The Answer

This (not very long novella) was separately published in hard covers back in 1955. It's an antiwar fable and has survived the passage of time quite well. After each of two US and Soviet H-bomb tests an injured angel flutters from the sky and dies. Two different political systems must endeavour to cope with the implications, and in the event both fail. In a way Wylie was doing the same sort of thing as I did more recently in my own novel Leaving Fortusa, using fantasy in a sciencefictional setting to work out moral/ethical questions, although otherwise the works are extremely different. I can't think why it took me so long to get round to reading this little book, which I bought nearly a decade ago.

I loved this as a kid, and rereading the ending now, I can see why. For a kid growing up in the Sixties, waiting for the bomb to drop, this was a very hopeful book. I suspect it would seem very dated now.