There are devices a high-level culture could produce that simply don't belong in the hands of incompetents of lower cultural evolution. The finest, and most civilized of tools can be made a menace ...
Most useful high explosives, like ammonium nitrate, are enormously violent ... once they're triggered. But they will remain seemingly inert when beaten, burned, variously punished--until the particular shock...
A Playboy is someone with power, too much time on his hands, and too little sense of a goal worth achieving. And if the Playboy happens to belong to a highly advanced culture....
Everybody was waiting to see what the delegate from Venus looked like. And all they got for their patience was the biggest surprise since David clobbered Goliath.
It took a long time for human beings to accept that our little piece of meteoric rubble wasn't the exact and absolute center of the Universe. It does appear that way, doesn't it? It may not take so long for...
What is a "phony"? Someone who believes he can do X, when he can't, however sincerely he believes it? Or someone who can do X, believes he can't, and believes he is pretending he can?
Hugo nominated in 1962, originally published in Analog Science Fact-Science Fiction as "Sense of Obligation." Brion has just won the Twenties, a global competition to test achievements in 20 categories of human...
Cadet George Hanlon of the Inter-Stellar Corps had to make an important decision, the most difficult of his short lifetime. With graduation just a few short weeks ahead, he was asked to join the Corps' Secret...
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