Project Gutenberg 2009-02-23 Public domain in the USA. 70 Sharkey, Jack 1931 1992 Sharkey, John Michael Minor Detail Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net "Minor Detail" by Jack Sharkey is a satirical science fiction short story first published in the late 1950s. The narrative centers around the farcical military endeavors of General "Smiley" Webb and his ambitious plan to deploy troops using an innovative yet absurd contraption called the Whirligig. The story explores themes of military bureaucracy and the folly of over-complicated solutions to fundamental problems of warfare. The plot unfolds with Secretary of Defense James Whitlow's visit to observe General Webb's top-secret project, designed to land soldiers safely in enemy territory without traditional parachutes. Webb's unorthodox method involves subjecting soldiers to extreme centrifugal forces in the Whirligig to prepare them for high-altitude jumps. However, the demonstration goes hilariously awry, leading to a disastrous outcome where the soldiers fall head-first rather than landing safely. The story ends with the general fainting in shock, highlighting the absurdity inherent in his ambitious plans. Through humor and irony, Sharkey critiques military thinking and the push for conflict in a time marked by fragile peace. (This is an automatically generated summary.) en Science fiction Short stories PS Text Science Fiction Browsing: Literature Browsing: Science-Fiction & Fantasy Browsing: Fiction 45003 45012 2024-09-12T07:25:44.355311 2023-09-12T10:46:55.130038 text/html text/html 41372 2021-01-04T18:48:37 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 16415 2021-01-04T18:48:37 text/html; charset=iso-8859-1 application/zip 61500 2024-09-12T07:25:47.346305 application/epub+zip 60547 2024-09-12T07:25:45.509295 application/epub+zip 60550 2024-09-12T07:25:44.752279 application/epub+zip 115986 2024-09-12T07:25:48.810280 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 108523 2024-09-12T07:25:46.898280 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 108656 2022-09-13T07:18:20.674942 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 38859 38758 2024-09-12T07:25:44.149299 2023-09-12T10:46:54.953048 text/plain; charset=us-ascii text/plain 38750 2021-01-04T18:48:37 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 15223 2021-01-04T18:48:37 text/plain; charset=us-ascii application/zip 18792 2024-09-12T07:25:48.939258 application/rdf+xml 10468 2024-09-12T07:25:45.137290 image/jpeg 2777 2024-09-12T07:25:44.918287 image/jpeg 63193 2024-09-12T07:25:44.361293 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia