I just saw this story from Venus #16 (October 1951)
Which immediately reminded me of Ice 9 from Cat’s Cradle (published 1963), then of solaronite from Plan 9 from Outer Space (released in 1957).
So now I’m wondering about other world-destroying chain reaction stories. What is the earliest example? There is the real world speculation in early atomic bomb testing about the possibility of igniting the Earth’s atmosphere, but when did the general public first learn about that?
I’m sure it can’t be the earliest, but we have Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) - the original film, which inspired the TV series. A meteor shower sets the sky on fire, because that’s how science works, and only nuclear weapons can fix it.
This was followed by Crack in the World from 1965, where nuclear testing causes, you guessed it, a crack in the world. A nuclear weapon sets the world on fire, because that’s how science works, and only creating a new moon can fix it.
And just how dutiful is Raf, confusing stars and planets? His ham-fisted science reduces the credibility of the entire work.
We had a thread in FQ related to this recently. Early stories include The World Set Free, by H. G. Wells in 1914; The Crack of Doom, by Robert Cromie in 1895, and Last and First Men, by Olaf Stapleton, in 1930. Note that of those three, only Wells’ story is actually what we would call a nuclear reaction; the other two are matter-annihilation devices.
…after the Soviet Union and the United States simultaneously conduct nuclear bomb tests, strange meteorological events begin to affect the globe…The increasing heat has caused water to evaporate and mists to cover Britain, and a solar eclipse occurs days ahead of schedule. Later, characters realize that the orbit of the Earth has been disrupted and the planet is spiraling in towards the Sun.
A Princess of Mars (1912) has a single oxygen-producing tower that makes Barsoom’s atmosphere breathable, and when its keeper dies near the end of the novel it means all life on the planet has about three days before it suffocates (that is until our hero John Carter sacrifices himself to get the plant working again, but since this a pulp action novel he gets better in time for the sequel).
