The Mind Digger

by Winston K. Marks

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Genres: Short Stories, Science Fiction

28 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 12, 2010

About the author

Born Winston Kinney Marks, this US writer of sf short stories also wrote as Win Marks and used the pseudonyms Win Kinney and Ken Winney, each for just one story. He began publishing with "Mad Hatter" for Unknown in May 1940, but then, after "Manic Perverse" (October 1941 Astounding), was not heard of again until 1953 when he published The Water Eater (June 1953 Galaxy; 2010 ebook). He was then quite prolific, publishing nearly 60 further stories to 1959, with two final SF Magazine appearances in the late 1960s.

Reviews

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the flow and cadence of this story. Wondering if it were slightly larger would have pulled more out of the story such as who was "Hillary" really and where was he from. The short ending of his mental breakdown would most certainly be caused by the time of this story. If this story were to be envisioned using the knowledge or theories of our current times, I think this story would naturally run a little longer.

[William · Rating 4 out of 5]

Entertaining listening 🎶🔰

Another will written fantasy adventure thriller short story by Winston K. Marks about a writer who turns out a number plays and manuscripts that are all hits and then nothing. What happened? I would recommend this novella to readers of fantasy novels 👍🔰. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to Alexa as I do because of health issues. 2022 😮🗽

[DOUGLAS J BERRY · Rating 5 out of 5]

Art is pain.

Old fashioned sci fi. Winston marks brings us a story of artistic merit through chemical inducement. The story is short on details, originally published in a pulp magazine.

[Luke John · Rating 5 out of 5]

An artistic wunderkind's side hustle experimenting on himself to achieve total memory recall leads, inevitably, to spiralling. Much of the 'action' here is obscured, and the tale works well due to this.

[Forked Radish · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting premise, one must suffer for one’s art. Today, the shoe is usually on the other foot and one must make others suffer for your art. Just think of the supertanker fleet full of woke 💩 Hollywood has dumped all over an unsuspecting public recently.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

More enjoyable than The Water Eater, it reads like a sort of "Old Hollywood" short television episode.