"Hell-Fire" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

short story A short story is a piece of prose fiction that typically can be read in one sitting and focuses on a self-contained incident or series of linked incidents, with the intent of evoking a single effect or mood. The short story is one of the oldest t ...

by American writer

Isaac Asimov Isaac Asimov ( ; 1920 – April 6, 1992) was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. During his lifetime, Asimov was considered one of the "Big Three" science fiction writers, along with Robert A. Heinlein and ...

, originally published in the May 1956 issue of ''

Fantastic Universe ''Fantastic Universe'' was a U.S. science fiction magazine which began publishing in the 1950s. It ran for 69 issues, from June 1953 to March 1960, under two different publishers. It was part of the explosion of science fiction magazine publishin ...

'' and reprinted in the 1957 collection '' Earth Is Room Enough''. It is one of a number of stories, such as "

Darwinian Pool Room "Darwinian Pool Room" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was first published in the October 1950 issue of ''Galaxy Science Fiction'', edited by Horace L Gold, and reprinted in the 1975 collection '' Buy Jupiter ...

" and "

Silly Asses "Silly Asses" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It was published in the February 1958 issue of ''Future Science Fiction'', after having been twice rejected by other outlets. It was subsequently included in the colle ...

", in which Asimov worries about the

nuclear arms race The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet n ...

of the 1950s.

Plot summary

"Hell-Fire" is an extremely short story, and deals with a journalist, Alvin Horner, who speaks with Joseph Vincenzo, a scientist at Los Alamos, at the first exhibition of a film with super-slow-motion footage of a nuclear explosion, with the footage "divided into billionth-second snaps." Vincenzo is sure that nuclear bombs are hell-fire, and tells the journalist they shall ultimately destroy mankind. After the scientist's observations, the film starts. For a brief moment, before initiating the full reaction into the infamous nuclear toadstool, the atomic blast resembles a specific shape: the face of the

Devil A devil is the personification of evil as it is conceived in various cultures and religious traditions. It is seen as the objectification of a hostile and destructive force. Jeffrey Burton Russell states that the different conceptions of ...

External links

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Short stories by Isaac Asimov 1951 short stories Science fiction short stories Works originally published in Fantastic Universe {{1950s-sf-story-stub