Philip K. Dick
A short story (or maybe a mini-novel). Earth (Terra) is in a war with Proxima Centauris. A war of sorts. There is not actually any battle or fighting. Earth scientists design a weapon and then feed the existence of this weapon into their statistical modelling computers to determine if they could win a war. And then the Cenaurians design a defense to this weapon and the defense gets fed into the model. There is never enough gap between weapon and defense to actually allow a weapon of defense system to be built. The statistical models never predict strong enough odds inspire actual action. But somewhere along the line, a man gets pulled to the present from the past and the statistical models have no way of calculating his effects on anything. So they get stuck and the generals are just as stuck. No statistical model, no ability to determine if they should actually start fighting.
Brilliant.
Rating: Read it
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