative poetry, leading to a bizarre encounter with the Sybillians and an unexpected physical transformation.

Editorial Edition Score 4.3/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg31964

Read the Text

Phipps had one eyebrow raised. I lifted the cover plate again. Quickly.

There I saw a fuzzy thing. It whisked out of sight. I snapped the plate down and held it down. The party I had been on the night before hadn't been that good and I had had at least three hours' sleep.

I tried typing again. I got nothing until I started a new line. Then out came

_Primly prides the privy prose_

I banged up the plate, saw a blur of something slinking down between the type bar levers again. Whatever it was, it managed to squeeze itself out of sight in a most amazing way.

"Hey!" I said. "I know you're down there. What's the big idea?"

Fuzzy squeezed his head up from the levers. The head looked like that of a mouse, but it had teeth like a chipmunk and bright little black beads for eyes. They looked right at me.

"You go right ahead," he said in a shrill voice. "This is going to be a great poem. Did you get all that alliteration there in those two lines?"

"Listen, will you get out of there? I've got work to do!"

"Yes, I think I've hit it at last. It was that four-stress iambic that did it. It was iambic, wasn't it?"

"Go away," I said miserably.

Fuzzy pulled the rest of himself out of the bars and stood on hind feet. He crossed his forepaws in front of him, vibrated his long, furry tail, and said defiantly, "No."

"Look," I pleaded, "I'm not Don Marquis and you're not Archie and I have work to do. Now will you _please_ get out of this typewriter?"

His tiny ears swiveled upward. "Who's Don Marquis? And Archie?"

"Go to hell," I said. I slammed the cover down and looked up into the cold eyes of Oscar Phipps who was standing next to my desk.

"Who, may I ask," he said ominously, "do you think you're talking to?"

"Take a look." I lifted the plate once again. Fuzzy was there on his back, his legs crossed, his tail twitching.

"I don't see anything," Phipps said.

"You mean you can't see Fuzzy here?" I pointed to him, the end of my finger an inch from his head. "Ouch!" I drew my hand away. "The little devil bit me."

"You're fired, Mr. Weaver," Phipps said in a tired voice. "Fired as of right now. I'll arrange for two weeks' severance pay. And my advice to you is to stay off the bottle or see a psychiatrist--or both. Not that it'll do you any good. You never amounted to anything and you never will."

I would have taken a swipe at Fuzzy, but he had slunk out of sight.

During the two erratic years I had been on the newspaper, I had passed the city park every morning on my way to work, feeling an envy for those who had nothing better to do than sit on the benches and contemplate the nature of the Universe. Now I took myself there and sat as I had seen others do, hoping to feel a kinship with these unfortunates.

But all I did was feel alone, frustrated and angry at Phipps. Maybe I had been too convivial, maybe I had enjoyed night life too much, maybe I hadn't given the paper my all. But I wasn't ready for the booby hatch even if I had seen a fuzzy little thing that could talk.

I drew a copy of _Editor and Publisher_ from my pocket and was scanning the "Help Wanted: Editorial" columns when out of the corner of my eye I saw a blob of black moving along the walk.

Turning handsprings, balancing himself precariously on the end of his vibrating tail, running and waving his forepaws to get my attention was Fuzzy.

I groaned. "Please go away!" I covered my eyes so I wouldn't have to look at him.

"Because you're a hallucination."

"I'm not a hallucination," he said indignantly. "I'm real flesh and blood. See?" He vibrated his tail so fast, I could hardly see it. Then it stopped and stood straight out. "Lovely, isn't it?"

"Look," I said, leaning far off the bench to speak to him, "I can prove you're a hallucination."

"You _can_?" he quavered. "How?"

"Because Phipps couldn't see you."

"That square? Hah! He would not have believed it if he had seen me."

He disappeared and reappeared like a flashing neon sign. "There!" he said triumphantly.

"Why didn't you let him see you then?" I asked, a little angry, but pleased nonetheless with his opinion of Phipps. "Because you didn't, you cost me my job."

He waved a forepaw deprecatingly. "You didn't want to stay on that hick sheet anyway."

Continue Reading →

Jerry Sohl's "Brknk's Bounty" opens with a first-person narrator who has traded newspaper work for circus life, a shift he attributes to a tiny alien named Trlk. The story's voice is colloquial and self-deprecating, the narrator recalling his initial disbelief as his typewriter keys begin to malfunction, producing only alliterative phrases like "Dimly drouse the dreary droves." The humor emerges from the mundane setting—a city room during a summer vacation schedule—invaded by the absurd: a fuzzy, mouse-like creature with chipmunk teeth that dictates poetry. Sohl builds the narrative through the narrator's gradual acceptance of the impossible, from the mechanical sabotage to the revelation of the Sybillians and their gift. The tale balances a newspaperman's cynicism with wonder, culminating in a physical change that redefines his life.

Voice and the Unreliable Narrator

The narrator's voice is central to the story's effect. He speaks in a breezy, conversational tone, addressing the reader directly with asides like "Who knows?" and "I suppose." This creates intimacy but also uncertainty: his account of the typewriter's rebellion—keys that "wouldn't go all the way down"—is filtered through his own incredulity. He checks for hangovers, suspects a prank by city editor Oscar Phipps, and only reluctantly accepts the alien's presence. The voice shifts from baffled to amused to rueful, especially in the final lines where he contemplates vibrating his tail in Phipps's face. This unreliability is not a flaw but a tool: the reader is left to decide how much of the tale is truth, fantasy, or a reporter's embellishment.

Pacing and the Escalation of the Absurd

The story's pace accelerates from a slow, realistic setup to a rapid-fire series of bizarre events. The opening paragraphs dwell on the tedium of newspaper work—probate court notes, the vacation schedule—before the typewriter's malfunction introduces a low-level mystery. The pace quickens as the narrator discovers the creature, then Trlk, and finally the Sybillian Brknk. The middle section compresses negotiations, a trip to the Sybillian world, and the return, all in a few paragraphs. The final twist—the growing tail—is delivered with deadpan brevity: "I was growing a tail—a long, hairy tail." This abrupt shift from the fantastic to the physical grounds the story in a concrete, absurd consequence, leaving the reader to catch up with the narrator's new reality.

Recurring Details and Thematic Threads

Several details recur to anchor the narrative. The typewriter itself is a persistent object: its keys, cover plate, and levers are described with mechanical precision. The alliterative poetry—"Primly prides the privy prose"—becomes a signature of the alien's interference. The narrator's relationship with Phipps frames the story: Phipps's skepticism ("I'd never amount to anything") is echoed in the narrator's final defiant fantasy. The Sybillians' gift, a tail, is both a burden and a boon, transforming the narrator from a failed journalist into a circus attraction. These threads—mechanical failure, poetic compulsion, professional rivalry, and physical mutation—weave together to create a coherent, if surreal, world.

Readers should pay attention to the story's tonal shifts: the narrator's voice moves from sardonic to sincere, especially in his farewell to Trlk. The brevity of the tale—just over 6,000 words—means every detail counts. Notice how Sohl uses the typewriter as a character in itself, and how the alliterative poems serve as a kind of alien language. The ending, with its casual acceptance of the tail, invites rereading to catch the clues that foreshadow the transformation.

That rain fell sideways all afternoon, and I kept thinking of the Sybillians—how the alien had forced Brknk to choose words until he couldn’t tell his own voice from theirs. The typewriter sat heavy on my lap. Somewhere between stanzas, I drifted to an older world, Scotland’s mist and stubborn loyalties, and picked up Rob Roy — Volume 01 — Story, Setting & Ideas. The same quiet coercion of place pressing on a man’s choices. I never planned it. The rain just kept falling.