March 10 - "Estoppel"

“Estoppel”
by Bentley Little
The Collection (2002)

* * * * (Great) Science Fiction

A man decides to stop speaking forever because his gift, his curse, is that everything he speaks suddenly becomes reality. After twenty years of silence, twenty years of formulating the exact phrase, the man decides to speak one final time.

The title comes from the Middle French, meaning to stop (thank you Dictionary.com). It is a fitting title for this story of man afraid to speak for the changes his speech exert on the world. I enjoy these trippy ideas where I find myself wondering what I would do – the choice I’d make – if I were in a similar situation. It is that age-old question: How would you handle the gift of power? I like to think I’d be as noble as the character in this story, but who knows. That’s one of the powers of fiction – good fiction – it allows you to live vicariously through its creatures and creations. To be as good or bad as the story, or your imagination, allows.

An interesting side note – There is a novel, Dispatch, by Little that must have found inspiration in this story. In Dispatch the main character has the ability to persuade anyone to do anything he writes in a letter. Blessed/cursed by a gift of similar persuasion, Little explores the idea in more detail, and it is a captivating and entertaining read.