George O. Smith 14 min read

A quiet emissary of the United Nations tells the arrogant scientist Hohmann he must not build the plutonium pile, not as a threat, but as the plain will of the people, which he defies at his peril.

George O. Smith's 1947 story is a thoughtful hard-SF and social-SF tale of the atomic age. Sharp, sober golden-age SF. Read it for a tense post-Hiroshima story about power, responsibility, and the collective will, where the question of who may wield atomic force drives a taut confrontation, in idea-rich early-atomic-age SF.

In its time

Published in 1947, during the 1940s, the golden age begins.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

Paul Orban