Solution Unsatisfactory

'''Heinlein, Robert A. (writing as Anson MacDonald). "Solution Unsatisfactory."' Astounding'' May 1941. Collected in The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein in several editions starting with New York: Ace, 1966. Frequently reprinted, including The Best of Science Fiction. Groff Conklin, editor. New York: Crown Publishers, 1946. See the Internet Speculative Fiction Database for other publication.

Perhaps best seen as alternative history, where the USA does not enter World War II but gives the British "radioactive dust" to use for radiological warfare against Germany — giving the dust with conditions of American pre-eminence. Note date on story. Cf. and contrast nuclear energy uses in Heinlein's Blowups Happen and the future war motif elsewhere. Cf. and strongly contrast the casual use of atomic weapons in the much earlier "The Airlords of Han". Among other necessary but unsatisfactory solutions, note final establishment of a new Peace Patrol, with a worldwide monopoly over the radioactive dust and the aircraft which can deliver it[.... with] schools for the indoctrination of cadet patrolmen from any race, color, or nationality. They will patrol the sky and "guard the peace" of any country but their own, and would be forbidden to return to their original country for the entire duration of their service; "a deliberately expatriated band of Janizaries, with an obligation only to the Commission and the race, and welded together with a carefully nurtured esprit de corps." (Wikipedia entry) For the Peace Patrol cf. and contrast "Wings Over the World" in the 1936 film THINGS TO COME. and "The Dictatorship of the Air" in H. G. Wells's 1933 The Shape of Things to Come.

RDE, finishing, 14Sep19