H. G. Wells 
The World Set Free 

The World Set Free is H. G. Wells’ prophetic 1914 novel, telling of world war and the advent of nuclear weapons. Although Wells’ atomic bombs only have a limited power of explosion, they keep on exploding for days on end. ‘Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.’