H. G. Wells 
The World Set Free 

The World Set Free is a series of three fantasias of possibility, stories which all turn on the possible developments in the future of some contemporary force or group of forces. The World Set Free was written under the immediate shadow of the Great War. Every intelligent person in the world felt that disaster was impending and knew no way of averting it.
Noteworthy for its depiction of fictional ''atomic bombs'' which eerily prefigure the development of real nuclear weapons.