James Blish 19 min read

A madman can be stopped from throwing bombs, but a mad world? Alone aboard Satellite Vehicle 1, Colonel Gascoigne sits sweating before the bombardier board as a sergeant reports: bomb one is primed.

James Blish's 1955 story is a taut, chilling post-apocalyptic tale of nuclear command and a fraying mind. Sharp, tense golden-age SF. Read it for a gripping story about one man, an orbiting arsenal, and the terrible question of who is really in control.

In its time

Published in 1955, 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

Fuller Griffith