In November 1940, Astounding editor John W. Campbell had suggested that Heinlein write a story about the use of radioactive dust as a weapon, proposing a detailed scenario.
Campbell quickly accepted the piece, changing the title to "Solution Unsatisfactory"; it appeared in the May 1941 issue, under Heinlein's "Anson MacDonald" pseudonym.
[2] The 1972 collection Myths and Modern Man noted It is strange how, among all the justified praise heaped upon Heinlein, what should have counted as one of the most brilliant successes of his entire career is very much overlooked.
[3]John DeFries, the narrator, is the campaign manager of Clyde C. Manning, a freshman congressman and military veteran who received a medical discharge for a heart condition.
Manning hears of fish dying in Chesapeake Bay where the by-products of Dr. Estelle Karst's research into artificial radioactive materials are being dumped.
Manning warns the Cabinet of the great dangers of the new situation, introducing the concepts of the nuclear arms race, mutual assured destruction, and second strike capability.
The American victory in the "Four-Day War" owes much to Manning, who had arranged for Congress and President to be outside Washington ahead of the attack, and false rumors of plague to empty New York; nonetheless, 800,000 are killed in Manhattan alone.
The narrator concludes: For myself, I can't be happy in a world where any man, or group of men, has the power of death over you and me, our neighbors, every human, every animal, every living thing.
And neither does Manning.Though it deals not with fission bombs, but rather with a radioisotope dust weapon, "Solution Unsatisfactory" accurately predicted many aspects of the development of nuclear arms and the dilemmas they pose, a year before President Roosevelt authorized the Manhattan Project led by General Leslie Groves.
The concept of a distinct order of pilots totally dedicated to preserving the peace reappears in Heinlein's later works, including the short story "The Long Watch".
Cadets are taught not to ask about another's country or planet of origin, and to admire and seek to emulate Rivera, a legendary Patrolman who ordered the nuclear bombing of his own hometown and died himself in the blast.
He wrote several works on nuclear warfare in the mid-1940s, such as "The Last Days of the United States", "How to be a Survivor", and "Pie from the Sky" but, except for "Back of the Moon," they were rejected by publishers.
I offered them to commercial markets, not to make money, but because the only propaganda that stands any chance of influencing people is packaged so attractively that editors will buy it in the belief that the cash customers will be entertained by it.
In Gregory Benford's 2017 novel, The Berlin Project, set in an alternate history during World War II, Hitler uses radioactive dust against the Allied invasion of Europe in 1944.