James H. Schmitz 8 min read

A thief speeding through the midnight dark with a stolen suitcase of cash breaks down on a lonely road, and picks up something worse than trouble.

James H. Schmitz's 1962 story strands the fleeing Phil Garfield thirty miles from town with a dying Packard and a hundred miles still to go before dawn, in a taut tale that turns his desperation against him. A tight, satisfying twist of a first-contact story. Read it for a lean, wickedly ironic golden-age shocker with a memorable sting.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

8 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).