The Heather-Moon vs Project Daedalus
Both counted from their full texts, the same way, on the same day.
382words between them — 2 min of it
The Heather-Moon is longer — 124,000 words against 123,618 for Project Daedalus, a difference of 382 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Heather-Moon is the harder read, at grade 7.5 against 6.3.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions counted the same way·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Side by side
| The Heather-Moon | Project Daedalus | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Williamson, C. N. (Charles Norris) | Hoover, Thomas |
| Words | 124,000 | 123,618 |
| Reading time at 250 wpm | 8h 16m | 8h 14m |
| Unique words | 9,701 | 11,572 |
| Sentences | 6,536 | 9,724 |
| Average sentence length | 19 words | 12.7 words |
| Reading grade | 7.5 | 6.3 |
| Reading ease | 75.4 | 72.8 |
| Long words | 6.6% | 10% |
Highlighted cells are the larger figure — except reading ease, where higher means easier.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·both editions, same counting rule·REVIEWED JUL 2026
How this is worked out
- Both texts are counted the same way, from the same source, with Gutenberg's header and licence footer struck first.
- The gap is stated in words and then in time at 250 words a minute — the rate is printed because a duration without one cannot be checked.
- Difficulty is compared on Flesch–Kincaid grade, which reads sentence and word length only. It cannot see irony or dialect, so treat it as a measure of surface, not of effort.
gap = |124,000 − 123,618| = 382 words 382 ÷ 250 wpm = 2 min of extra reading
The second question
Which is longer, The Heather-Moon or Project Daedalus?
The Heather-Moon is longer — 124,000 words against 123,618 for Project Daedalus, a difference of 382 words or about 2 min of extra reading. The Heather-Moon is the harder read, at grade 7.5 against 6.3.
Colophon
Both figures computed from Project Gutenberg plain-text editions — ebook no. 19742 and no. 34320 — and from no other source. Neither book’s text is set on this site.
SOURCE·Project Gutenberg full texts·US public domain·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Word counts and reading levels are computed from a specific public-domain edition and will differ from other editions and from other counting methods — see the method page.
