Harry Harrison 9 min read

General Wingrove delivers perhaps the shortest speech Congress has ever heard: the Army requests that the archaic branch known as the U.S. Navy be abolished.

Harry Harrison's 1954 story spins sharp military and social-SF satire from inter-service rivalry taken to absurd lengths. Funny, pointed golden-age SF. Read it for a wry tale where a bureaucratic turf war between Army and Navy escalates into gloriously ridiculous consequences.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Kelly Freas