Lester Del Rey 49 min read

In a quiet Geneva garden, the aged President of the United States and the Russian Premier reach a grim stalemate, neither able to give another inch without political suicide, as war looms.

Lester del Rey's 1962 novel is a taut hard-SF and military-SF tale. Sharp, tense, well-crafted. Read it for a gripping Cold War story where the superpower deadlock plays out into space, and the fate of the world hinges on nerve and brinkmanship, in a well-turned golden-age piece of high-stakes tension and hard political choices.

In its time

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

Reading it

49 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay