Ben Bova 12 min read

'I don't see where this has anything to do with me,' the CIA man grumbles, until the general invites him to see the problem: a computer that simulates a war down to its final, secret details.

Ben Bova's 1962 story is a sharp hard-SF and military-SF tale of war-gaming machines. Clever, prophetic golden-age SF. Read it for an early, incisive story of computer simulation and its perils, where a machine's perfect war-game confronts the generals with the next logical step, whether they like it or not.

In its time

Published in 1962, during the 1960s, new wave revolutionizes the genre.

Reading it

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

Illustrated by

George Schelling