Karl Grossman | The Sun Magazine

Karl Grossman

Karl Grossman is a journalist from Sag Harbor, New York. He is the author of Cover-Up, a book about the nuclear power industry, available from The Permanent Press, Sagaponack, N.Y. 11962.

— From March 1981
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

No Safety

An Excerpt From Cover-Up: What You Are Not Supposed To Know About Nuclear Power

A massive dose, even a mid-range dose of radioactivity, the kind you’d get from a nuclear plant accident, is not necessary to produce cancer. “Routine” radioactive emissions will do it.

December 1980
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

“Truth” Crisis, Not “Energy” Crisis

It was all blamed on the “Arab oil embargo” but who really believed that? There were the tankers, filled to the brim with oil, being kept waiting off-shore. The figures that would authenticate a “shortage” just didn’t add up. Arab oil is just a fraction of U.S. supply and is mainly controlled and pooled internationally by the U.S.-dominated world oil industry.

June 1979
The Sun Interview

Nuclear Power: The Ugly Truth

An Interview With Richard Webb

I’d have to assume that you’re going to get a disastrous accident within the next 20 years, 30 years, right around there . . . I may be wrong . . . We’re liable to have one next week.

February 1978
Fiction

On The Astral Plane To Puerto Rico

I, Arthur Milstein, have had a shitty life. I have found difficulty finding gainful employment. I most recently had a position carving names on gravestones, but I was dismissed owing to poor spelling. I usually spell well but not under intense pressure.

December 1977
Fiction

Not Quite Our Sort

“Anything,” I say. “Anything but that.” They were trying to make me eat chicken. As an intelligence agent I had been through the wringer many times — torture, torture, forever torture. But I hate chicken. I detest chicken. I would tell them anything if I had to eat chicken.

November 1977
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Nuclear Energy: Our Faustian Bargain?

Governor Meldrin Thomson flew in in his helicopter. He’d originally teamed up with the Public Service Company of New Hampshire to push the twin 1150 megawatt set of nuclear power plants, among the biggest ever built, on New Hampshire’s coast, all 18 miles of it. Seabrook got selected without knowing it.

October 1977
Fiction

Spies Don’t Kill Each Other

Fletcher E. Driscoll felt the day getting warmer. He was in the back seat of a Land Rover, blindfolded. It must be noon, he thought, bouncing along what seemed to be a crude jungle road.

May 1977
Fiction

How To Cook Chevrolets

“But man must live in his environment. So our solution is simple. We alter the digestive system, replace it with a treatment plant. Then anybody can eat cars, cement, you name it.”

April 1977
Fiction

Hot Dogs

I was compiling a list of what I would take with me in the coffin when along came a dog wearing a hat.

March 1977
Fiction

Seventh Heaven

Every time Arthur Wazu got sexually excited his ear lobes turned lavender. This had just happened in the central power station, so he roller-skated back to his captain’s quarters to rest.

February 1977
Fiction

Journey To Ishpeming

The person they called The Wizard and I were standing in the grimy men’s room of the Greyhound Bus Station in Ishpeming, Michigan. This is where The Wizard met visitors.

December 1976
Fiction

Star Klutz

Commander Arthur Wazu, a broken man, sat disconsolately on the spaceship veranda, gazing at Shlerpy, one of the nine moons of planet 4-b.

November 1976
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