"The Runaway Skyscraper" is a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by American writer

Murray Leinster Murray Leinster () was a pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (June 16, 1896 – June 8, 1975), an American writer of genre fiction, particularly of List of science fiction authors, science fiction. He wrote and published more than 1,500 ...

, first appeared in the February 22, 1919 issue of '' Argosy'' magazine. Although Leinster had been appearing regularly in ''

The Smart Set ''The Smart Set'' was an American monthly literary magazine, founded by Colonel William d'Alton Mann and published from March 1900 to June 1930. Its headquarters was in New York City. During its Jazz Age heyday under the editorship of H. L. Men ...

'' and pulp magazines such as ''Argosy'' and ''

Short Stories A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

'' for three years, "The Runaway Skyscraper" was his first published science fiction story (or more accurately,

scientific romance Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but it has since come to refer to ...

, since

Hugo Gernsback Hugo Gernsback (; born Hugo Gernsbacher, August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) was a Luxembourgish American editor and magazine publisher whose publications included the first science fiction magazine, ''Amazing Stories''. His contributions to ...

had yet to coin the phrase "science fiction"). Gernsback would reprint the story in the third issue of his science fiction pulp magazine ''

Amazing Stories ''Amazing Stories'' is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearance ...

'' in June 1926.

Plot summary

"The Runaway Skyscraper" concerns Arthur Chamberlain, an engineer who works in a midtown

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

office building called the Metropolitan Tower. When the sun suddenly begins moving backwards in the sky, setting rapidly in the east, he is the only one to realize what is actually happening: a flaw in the rock beneath the building has caused it to subside, but instead of moving in space, the building is falling backwards into the past. When the subsidence finally ends, the building is located several thousand years in the past, and its 2000-odd inhabitants find themselves stranded in pre-Columbian Manhattan. Chamberlain also realizes that the same seismic forces that caused the building to drop back into the past can also be used to return it to the present, but that doing so will require several weeks of intensive work by the building's inhabitants, and in the meantime they must concentrate on feeding themselves. Chamberlain convinces the president of a bank on the first floor that he can return them to the present, and together they are able to organize the other inhabitants into hunting and fishing parties. Two weeks later, Chamberlain is ready to implement his plan. He forces a jet of soapy water into an artesian well beneath the building, and this allows the pressure that has built up in the rock to be released. The building travels forward in time again, returning to the exact moment when it began to travel into the past.

Reception

In 2013, ''

'' described it as "monumental" and "an ageless story of adventure and endurance". You Can Still Catch the Runaway Skyscraper
by Ricky L. Brown, in ''

''; published March 30, 2013; retrieved January 20, 2019 ''

Reason Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, scien ...

'' noted that the building "travels backwards in time for no particular reason".Science Fiction: Pioneer Murray Leinster
by John J. Pierce, in ''

''; published 1976; archived at Reason.com; retrieved January 20, 2019

References

External links

The Runaway Skyscraper
at Project Gutenberg. * {{DEFAULTSORT:Runaway Skyscraper, The Science fiction short stories 1919 short stories Works originally published in Argosy (magazine) Works by Murray Leinster