"The Weapons Shop" in 'Featured Stories', SpecFicWorld.com

http://specficworld.com/fiction/DVSHORT.aspx?Id=41

In my own reading, Spider Robinson was the first SF writer to point out the particle-beam weapons system that Nikola Tesla tried to sell to both FDR and British Prime Minister Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin. One huge Spider fan I know is CBS radio's own Big Jim.

Jim advanced the idea you are about to see. I find it truly horrifying in a way... but in a way, I kind of wish it would happen.

I wrote a lot of cynical things during the Bush Administration. I was sure it was Game Over. Game On passes strange, many times, but the winds have begun to blow hard out here. Hopefully, I too can get a job picking up the downed branches from the storm of the previous regime. Or at least mucking biofuel someplace.

In any case, "The Weapons Shop" was inspired by a great painting by Kenn Brown (http://www.mondolithicstudios.com .) Kenn told me he titled the painting, in turn, from A.E. van Vogt's SF chestnut 'The Weapons Shops of Ishtar."

Completely off-topic, but I finally get to nod three hands away at that old Dutch master, whose story "The Enchanted Village" was the best damn piece of SF I was ever exposed to in elementary school, period, with the exception of "Night of the Cooters"...

Anyway, enjoy. More on the way. ---ed/