Project Gutenberg 2016-01-08 Public domain in the USA. 9589 Del Rey, Lester 1915 1993 Rey, Lester del Knapp, Leonard Earthbound Produced from Galaxy Magazine August 1963 Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net "Earthbound" by Lester Del Rey is a science fiction short story published in the early 1960s. The narrative centers around the yearning for space exploration and addresses the themes of dreams, solitude, and human limitation. The story reflects Del Rey's imagination of a future filled with space travel and the impact it has on individuals who aspire to leave Earth behind for the stars. In the story, Clifton, a once-celebrated space hero, finds himself reluctantly back on Earth, surrounded by celebratory crowds. Feeling trapped and discontent, he encounters an old man named Ahasuerus, who has devoted his life to making space boots yet has never traveled beyond Earth. Their exchange reveals the deep longing Ahasuerus harbors for the cosmos, contrasting with Clifton's own frustration and disappointment toward his return. Moved by Ahasuerus's dream of going to space, Clifton offers him a place on his upcoming journey to Rigel. However, Ahasuerus feels bound by a destiny that keeps him on Earth, symbolizing the constraints that life can impose, despite one's aspirations to explore the universe. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Reading ease score: 85.8 (6th grade). Easy to read. en Science fiction Short stories Wandering Jew -- Fiction PS Text Science Fiction Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Browsing: Fiction Category: Short Stories Category: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Category: American Literature 30064 2025-06-20T12:41:55.193345 text/html 6143 2024-10-22T23:42:32 text/html 124365 2025-06-20T12:41:56.991295 application/epub+zip 123201 2025-06-20T12:41:55.595292 application/epub+zip 69868 2025-06-20T12:41:55.377304 application/epub+zip 154172 2025-06-20T12:41:58.263549 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 147365 2025-06-20T12:41:56.770258 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 94159 2022-09-23T06:41:38.424576 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 23827 2023-09-22T07:05:02.340610 text/plain 4145 2024-10-22T23:42:32 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 16579 2025-06-20T12:41:58.412311 application/rdf+xml 27459 2025-06-20T12:41:55.457300 image/jpeg 4707 2025-06-20T12:41:55.415368 image/jpeg 111094 2025-06-20T12:41:55.202401 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia More titles under McCann, Edson