The first U.S. edition of The World Set Free, by H. G. Wells

Did the Idea for the Atomic Bomb Come From a Science Fiction Novel?

‘The World Set Free’ and its predictions of nuclear warfare

When the gigantic 40,000-feet-high mushroom cloud rose up into the air from a remote desert in Alamogordo in New Mexico on July 16th, 1944, little did we know we had plunged into a new era of both science and politics — an era when atomic power would…