A decision story.

This was the first short story I read at school that made me realise that short stories could make me think and remain in my mind for days and weeks. And all in a short number of pages. This is the tale that started my lifelong love for short stories. ‘The Cold, Cold Box’ is set in an auditorium at some point in the future where members of a corporation meet every year to discuss company business. As the Chairman of the Board explains:

“At the beginning of our annual meeting — and this is an established procedure, I may say — we deal with a moral and legal point, the question of Mr. Steve Kovac. We undertake this before the reading of the agenda, for we have felt that the question of Mr. Kovac is not a matter of agenda or business, but of conscience. Of our conscience, I must add, and not without humility; for Mr. Kovac is the only secret of this meeting. All else that the Board discusses, votes upon and decides or rejects, will be made public, as you know. But of Mr. Steve Kovac the world knows nothing; and each year in the past, our decision has been that the world should continue to know nothing about Mr. Kovac. Each year in the past, Mr. Kovac has been the object of a cruel and criminal action by the members of this Board. Each year in the past, it has been our decision to repeat this crime.”

The reader finds themselves sitting in this auditorium, in the role of a new member of this corporation. And we all listen as the Chairman outlines the matter. Then a vote has to be taken. Which way would you vote?

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Collected in The Howard Fast Reader, Crown Publishers, 1960 and The Edge of Tomorrow, Bantam Books, 1961

Humour is very personal thing. What one person finds funny, another may not. Some stories may just make you smile, others make you laugh out loud. This story for me falls into the second category.

A humorous story by Fast in his role as a World War Two war correspondent, who finds himself stranded at a scoring hot airbase in the middle of a desert. His one wish is fly out on the next available freight plane. Which just happens to be loaded with empty coca cola bottles. Fast is alarmed to find that once airborne the plane isn’t gaining height, the plane’s doors are missing, the aircrew are a crew of teenagers who are unwilling to jettison the empty bottles due to the paperwork it would cause. Plus,

“I looked at the open doors and then at the sand hills, and then I nodded and asked a foolish question about parachutes.
‘You don’t have one? Well, that’s strange, and it’s against regulations too, but it wouldn’t be much use at this altitude.’”

The situation goes rapidly downhill from there.

First published in he Last Supper and Other Stories, Blue Heron Press, 1955, and collected in The Howard Fast Reader, Crown Publishers, 1960