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War was banished from Earth, and instead operated by proxy on the Moon. Belligerent nations would each send robots (not necessarily androids) to the moon to compete for supremacy in the given conflict.

  • The short story detailed a "world war" that was something like WW XVII or some other number well beyond II or III.
  • The mechanisms by which they attacked each other were interesting; things like interfering with each others ability to isolate or dissipate waste heat while in vacuum.

I believe I originally read it in an Analog Magazine that would have originally been published in the 1970s or early 1980s.

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    That sounds cool, hope someone answers.
    – Organic Marble
    Mar 1, 2017 at 17:10
  • Sounds a bit like Stanislaw Lems "Peace on Earth" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_on_Earth_(novel)) - but it is not a short story, and the other things don't quite match either.
    – Olaf
    Mar 1, 2017 at 21:28
  • Definitely not Peace on Earth, but that deliciously hilarious.
    – Michael Mol
    Mar 1, 2017 at 21:30
  • Sounds a bit like "Robot Jox", but classier.
    – Liesmith
    Mar 2, 2017 at 5:30

1 Answer 1

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I think you may be thinking of "A Short History of World War LXXVIII", by Roy L. Prosterman, published in Analog in 1977.

"After 2025, however, it became possible to transfer the status of fighting to Luna, and this is where all subsequent wars have been fought."

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  • Woo hoo! Sadly though, never anthologized isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?50251
    – Organic Marble
    Mar 3, 2017 at 1:01
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    @OrganicMarble Happily, that issue of Analog is not rare: Abe.com lists 28 copies for sale, starting at $2 + postage. The current issue (they still publish, don't they?) probably costs twice as much.
    – user14111
    Mar 3, 2017 at 1:24
  • I miss the stacks at my university. They had the full runs of all the major sf magazines.
    – Organic Marble
    Mar 3, 2017 at 1:42
  • I'm curious, Paul, how did you happen to figure that out? Even with the strings you provide, Google is completely useless for me as per finding any mention of that story anywhere. Did you recently read that issue?
    – Michael Mol
    Mar 3, 2017 at 18:22
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    @Michael Mol As you may have guessed, I had to go to the original source materials.
    – Paul
    Mar 5, 2017 at 3:20

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