The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use
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The Weapon Too Dreadful To Use is a short story by science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov. It was published in Amazing Stories in May 1939.
The people of Earth have colonised Venus, despite the intelligent species native to the planet, who are treated as inferiors with no rights (reminiscent of apartheid on Earth).
One of the Venusians shows his Earthman friend the ruins of an ancient city, where they discover details of an ancient weapon, apparantly abandoned eons before as being too dreadful to actually use. But as the domination of the colonists increases, elements of the Venusian resistnce obtain the weapon and use it on the colonial cities and their population. The weapon works by disconncting the brain from the mind, and within a short time, the Venusians take back control of their planet from the defenceless colonists.
Earth surrenders and signs a peace treaty with Venus, and the Venusians destroy the weapon.
| The Early Asimov |
| The Callistan Menace | Ring Around the Sun | The Magnificent Possession | Trends | The Weapon Too Dreadful to Use | Black Friar of the Flame | Half-Breed | The Secret Sense | Homo Sol | Half-Breeds on Venus | The Imaginary | Heredity | History | Christmas on Ganymede | The Little Man on the Subway | The Hazing | Super-Neutron | Not Final | Legal Rites | Time Pussy | Author! Author! | Death Sentence | Blind Alley | No Connection | The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline | The Red Queen's Race | Mother Earth |
