Wednesday, February 9, 2011

William J Smith's "The Last Straw" (short story, free): Investigating a plane crash

One of the illustrations, by George Schelling, accompanying the original publication in Analog magazine of short story The Last Straw by William J Smith. Picture shows an airplane beginning to crash, against night sky.Except for Niven's "Ringworld" that has someone bred to be lucky & a story of Murray Leinster that features a gadget that makes people near it lucky, I've'nt seen many stories where luck is an essential personal attribute. Here is one of the rare stories of the class.

Story summary.

A plane crash 6 months ago is one of the several where, in spite of a very thorough investigation that picked up many interesting tidbits, there is no clue to what might have caused the crash. A chance remark by the wife of Bob Kessler, the investigator of current crash, may be ... holds a clue...

Fact sheet.

First published: Analog, September 1963.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg, Manybooks.
Rating: B.
Among the stories from Astounding/Analog issues edited by John Campbell.

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