Short Science Fiction: reading level, length and free edition

Name: Short Science Fiction
Author: Isaac Asimov

Short Science Fiction by Isaac Asimov is a short stories in English. Our team rates it B1. It runs to 23,196 words with 3,844 different word forms, about 2–4 h of reading at 200 to 100 words per minute, and it is free from Standard Ebooks.

By the Readlang Mobile team (an independent app, not affiliated with readlang.com). Updated 31 October 2026.

Author: Isaac Asimov
Language: English
Level: B1
Form: short stories
Words: 23,196
Different word forms: 3,844
Forms for 95% / 98%: 2,685 / 3,381
Reading time: 2–4 h
Free edition: Standard Ebooks

A collection of short science fiction by Isaac Asimov, ordered by date of original publication.

Is Short Science Fiction right for your level?

To recognise 95% of the running words in Short Science Fiction, you need its 2,685 most frequent word forms; for 98%, the share at which most readers manage a novel without a dictionary, 3,381. The median English B1 book in our table needs 702 forms for 95%, so by this measure the book is harder than most for its level: number 15 of 21, easiest first.

A word form is any spelling that appears in the text, so “walk” and “walked” count twice, and names count too. These numbers are a guide to how much vocabulary the book asks for, not a test. The level itself was set by hand by our team. Before you commit, read one page of the free edition and count the words you do not know: the one-page test takes two minutes.

Which words should you know before you start?

These are the words that Short Science Fiction uses most often but that are not among the 2,000 most common word forms across all 309 English books in our library; the number is how many times each appears. Names of people and places are left out. Learning a handful of them first makes the opening chapters easier.

robotics 33
ammonium 32
humanoids 23
meat 20
circus 16
lunch 16
spoon 14
planets 14
guess 13
cage 13
bomb 12
worlds 12
barn 11
stalemate 11
laboratory 10

How does it begin?

Walter Sills reflected now, as he had reflected often before, that life was hard and joyless. He surveyed his dingy chemical laboratory and grinned cynically—working in a dirty hole of a place, living on occasional ore analyses that barely paid for absolutely indispensable equipment, while others, not half his worth perhaps, were working for big …

From the Standard Ebooks edition, which is in the public domain. If this paragraph already feels slow, try a book one level lower.

How long does it take to read?

Hours to read *Short Science Fiction* (23,196 words) at four reading speeds.
Words	100 wpm	150 wpm	200 wpm	250 wpm
23,196	4 h	2.5 h	2 h	1.5 h

Learners reading a book at their level often manage 100 to 150 words per minute, and readers in their first language 200 to 250. Where these speeds come from, and a calculator for your own: How long does it take to read a book?

Where can you read it for free?

The free edition is from Standard Ebooks, a volunteer project that proofreads and typesets public-domain books. Standard Ebooks releases its editions into the public domain in the United States under CC0 1.0; you can download it as EPUB, Kindle (AZW3) or KEPUB without signing up.

To read it with a translation over every word you tap, open it in Readlang Mobile on iPhone or iPad.