Review: "Accidental Death" by Peter Baily (1959)

Posted on February 15th, 2008

Unfortunately, this short story starts in the "it was a dark and stormy night" vein:

The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow.

The writing lets up a little after that, though, and becomes less distracting. It turns out to be the story of Matt Hennessey, a lone survivor space astronomer recording the events leading to the crash of an experimental spaceship on its return to Earth. The rest of the crew has been lost along the way and the survivor is recounting how a seemingly friendly catlike alien race they encountered caused them to hit a run of suspicious bad luck. Hennessy believes they have an affinity for causing others bad luck, and is warning Earth about the race, but he further believes his survival is proof that their abilities are not foolproof. He may be wrong.

I had problems with this story from the writing in the opening paragraph to the alien race. The ending does contain a twist, albeit a lukewarm one. On the other hand, it’s pretty short and the same things might not bother you, but I’m giving it a rating of

Poor to Fair. No matter what your luck you can read it online here or find it available for download at Project Gutenberg in a couple formats or Manybooks.net in more.

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