Which would annoy you more?

A book centered on the American Civil War in which the institution of slavery turns out to be due to the influence of inhuman monsters or a book centered on the American Civil War in which the institution of slavery is either mentioned only in passing or not at all?

A question from Centauri Dreams

The question is still open in the comments section and I haven’t been able to pin down anything in the World War II era, though there is plenty of material to be sifted through. In any case, as I mentioned in the comments yesterday, Hans Bethe was deep into fusion studies in the late 1930s, and I would bet somewhere in the immediate postwar issues of John Campbell’s Astounding we’ll track down the first mention of fusion driving a spacecraft.

My gut feeling on this is that it's going to turn out be later than the 1940s. Definitely by 1960 but it wouldn't surprise me too much if SF awareness of fusion reactions as a power source didn't gel until after Ivy-Mike in 1952.

What I recall from before that is fission or total conversion, without fusion in between them.

Not everything by OSC I link to gets an MPR

Although I would not wander too far from this essay on his site:

We do not punish children who have done nothing wrong. These kids deserve to have all the opportunities of American life, and shame on anyone who tries to hurt them because their parents might have broken a law. They are our children now.

The evidence suggests otherwise - kids who did nothing wrong get punished all the time - but nice sentiment.

"So tomorrow night, we're doing it again with fire."