[1] Computer expert Charles Forbin briefs the President of the United States of North America on the completion of Project Colossus, a powerful system designed to control the USNA's nuclear arsenal from within the Rocky Mountains.

Fearing compromised military secrecy, the USNA President and the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union agree to disconnect Colossus and Guardian from each other.

Forbin confers with Academician Kupri, Guardian's creator, to stop the computers by slowly disabling the nuclear weapon stockpiles of the USSR and the USNA during routine missile maintenance.

In the meantime, the USNA and the USSR yield to increased Colossus-Guardian control of human life; the Moscow-Washington hotline is tapped, both nations' arsenals target the rest of the world, Colossus's cameras and microphones constantly watch Forbin, and the computers order the deaths of Kupri and other Guardian scientists as they are deemed redundant.

SF Impulse reviewer Alastair Bevan treated the novel favorably, declaring that Jones's handling of a familiar theme made Colossus compulsively readable.

[2] In 1970, the film Colossus: The Forbin Project, based on the novel, was released, produced by Stanley Chase, directed by Joseph Sargent, and starring Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, and William Schallert.