Weapons of Mass Destruction
Nuclear weapons are a staple element in science fiction novels. The phrase "atomic bomb" predates their existence, and dates back to H. G. Wells' The World Set Free (1914) when scientists had discovered that radioactive decay implied potentially limitless energy locked inside of atomic particles (Wells' atomic bombs were only as powerful as conventional explosives, but would continue exploding for days on end). Cleve Cartmill predicted a chain-reaction-type nuclear bomb in his 1944 science-fiction story "Deadline", which led to the FBI investigating him, due to concern over a potential breach of security on the Manhattan Project.
The use of radiological, biological and chemical weapons is another common theme in science fiction. In the aftermath of World War I, the use of chemical weapons, particularly poison gas, was a major worry, and was often employed in the science fiction of this period, for example Neil Bell's The Gas War of 1940 (1931). Robert A. Heinlein's 1940 story "Solution Unsatisfactory" posits radioactive dust as a weapon that the US develops in a crash program to end World War II; the dust's existence forces drastic changes in the postwar world.
A sub-genre of science fiction, post-apocalyptic fiction, uses the aftermath of nuclear or biological warfare as its setting.
Read more about this topic: Weapons In Science Fiction
Famous quotes containing the words weapons of, weapons, mass and/or destruction:
“Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery.”
—Stendhal [Marie Henri Beyle] (1783–1842)
“When it comes to my own turn to lay my weapons down, I shall do so with thankfulness and fatigue, and whatever be my destiny afterward, I shall be glad to lie down with my fathers in honour. It is human at least, if not divine.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
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They must wait several weeks before a mass
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—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“In nothing was slavery so savage and relentless as in its attempted destruction of the family instincts of the Negro race in America. Individuals, not families; shelters, not homes; herding, not marriages, were the cardinal sins in that system of horrors.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)