The Next Logical Step
One Decision Left

What if you could witness a war from beginning to end in a single sitting—every decision, every outcome, every consequence playing out with absolute clarity? In The Next Logical Step, Ben Bova imagines a breakthrough that removes distance and abstraction from strategy, forcing those in power to confront what their choices truly create. This is not a distant view from a map or a page of statistics. It is immediate, overwhelming, and impossible to ignore.As the simulation unfolds, the question shifts from whether a war can be won to whether it should ever be fought at all. The story presses its characters into a corner where knowledge itself becomes dangerous, and the usual boundaries between planning and responsibility begin to collapse. What begins as an experiment becomes a test of what a person is willing to do once the outcome is no longer hypothetical.Ben Bova built his career at the intersection of science and storytelling. He served as editor of Analog Science Fiction and Fact and later Omni magazine, shaping the direction of modern science fiction. His novels, including Mars and Jupiter, brought scientific rigor into compelling narratives, while his shorter works often explored the immediate human cost of technological advancement. The Next Logical Step reflects that focus, presenting a single innovation and following it to a point where someone must choose what happens next.