The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories

THE VOICE OF THE DOLPHINS
And Other Stores – Expanded Edition

LEO SZILARD

First published in 1961, this is a collection of stories by the eminent physicist Leo Szilard (1898-1964). The 1989 edition includes a previously uncollected story that was the origin of the idea for the Moscow-Washington hot line and a new Introduction by Barton J. Bernstein.

From the Introduction by Barton Bernstein:

ADMIRING Leo Szilard's provocative plot, his earnest plea for peace, and his spirited playfulness in "The Voice of the Dolphins," the main science fiction fable in this 1961 volume, a longtime admirer and sometime protector told him, this story is "your political testament, . . . it is the pure milk, or cream, of the Szilardian word." Penning that praise, Robert Hutchins, former president of the University of Chicago, where Szilard had been a professor of physics and was still a professor of biophysics, went on to say, "I laughed and cried at the same time. I laughed because it [the story] was funny, and I cried because it was true.”
This "political testament," as Szilard himself called it, was written toward the end of his long career as a scientist, critic of the arms race, crusader for peace, and occasional science fiction writer and satirist. The "Dolphins" tale, crafted four years before Szilard's death, was one of his many efforts to guide the world through an uneasy period of nuclear stalemate, to propose rules for learning to live with the bomb, and to sketch a way out of a perilous situation and toward peace. So concerned was Szilard that his message reach important people that he sent copies to American officials, presented the analysis underlying the story at international meetings, and even arranged, shortly before publication, to have a lengthy extract of "Dolphins" translated into Russian and given to Premier Nikita Khruschev, with whom he had privately discussed its ideas a few months before.
To this fable of future history, Szilard attached four shorter tales, all written in the late 1940s, to put together his small volume, The Voice of the Dolphins and Other Stories. The five tales raised fundamental questions about the uses of science, the meaning of scientific progress, the menace of nuclear war, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The book, though technically classified as science fiction and often mixing in heavy doses of satire, was devised to promote Szilard's criticisms of the international system, his general hopes for rational analysis, and his ways toward arms control and ultimately disarmament. The stories are ironic, imaginative, clever, and rich with both warning and hope.
The book was published in 1961. In the next few years, it sold over 35,000 copies within the United States. It was translated into six other languages, and published in seven foreign countries, often with an additional story or two by Szilard. Winning attention for its bold thinking about nuclear issues and its clever mixture of science fiction and satire, the book became a minor classic of the nuclear age.

Comments about the 1989 Edition:
“This book is fiction, but it is a fiction of a Swiftian nature, addressed to major issues, including those of geopolitics, the arms race, disarmament, population control, the morality of war, and the mismatch between modern man’s enormous technical capabilities and his limited moral capacities. There is a continuing vitality in much of the material, which is instructive about apprehensions manifest not only in Szilard’s day but in our own concerning the social role of science and technology. I know of no other modern book like it.”
- Daniel J. Kevles, California Institute of Technology

Original reviews of the 1961 Publication:
“These stories could more appropriately be labeled ‘parables for the nuclear age.’…This makes the book sound dour, which it most certainly is not. No, it is imaginative and witty – thoroughgoing entertainment spiced with thought-provoking overtones.” – The Christian Science Monitor

“An extraordinarily well-written book…extremely satisfying as a work of art. In each story, Szilard conveys a feeling, an atmosphere that goes far beyond its overt ‘meaning.’…What he says about the eternal political situation cannot fail to move us.” – Saturday Review

This is a reproduction edition from a scanned copy of the original 1989 edition from Stanford University Press publication (ISBN: 0804717540).

INTRODUCTION by Barton J Bernstein 3

THE VOICE OF THE DOLPHINS 47

MY TRIAL AS A WAR CRIMINAL 103

THE MARK GABLE FOUNDATION 117

CALLING ALL STARS 133

THE MINED CITIES 153

AFTERWORD by Helen Weiss 175

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