Stephen Marlowe 8 min read

Harry Taylor knows it's a big one the moment he sees the haggard Chief, who comes right to the point: every one of America's guided missiles has vanished, leaving the nation helpless.

Stephen Marlowe's 1956 story is a tense AI-and-post-apocalyptic tale of a Cold War crisis with a science-fictional cause. Sharp, gripping golden-age SF. Read it for a story where a superpower's whole arsenal disappears, and the terrifying, unexpected reason behind the theft.

In its time

Published in 1956, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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