H.G.
Wells has long been given credit for inventing the idea of the atomic bomb. He not only described it in his 1914 novel, The World Set Free, but also coined the name. But there was a far more obscure novel, published that same year, which should really be credited with the most realistic prediction of what the Bomb would be like.
While
Wells certainly got the basic idea right, he radically underestimated the
effects of an unbridled nuclear reaction. And what he described would hardly be
recognizable as an atomic explosion today. The explosive force, he thought,
would be no greater than that of a conventional high explosive. The main
difference was, according to Wells, that an atomic explosion simply wouldn’t
stop. It would just keep on exploding pretty much forever.
A far more accurate picture of an atomic blast appeared in an obscure story serialized the same year in Saturday Evening Post
(November 14-November 18) and published as a book in 1915.
The Man Who Rocked the Earth was
written by an unusual team of authors. One was Arthur Train, the creator of a
series of wildly popular detective and mystery novels. As a
lawyer-turned-mystery author, Train’s popularity can be
compared to that of, say, John Grisham today. In his autobiography, My Day in Court (1939), he wrote: “I enjoy the dubious
distinction of being known among lawyers as a writer, and among writers as a
lawyer.” Members of both professions, he goodhumoredly lamented, treated him
with condescension. Although Train’s best-known work is about lawyer-detective
Ephraim Tutt, he also wrote some of the first books about true crime in
America, non-mystery novels and…two books of science fiction (the other, a sequel to The Man Who Rocked the Earth, is no less remarkable and worthy of an article of its own).
In creating the latter he turned for
help to a pre-eminent scientists of his day, Robert Wood. Hardly a household
word today, he was a scientist whose researches in many areas are still
important, especially his work in optics and spectroscopy. In 1897, he became the first to observe field emission; that is, charged particles
being emitted from a conductor in an electric field. This phenomenon is now
used in the field emission microscope for studying atomic structure. He
developed a color photography process, as well as both infrared and ultraviolet
photography. He invented the frosted glass light bulb and the Vienna method of
detecting forged documents. He was apparently also the first person ever to
show animated films.
He brought a level of scientific imagination
and verisimilitude to the two novels he collaborated on with Train that was
unique for the time they were written.
In their story, a mad scientist named Pax
demonstrates his power by detonating a nuclear device in the Atlas Mountains of
Africa. A gunboat attempts to shoot down his flying machine, when…
“…everything happened at once.
Mohammed described afterward to a gaping multitude of dirty villagers, while he
sat enthroned upon his daughter’s threshold, how the star-ship had sailed
across the face of the moon and come to a standstill above the mountains, with its beam of yellow light
pointing directly downward so that the coast could be seen bright as day from Sf ax to
Cabes. He saw, he said, genii climbing up and down on the
beam. Be that as it may, he swears upon the Beard of the Prophet that a second ray of light—of a lavender colour, like the eye of a
long-dead mullet—flashed down
alongside the yellow beam. Instantly the earth blew up like a cannon—up into the air, a
thousand
miles up. It was as light as noonday. Deafened by titanic concussions he fell half
dead. The sea boiled and gave off thick clouds of steam through which flashed
dazzling discharges of lightning accompanied by a thundering, grinding sound
like a million
mills. The ocean heaved spasmodically and the air shook with a rending, ripping noise,
as if Nature
were bent upon destroying her own handiwork. The glare was so dazzling that sight was
impossible. The falukah
was tossed this way and that, as if caught in a simoon, and he was rolled hither and yon
in the company of Chud,
Abdullah, and the headless mullet.
“This earsplitting racket continued, he says,
without
interruption for two days. Abdullah
says it was
several hours; the official report of the Fiala gives it as six minutes. And then it began to rain in torrents until he was almost drowned. A great wind arose and lashed the ocean, and a whirlpool seized
the falukah and whirled it round and round. Darkness
descended upon the earth, and in the general
mess Mohammed hit his head a terrific blow
against the mast. He was sure it was but a matter
of seconds before they would be dashed to pieces
by the waves. The falukah spun like a marine top
with a swift sideways motion. Something was dragging
them along, sucking them in. The Fiala went
careening by, her fighting masts hanging in shreds.
The air was full of falling rocks, trees, splinters,
and thick clouds of dust that turned the water
yellow in the lightning flashes. The mast went
crashing over and a lemon tree descended to take its
place. Great streams of lava poured down out of the
air, and masses of opaque matter plunged into
the sea all about the falukah. Scalding mud, stones,
hail, fell upon the deck.”
The
authors go on to detail the widespread effects of the explosion. One result
was a breech in the mountains, allowing
the Mediterranean to flood the Sahara.
(It might be worth mentioning that the illustrations accompanying the story were the first depictions of a nuclear explosion—including the first in color.)
Unlike
Wells who mumbled about oxidizing an imaginary element called “Carolinium,” Train and
Wood explicitly used uranium, which they had release its energy
instantaneously. The resulting atomic blast itself was devastating enough, but
Train and Wood trumped Wells totally in describing the physical aftereffects of
the explosion: “Reaching Syfax [the survivors on the boat] reported their
adventures and offered prayers in gratitude for their extraordinary escape; but
five days later all three began to suffer excruciating torment from internal
burns, the skin upon their heads and bodies began to peel off, and they died in
agony within the week.”
So, almost exactly 100 years ago, a lawyer and a scientist managed to describe in meticulous detail not only a
nuclear explosion but the lingering aftereffects of fallout and radiation poisoning.
