Ambrose Bierce's Puddle-Jumper, "The Flying Machine"

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Recently, I've become more and more interested in flash fiction. To my delight, Fight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales contains such a story: Ambrose Bierce's “The Flying Machine” (79).

The tale, which consists of 110 words, describes a prototypical flying machine's unsuccessful maiden flight. Despite the machine's failure, its inventor's assurance to the crowd of onlookers that the machine's “defects . . . are merely basic and fundamental” is enough to get them to invest in the construction of “a second machine” (79).

The editors, Stephen King and Bev Vincent, see the witnesses' willingness to subscribe to the second machine's construction as evidence of their gullibility. In their opinion, the spectators are duped by the inventor, a con artist who claims to have built a machine that is able to fly. King and Vincent could be right. As they point out, Bierce was both cynical and misanthropic, after all. Perhaps “The Flying Machine” is merely a literary expression of the declaration, sometimes erroneously attributed to showman P. T. Barnum, that “there's a sucker born every minute.”

A comic book version of Ray Bradbury's short story "The Flying Machine"

Another possibility—one that the late optimistic Ray Bradbury might have preferred—is that, despite the flying machine's failure, people are willing to finance the apparently impossible; in doing so, they often find that they have financed the next technological marvel, whether a flying machine, artificial intelligence, or a cure for the common cold.