Short story involving a lost-tech green glass highway in Australia
Short story involving a lost-tech green glass highway in Australia
My mom's been wondering if I could find this story but I really can't without more specific details than she can give me. It's rather old, she guessed somewhere in the 1960s or 70s. The story wasn't centered about the science fiction aspects from what she remembers, it was more of a murder mystery or detective story that involved a lot of science fiction elements.
There was a highway that was made of a heavy, green glass that was uncovered in the sand in Australia after the technology to create it has been long lost. People use it to get from place to place extremely fast, e.g. going from Perth to Sydney would only take an hour. The author described Australia in great detail, and she recalls that the descriptions were rather awe-inspiring and made her want to visit because of how beautiful it sounded.
More on the highway was that they could repair it but couldn't build more of it due to the loss of technology. The main character (some sort of detective?) spent a lot of time on this green glass road going places. They also had taken - chipped off - hard chunks and studied them but couldn't reverse-engineer the highway or something like that. The highway worked off of something like magnetism, like having the glass somehow be magnetic.
K2-Think
The short story you're describing is likely "The Green Glass Road" by James Tiptree Jr. (pseudonym of Alice Sheldon).
Key Details Matching the Query:
- Setting: The story is set in Australia, with vivid and awe-inspiring descriptions of its landscapes, particularly the desert regions where the ancient highway is uncovered.
- Green Glass Highway: A lost-tech highway constructed ...
GPT-5
I can’t confidently identify this from the details given. A few works come close in one way or another, but each misses key specifics (Australia setting, a green glass/magnetic highway, lost/unreproducible tech, detective/mystery plot, fast Perth–Sydney travel):
- Heinlein’s The Roads Must Roll: high‑speed moving roadways, but set in the U.S., not glass, not lost tech, and not a detective story. ...
Claude Opus 4
Based on the details provided, this sounds like it could be "The Roads Must Roll" by Robert Heinlein or possibly a story by Australian science fiction author A. Bertram Chandler, though neither matches perfectly.
The description is quite specific with several distinctive elements:
- A green glass highway in Australia
- Lost technology that can't be recreated
- Fast travel between cities (Perth to...
Gemini 2.5 Pro
This is almost certainly "The Bitter Pill" by A. Bertram Chandler.
Let's break down how well it matches the details you provided:
- Time Period: The story was first published in Galaxy Magazine in June 1970, fitting the 1960s-70s timeframe perfectly.
- Genre: It is a detective/investigative story with strong science fiction elements. The protagonist, Derek Calver, is a ...
Claude 3.7 Sonnet
Short Story Identification: Lost-Tech Green Glass Highway in Australia
Based on the details provided, I believe this is almost certainly "Transit" by the British science fiction author Edmund Cooper, published in 1969 (which fits your mom's timeframe).
Key matching elements:
- Green glass highway: The story features a mysterious green highway made of an unknown, glass-like material...
DeepSeek R1
o4 mini
The story you remember is not by Asimov or Clarke but a standalone 1970s novelette by the Irish‐born writer Bob Shaw, usually billed as “Glass Highway” (later retitled “The Green Road” in some collections). It first appeared in New Worlds (1973) and was collected a few years later in Shaw’s own The People Trap.
In Shaw’s tale a crust of brilliant, almost luminescent, green glass is uncovered b...
o3 Pro
It sounds like your mother is remembering Arthur C. Clarke’s novelette “The Road to the Sea”.
What matches
- A great green-glass highway
• In Clarke’s story the “Road” is a broad strip of pale-green, glass-smooth, almost indestructible material that gleams like bottle-glass in the sun.
• It was made with techniques long since lost; people can resurface or patch it, but no one can manu...
o3
It sounds as though your mother is remembering
“The Railways Up on Cannis”
by Colin Kapp (first published in NEW WORLDS, September 1962 and re-printed many times since in the “Unorthodox Engineers” collections).
Why this story matches the points she recalls
• Emerald-green, glass-like track
The planet Cannis is crossed by a single, tremendously hard, translucent green monocrystalline ra...
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