Everett B Cole
1) Millennium
There are devices a high-level culture could produce that simply don't belong in the hands of incompetents of lower cultural evolution. The finest, and most civilized of tools can be made a menace ...
2) Indirection
The best way to keep a secret is to publish it in a quite unbelievable form--and insist that it is the truth.
3) The Players
A Playboy is someone with power, too much time on his hands, and too little sense of a goal worth achieving. And if the Playboy happens to belong to a highly advanced culture....
4) Final Weapon
The societal picture painted by Cole is mainly gray: for second and third class citizens, life is literally lived underground, at subsistence or lower, and closely monitored in all aspects. The few ruling elite, the first class citizens, enjoy personal freedoms and luxuries and exercise control over the rest, forming the basis for Cole criticism of socialist societies.
5) Alarm Clock
Most useful high explosives, like ammonium nitrate, are enormously violent ... once they're triggered. But they will remain seemingly inert when beaten, burned, variously punished--until the particular shock required comes along....
7) The Weakling
A strong man can, of course, be dangerous, but he doesn’t approach the vicious deadliness of a weakling--with a weapon!