Howard Browne 7 min read

In the year 2000, cars may drive themselves at ninety miles an hour in perfect safety, but picking up a hitchhiker will still be as dangerous as ever, as Frederick Marden is about to learn.

Howard Browne's 1952 story (as H. B. Carleton) spins a taut social-SF thriller from a future roadside encounter. Sharp, suspenseful golden-age SF. Read it for a lean tale that proves some human dangers no technology will ever engineer away.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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