Neutron Tide

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"Neutron Tide" is a short story by British writer Arthur C. Clarke, first published in 1970 in Galaxy Science Fiction.^[1] It is among his shortest pieces of writing, consisting solely of a 2-page, detailed description of a futuristic scenario in order to use a pun as a punch-line. The story was reprinted later in the 1978 Starlord summer special.

Plot summary[]

Clarke describes a space battleship flying too close to the gravitational field of a neutron star, and subsequently being torn to bits by the high tidal forces. A military commander revealing this in a meeting says the only identifiable piece of debris was from an engineer's toolkit, resulting in the pun, "star-mangled spanner": a play on the title of the United States' national anthem.

See also[]

• Neutron Star, a 1966 science fiction short story by Larry Niven
• Feghoot, a short story designed to end with a pun

References[]

External links[]

• Neutron Tide title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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