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The Flying Dutchman

Many years ago—never mind how many—when I was fourteen, I read a science-fiction story while killing time in the school library. I was a library aide that year, and I had lots of time to kill. Come to that, I read lots of science-fiction when I was fourteen. But this particular story was one of the few I read—not excepting those in the anthologies I owned—that stuck with me.

It was short and punchy, for one thing, and written with a vivacity that put its one, very horrible idea across with great simplicity and clarity. There was a pencil illustration of graphic bluntness to go with it, and that too probably made it memorable. Also, the story spun its one, very horrible idea out of a common bit of futurism that shows up in many science-fiction stories and movies, so that every time I read a story or saw a movie that employed that bit of futurism, it reminded me of that short story and of its very horrible twist.

But the name of the author, and the story? I had no notion or memory.

That is, until a few days ago, when I downloaded and started to read a cheap Kindle book: 101 Science Fiction Short Stories. You can probably now guess where this is anecdote is going.

Within the first three paragraphs of the twelfth story in the collection, I suspected what I had found. Halfway into it, I knew beyond a doubt. Confirmation at the end was anti-climax.

"Road Stop," by David Mason, is a minor work by a minor author, but it is one of the best and most effortless blendings of idea and technique—a simple idea, vividly told—that I have read. I would give it a mild recommendation to general readers. To professionals or amateur writers with ambitions, though, I would commend it for study.

And if I tell you that the story's necessary plot element concerns a self-driving car that comes out of the past and leaves the observing characters with a chill as it slides obliviously by, then you might understand why I was doubly struck by its reappearance in my reading. My experience with the story itself almost exactly recapitulates the experience of its characters.

If you want to read the story itself, here it is in its original context: Worlds of If (January 1963)  . No illustration here, sad to say. That was an addition made to the reprinted version I found in the school library.