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The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories: And Other Stories (Stanford Nuclear Age)

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Leo Szilard wrote the famous letter to Franklin Roosevelt in 1939, signed by Albert Einstein, urging development of nuclear weapons when he thought the Nazis were already underway on such a program. Once it became clear, however, that Hitler was nowhere near getting one Szilard became one of the foremost opponents of their use. In 1945 he wrote the Szilard Petition, signed by 155 Los Alamos scientists, urging Truman to demonstrate the A-bomb on an uninhabited atoll rather than use it in war. He was also a signatory to the Franck Report that urged the same thing.

After the war, with the government classifying "Top Secret" almost everything relating to Los Alamos, and Senator McCarthy publicly accusing anyone pro-peace of being a "Communist sympathizer," it was very difficult for Szilard to get his pacifist views heard. He was greatly troubled by the Cold War, which he foresaw and correctly predicted would be disastrous. His clever solution was to embed his views in a series of short stories, which are not only amusing tales in themselves but gain esteem when you realize why they had to be written.

The first story, written in 1961 following John C. Lilly's pioneering research, starts with the idea that dolphins are discovered to be more intelligent than man and they begin dominating human politics through an uneasy alliance. In this story he not only anticipates the politics of the Cold War but also the whole era of petro-diplomacy which is still ongoing.

The other stories, dating back to 1949, are similarly thought-provoking. Szilard was a very smart man, and it's a shame his views were not more widely respected and followed in his own time.

He's the world-class physicist who got Einstein to send a letter to Roosevelt about building a Bomb before the Nazis. He's also a world-class writer. These short stories are superb; prove one doesn't need to lead the life of a writer to write magnificently. A great read on a rainy night. Transparent and stylish, these stories will last.