The Middle of the Week After Next

A city panics when people begin disappearing without a trace after stepping into an ordinary taxicab. Men, women, groceries, luggage, jewelry, even a patrolman vanish into thin air while one furious cabdriver finds himself blamed for crimes he cannot explain and cannot stop. Every new passenger brings another disaster, another pile of abandoned belongings, and another headline screaming about the "Taxi Monster."

Murray Leinster turns a bizarre scientific idea into a fast-moving comedy of escalating catastrophe. The Middle Of The Week After Next mixes missing persons hysteria, tabloid sensationalism, stubborn human stupidity, and speculative science into one of the most entertaining time-bending stories of the pulp era. The deeper the mystery grows, the more ridiculous the situation becomes, especially for poor Mr. Steems, whose greatest talent is becoming outrageously angry at everybody except the one man actually responsible.

What makes the story memorable is how calmly impossible events unfold beside completely ordinary people. A retired electrical worker casually experiments with philosophy in his basement. A cabdriver worries more about losing fares than disappearing passengers. Reporters turn panic into celebrity. Through it all, Leinster keeps the story moving with sharp humor and relentless momentum while slowly revealing the strange scientific accident behind the chaos.

Murray Leinster was the pen name of William Fitzgerald Jenkins, one of the most influential authors in science fiction history. His work appeared constantly in magazines including Astounding Science Fiction, Amazing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and Startling Stories. He wrote hundreds of stories and novels across multiple genres and helped define many science fiction ideas that later became standard, including parallel universes, first-contact translation systems, and speculative time mechanics.