The Voice of the Martians: Hungarian Scientist Who Shaped the 20th Century in the West

"In the 1990s the world commemorated the fiftieth anniversary of the first man-made nuclear chain reaction in Chicago, the fiftieth anniversary of the explosion in Hiroshima, and the fiftieth anniversary of the electronic computer. The "story of the atomic bomb" was told repeatedly by citizens of various nations. Leo Szilard, author of The Voice of the Dolphins once said: - "I am going to write down all that is going on in the Uranium Project, not for anyone to read, just for God." - Hans Bethe then asked: - "Don't you think God knows the facts?" - whereupon Szilard replied, - "Maybe he does, but he does not know my version of the facts."" Well, this is the Hungarian version of the human quest for power, for fast information processing, for a scientific understanding of life, based mostly on interviews with the participants involved. The author knew most of these men and interviewed them personally; he journeyed to Chicago and Alamogordo, to Los Alamos and Livermore, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Chelyabinsk and Chernobyl. It will be left for historians in the 21st century to judge facts and myths, intentions and consequences.