The story starts in the dystopia of an Earth destroyed in war and under a dictatorship, but, given the conceit of the volume in which it first appeared, a boy is given an intelligent weapon and uses it to overthrow the dictatorship and become a new dictator.
}, year = {2007}, journal = {Future Weapons of War}, pages = {43-65}, month = {01/2007}, publisher = {Baen}, address = {Riverdale, New York}, note = {Rpt. in his A Very British History: The Best Science Fiction Stories of Paul McAuley, 1985-2011 (Hornsea, Eng.: PS Publishing, 2013), 313-29 with an author’s note on 432.
}, language = {eng}, }