Thursday, November 1, 2007

Arthur C. Clarke's "The Last Command": Cold war superpower story - with US as clear winner

I found this an utterly unbelievable story.

Story summary.

USSR has been completely decimated in nuclear attacks by US.

But there still is a space based USSR fighting unit called Fort Lenin, on a "secret orbit beyond the moon", capable of completely wrecking the US.

Story is in the form of a recorded message from the President of Supreme Soviet, now dead, to this unit. Message tells them that they were meant as a deterrent, & obviously the deterrent hasn't worked. Now rather than a counter attack, they should quietly destroy their weapons & put themselves "at the disposal of the United States"!

Fact sheet.

"The Last Command", short story, review
First published: "Bizarre! Mystery Magazine", November 1965.
Rating: Time waster C

This story is included in the following collections.

  1. "The Collected Stories of Arthur C Clarke"
  2. "More Than One Universe"
  3. "The Wind from the Sun"

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding? This is a fantastic story! You are a fool for giving it a C!

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