September 5 marked the 77th anniversary of the beginning of the Gouzenko spy scandal, which is so well known I won’t insult readers by explaining further. At least directly.
Among the targets of the spy ring were atomic secrets; control of the atom bomb was seen even then as potentially crucial to geopolitical ambitions. One side trying to steal the other side’s breakthroughs is nothing new—no doubt one tribe of cavemen tried to steal another tribe’s closely held secret of fire-hardened-pointed-sticks—but nuclear secrets have a particularly SFnal flavor…
Of course, in the decades since Gouzenko skulked from the Russian Embassy, damning documents metaphorically tucked under one arm, infallible safeguards have been introduced to ensure that no miscreant, no matter how highly placed, absconds with nuclear secrets. Nevertheless, writers are not constrained by such real-world considerations. Esoteric technical and scientific espionage is a vital source of plot for science fiction writers. The following five works show some of what can be done with esoteric spy stories.
“Solution Unsatisfactory” by Robert A. Heinlein (1941)
In April 1943, Dr. Estelle Karst perfected the Karst-Obre technique. Armed with Karst’s breakthrough, the United States could produce industrial quantities of artificial radioisotopes. The US wasted little time employing the radioactive dust to depopulate Berlin and thus end the Second World War. This was merely the end of the war, however: The crisis was just beginning.
By using Karst’s dust, the United States gave away the most crucial secret: that the dust could be created at all. Other nations would soon duplicate the dust. Having failed utterly to protect the secret of the radioactive dust, how should the US prevent the seeming inevitability of nuclear proliferation? Solutions are suggested…all unsatisfactory.
Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber (1952)
Professor of ethnology at backwater Hempnell College, Norman Saylor seems an unlikely man to stumble over closely held secrets crucial to an unspoken war. In fact, Saylor has no idea that his wife Tansy’s collection of magical trinkets has any significance beyond revealing that Tansy is superstitious to a degree unacceptable for a respectable professor’s demure wife. It’s only after he insists Tansy dispose of her charms that Saylor discovers that he is wrong, that Tansy is right, and that his actions have placed him in the middle of a conflict much older than the Cold War.
The book’s setting, 1940s America, is divided between men and women. The world of 1940s America is also divided into those who think they run the world—men—and those who know they run the world—magic-using women. Men like Saylor are successful to the extent that their wives’ magic enables them. By insisting that Tansy abandon her magic, Saylor will learn just how much magic has helped him. He is now completely unprotected from the spells cast by Tansy’s rivals.
A Colder War by Charles Stross (2000)
Humans are not the first intelligent beings to walk the Earth, nor are they the most powerful. The Predecessor relics that have survived the eons since the Predecessors vanished are few, but disquieting enough in their implications that rival nations have signed the Dresden Agreement of 1931, which forbids development and use of Predecessor-derived technology.
What nations agreed to do and what they actually do turn out to be quite different. All the Dresden Agreement ensured was that efforts like Project Koschei would be conducted in the deepest secrecy, while the state’s enemies do their best to learn the state’s secrets. American countermeasures to Soviet innovation would remain hidden…until a President’s ill-timed joke on a hot mic turns the Cold War hot.
Atomic Robo by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener (2007 onward)
Nicola Tesla’s creation—that brilliant artificial person known to the world as Atomic Robo—was a stunning achievement. Unfortunately for the world, Tesla was merely a super-genius rather than the super-genius. Tesla’s peers—Helsingard, Undead Edison, perhaps even Doctor Dinosaur—were just as adept as Tesla at delivering paradigm-shattering breakthroughs. What too many geniuses lacked was common sense.
The world is filled with (ta-dum!) Secrets Humanity Was Not Meant to Know and Yet for Some Reason Invested a Lot of Effort to Learn. Secrets such as vampire creation and control, artificial intelligences gone horribly wrong, or the terrible mystery known as “Zorth.” In a world whose secretive government agencies are more ambitious than cautious, Action Scientists! like Atomic Robo are all that stand between humanity and doom.
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys (2017)
Having discovered the existence of the Innsmouth Deep Ones, interwar America could think of only one way in which to manage them. Innsmouth’s inhabitants were summarily dragged from their homes and deposited in concentration camps. Most Deep Ones perished in the camps. By the time Executive Order 9742 delivered Japanese Americans to those same camps, only Aphra and Caleb March remain.
Having been freed along with the Japanese Americans by a lucky bureaucratic oversight, Aphra has no reason to love the US. Nevertheless, it is to Aphra that the US reaches out for assistance in a matter of espionage. The Soviets may be on the verge of mastering Yithian mind-transference. In return for assisting the US and confounding the Reds, the US is willing to promise Aphra the key to recovering her people’s lost legacy. However, this is a treasure that will be useful to Aphra only if she lives long enough to collect it.
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Readers love spy stories; even subgenres not usually spy-centric will find ways of featuring spies and intrigue. No doubt I omitted works that some readers cherish and highly recommend. If so, the comments are, as ever, below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is a four-time finalist for the Best Fan Writer Hugo Award, and is surprisingly flammable.
