"Armaments Race" is a

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction. It can typically be read in a single sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the old ...

by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1954, and later anthologized in ''

Tales from the White Hart ''Tales from the White Hart'' is a collection of short stories by science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke, in the "club tales" style. Thirteen of the fifteen stories originally appeared across a number of different publications; some had n ...

''. Like the rest of the collection, it is a frame story set in the pub "White Hart", where the fictional Harry Purvis narrates the secondary tale.

Plot

This comic story discusses the career of Hollywood special effects man Solly Blumberg after he is hired to create mock weapons as set pieces for a science-fiction serial named "Captain Zoom". Blumberg becomes involved in what is effectively an arms race as he creates weapons for both the protagonist and his adversaries. The weapons he creates become increasingly elaborate, until he accidentally creates a real functional piece and "makes the studio disappear", upon which he is sacked. The story is told from his prison cell, where he is questioned again and again by military experts, demanding to know what he had built.

Publication

"Armaments Race" was first published in the April 1954 issue of ''Adventure'' magazine and was later published as the fourth story in Clarke's collection ''

''. The story was included in the 2000 publication of ''

The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke ''The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke'', first published in 2001, is a collection of almost all science fiction short stories written by Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur C. Clarke. It includes 114 stories, arranged in order of publication, from ...

'' and has been translated into multiple languages such as Dutch, Italian, Croatian, French, and German. Robert Looby noted that a Polish translation of "Armaments Race" included content that had mild criticism of communism, which he stated was an example of the censors turning a "blind eye".

References

External links

* Short stories by Arthur C. Clarke 1950 short stories {{1950s-sf-story-stub

Plot

Publication

Further reading

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External links