I was reading a book called Last and First Men by Olaf Stapleton, published in 1930.
Interesting enough book(at least I think so) but one thing that bothers me is that one of the events of the book is the collapse of the World Civilization in 6000 AD(more or less) because they run out of Coal. What bugs me is that he never seems to show the idea of an advanced civilization developing nuclear power.
I know that no one had split the Atom in 1930(unless I’m wrong) but wouldn’t the theoretical basis be there at the time? If so, how well known would the idea have been? My. Stapleton apparently had some kind of degree in Philiosphy, so he hung around Univeristies a bit, but would he possibly have heard of it?
According to this site, Ernest Rutherford split a nitrogen atom as early as 1917. I’m sure the possibilities for unlocking the energy of the nucleus were well known by 1930, if not the actual means to go about it efficiently.
Looking at fiction, H.G. Wells envisioned both nuclear power and nuclear weapons in his 1914 book The World Set Free. Mr. Stapleton seems to have been a bit out of the loop.
So it looks like Mr. Stapleton was either rather isolated from speculative techology in general(Maybe he spent most of his time contemplating philosphy?) , or he didn’t consider Nuclear power feasible.
Considering the guy lived until 1950, it makes me wonder if about 1946 he contemplated rewriting some of his novel…
Splitting Nitrogen requires energy - it doesn’t release it. There’s no unlocking of energy involved.
The idea of a fission chain reaction happened in the latter part of the 1930’s. The neutron wasn’t “officially” discovered until 1932 (Chadwick). Fission was discovered a few years after that. Even though there must have been strong speculation about the neutron before the conclusive evidence was published, I’m not sure that a guy with a philosophy degree would have had any inside information on that.
The 1920s-style deathray, for all its potential, turned out to simply not be practical. Unfortunately, one side-effect of this is that advanced energy sources used to develop the 1920s-style deathray were simultaneously discredited, even though the failure of the 1920s-style deathray was not due to these energy sources.
By 1930, the failure of the 1920s-style deathray had left such a bad taste in everyone’s mouth that it was presumed that the entire world would stick to coal from then on.
Last and First Men and Starmaker are two of the most important books in early Science Fiction; they got manypredictions wrong, but indicted a way forward for philosophical conjecture about life in the unverse.
Many concepts in these books were far ahead of their time, particularly the building of artificial worlds and genetic engineering…
However he used a very long timescale for everything; in the book, nuclear power was developed after the coal ran out four thousand years from now, but it caused a chain reaction in radioactive ores throughout the world causing worldwide artificial volcanos.
I should point out that even during the Manhatten project the possibility of a world-wide chain reaction was considered, but the developers of the Bomb were confident in their calculations that this was impossible.
Luckily they were correct.
Actually, he doesn’t name the element concerned, nor specify that it was radioactive;
but he says-
“it was found possible, by means of a huge initial expenditure of energy, to annihilate the positive and negative charges onin one not very common type of atom.”
By this he may have meant that the charges holding the atom together were suppressed, releasing the considerable binding energy.
Later-
“The first explosion was enough to blow up the mountain range above the mine. In those mountains were huge tracts of the critical element, and these were detonated by the rays from the initial explosion.”
So he has got fission, of a sort, and a runaway chain reaction;
not bad for 1930.
The details of the runaway chain reaction were secret till 1945.
IIRC, Hugo Gernsback’s 1929 visionary tale Ralph 124c41+ doesn’t mention atom splitting as a future source of power, but in 1932 Gernsback wrote an essay for his magazine “Wonder Stories” entitled “Wonders of Atomic Power.”
I wasn’t sure if that chain reaction was actually caused by nuclear fission or not.
Stapledon mentions annihilation, both here and when describing the interplanetary drive; so fission is probably not completely accurate.
Is the Star Makers a sequel or rather another book on an even broader scale?
Very much a book on a broader scale; it mentions Humanity as a fleeting phenomenon, but follows the history of mindkind to the end of the universe.
The myriad aliens that Stapledon dreamt up for Starmaker have been equalled, but never bettered.
Probably along the lines of that device that destorys the island and the American bomber formation in the early part of the book.
I’m rather enjoying the book so far, moreso the father it gets. Though I have a thing for epics, particualry on a large scale, so that probably explains it. I’ll probably end up reading “Star maker” pretty soon too.
Tell me, are the martians interesting? I’ve read it describes their society, but I haven’t reached that point yet.