"Heinlein, Robert A - The Worlds Of Robert A Heinlein" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

world situation has grown much worse. Instead of one Absolute Weapon there
are now at least five distinct types Ч an "Absolute Weapon" being defined
as one against which there is no effective defense and which kills
indiscriminately over a very wide area. The earliest of the five types, the
A-bomb, is now known to be possessed by at least five nations, at least
twenty-five other nations have the potential to build them in the next few
years.

But there is a possible sixth type. Earlier this year I attended a seminar
at one of the nation's new think-factories. One of the questions discussed
was whether or not a "Doomsday Bomb" could be built Ч a single weapon which
would destroy all life of all sorts on this planet; one weapon, not an
all-out nuclear holocaust involving hundreds or thousands of ICBMs. No,
this was to be a world-wrecker of the sort Dr. E. E. Smith used to use in
his interstellar sagas back in the days when S-F magazines had bug-eyed
monsters on the cover and were considered lowbrow, childish, fantastic.

The conclusions reached were: Could the Doomsday Machine be built? Ч yes,
no question about it. What would it cost? Ч quite cheap. A seventh type
hardly seems necessary.

And that makes the grimness of "Solution Unsatisfactory" seem more like an
Oz book in which the most harrowing adventures always turn out happily.

"Searchlight" is almost pure extrapolation, almost no speculation. The
gadgets in it are either hardware on the shelf, or hardware which will soon
be on the shelf because nothing is involved but straight-forward
engineering development. "Life-Line" (my first story) is its opposite, a
story which is sheer speculation and either impossible or very highly
improbable, as the What-If postulate will never be solved Ч I think. I
hope. But the two stories are much alike in that neither depends on when it
was written nor when it is read. Both are independent of any particular
shape to history; they are timeless.

"Free Men" is another timeless story. As told, it looks like another "after
the blowup" story Ч but it is not. Although the place is nominally the
United States and the time (as shown by the gadgetry) is set in the
not-distant future, simply by changing names of persons and places and by
inserting other weapons and other gadgets this story could be any country
and any time in the past or future Ч or could even be on another planet and
concern a non-human race. But the story does apply here-and-now, so I told
it that way.

"Pandora's Box" was the original title of an article researched and written
in 1949 for publication in 1950, the end of the half-century. Inscrutable
are the ways of editors: it appeared with the title 'Where To?" and
purported to be a non-fiction prophecy concerning the year 2000 A.D. as
seen from 1950. (I agree that a science fiction writer should avoid
marihuana, prophecy, and time payments Ч but I was tempted by a soft
rustle.)