George O. Smith 19 min read

'Terra is at it again,' Huvane tells his exasperated chief, the reckless little race has climbed all the way to element 109, and it may finally blow itself clear out of everyone's hair.

George O. Smith's 1952 story is a wry hard-SF and social-SF tale viewing humanity's nuclear recklessness from an alien vantage. Clever, ironic golden-age SF. Read it for a story where advanced observers watch, appalled and fascinated, as Earthmen play with forces they barely understand.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

19 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Martinez