A Jar of Jelly Beans by Franklin Gregory -Vintage Science Fiction Short Story Audiobook human voice
Channel: Stories of Futures Past
Date: 2024-03-24

Half a loaf is better than none.  Or, to put it another way, how many jelly beans can you get in a jar?

A story in the overpopulation subgenre, and that shares some elements with Robert Bloch's excellent novel This Crowded Earth that was released two years earlier.

Franklin Gregory (1905-1985) was a journalist who published two novels and somewhere around ten short stories, most of which were SF or SF adjacent such as horror or weird.

No background music, by popular demand. Only my voice, croaks, wheezes, and all. Enjoy!

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Stories of Futures Past presents a vintage science fiction short story, narrated by myself, Tom Trussel. An actual, real living human being, warts and all. 

Any and all voices and effects are produced live during reading with my actual voice. No obnoxious after effects, synthetic voices or filters used.

English is not my first language. There will be inaccurate accents and the occasional strange pronunciation. No mockery is ever intended.

These stories are also good for English learners / ESL. The full text is right there on the screen in a big and easy to read font. Read along with me. It's great practice!


A note about channel donations:
At this point in my life I do not need nor ask for your money. I do this for the love of the short story and to help promote the enjoyment of science fiction and fantasy literature.

However, if you enjoy my readings and would like to put your money where my mouth is, I would suggest instead to pay it forward to a good cause. Please consider donating to https://www.gutenberg.org/donate to help them keep up the good work. Project Gutenberg is an organization dedicated to promoting the free distribution of written works in electronic formats. I make no secret that I find the majority of the public domain stories I read here on their website https://gutenberg.org. There you will find a massive collection of ebooks that are free for anyone to read and download. Most of them are vintage with either lapsed or expired copyrights.

I am not affiliated with Project Gutenberg in any way other than that I use their website.

Now, if you still want to throw a dollar or two at your humble storyteller, feel free to use https://ko-fi.com/tomtrussel 
After all, it’s not as if I’ll say no to money freely given. Any tips I receive will go towards better audio equipment for a cleaner sound in the future, and I will make sure to pay a portion forward to gutenberg.org myself.

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Copyright notice: 
The written text of this story is in the public domain, as determined by the researchers and transcribers at Project Gutenberg, or it has passed the 95-years-since-publication mark. The story is and should be free for anyone to enjoy. 

Boilerplate license wording off the Gutenberg website:
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If you would like to read some of my own paltry writings, they can be found at https://tomtrussel.com