Ed M. Clinton 6 min read

A frantic exchange of White House telegrams demands to know why the Moon launches are behind schedule while the Russians launch on time, and the answer, maddeningly, is just one word: FOG.

Ed M. Clinton's 1958 story is a wry dystopian and social-SF satire. Clever, funny golden-age SF. Read it for a genial bureaucratic comedy told almost entirely in telegrams, where political panic over the space race collides with the stubborn indifference of the weather, in a light, well-turned golden-age piece that skewers officialdom with deadpan wit.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

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