NUCLEAR POWER

   The claim that sf is a realistic, extrapolative literature is often supported by the citing of successful PREDICTIONS, among which atomic power and the atom bomb are usually given pride of place. When the news of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was released in 1945, John W. CAMPBELL Jr, editor of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION, was exultant, claimingthat now sf would have to be taken seriously. Campbell was entitled to congratulate himself: it was largely due to his editorial influence that sf writers of the early 1940s had concerned themselves so deeply with atomic power.It could, however, be argued that anticipating the advent of atomic power was not such a tremendous imaginative leap. The notion of "splitting the atom" goes back to antiquity as a philosophical problemraised in the consideration of atomic theories from Democritus (fl 5th century BC) and Epicurus (c341-270BC) onwards. It was not until the end of the 19th century, however, that any evidence relating to the actual structure of atoms became accessible. In 1902 Ernest Rutherford (1871-1937) and Frederick Soddy (1877-1956) demonstrated that certainheavy atoms-including those of uranium and radium - were in a state of continuous spontaneous decay, emitting various types of energetic radiation. The popularization of this and related discoveries had an influence on SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE comparable only to that of evolutionary theory; the first title to reflect this opportunity was probably Robert CROMIE's The Crack of Doom (1895). The power of radioactivity - in manyapplications, some of them bizarre - quickly became commonplace in sf, especially in relation to WAR. Einstein's famous equation linking mass and energy (E = mc²)