Sci-Fi/Alternate Histories where some country gets the Atomic Bomb early?

Cafe Society
1

I’m just trying to work out a list of, like the title says, stories (literature, movies, games, etc.) where some country invents or acquires the Atomic Bomb earlier—or even at all—than happened in real life.

I’m leaving out non-state actors, though—terrorists, mad scientists, supervillains, etc. If the baddy is working for an actual country, that I’ll allow.

Anyway, I can think of…

•Stories where the Nazis get The Bomb, which are almost too numerous to mention, not that I’m opposed to a tally. And I’d be kind of curious as to what the first such story was.

•Queen Victoria’s Bomb by Ronald Clark, in which…well, The Bomb is built in Victorian Britain.

•In Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, IIRC…the Soviets build and detonate an atomic bomb first, using captured alien nuclear material, against said alien invaders.

So…anyone else recall any entries?

2

There is the rather peculiar pre-war Heinlein novella “Solution Unsatisfactory,” which deals with control over the bomb and an… unusual outcome.

(Actually, it’s about an atomic weapon that’s not a bomb, but allee-samee in the end.)

3

I was going to suggest the WorldWar books, myself, but the OP already has them.

The Walt Disney 1954 movie of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea very clearly suggests that Captain Nemo has harnessed atomic energy (something very new at the time, and which provided the motive power for the real-life Nautilus to sail under the North Pole, imitating the South Polar voyage in Verne’s book). At the end of the film, when Nemo realizes that his stronghold at the island of Vulcania is about to be taken, he sets off an explosion that was almost certainly intended to be an atomic bomb to destroy the island (the model work they did tried to make the result of the explosion look like a mushroom cloud)

4

It will depend a lot on what you call an “atomic bomb”. For example, in the 1914 Wells novel The World Set Free, what’s discovered is an artificial isotope that creates a continual meltdown lasting months.

As far as counterfactual history goes, Leo Szilard was convinced as early as 1933 that neutrons could somehow induce a chain reaction, and that uranium would be the most likely substance to support a chain reaction. In the depths of the Depression, he couldn’t find a backer willing to invest in exploring the possibility. If the support had been there, the first nuclear pile might have gone critical in 1938.

5

In Michael Moorcock’s book The Steel Tsar, there’s an alternate history where the Russian Empire dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima circa 1940.

6

More Turtledove – in his “Southern Victory / TL191” series: (I don’t know how to operate the “spoiler” gadget – will just leave a few lines blank, for the benefit of any who might wish to avoid “spoiling”.)

World War II in this series, runs a course mostly analagous to the real-world WWII, but with a different line-up: the (very relatively) good guys are the United States of America and Germany; the bad ones, with genocidal tendencies, are the Confederate States of America / Britain / France / (still-Tsarist) Russia. In this scenario, most of the belligerents get the atomic bomb at about the same time, circa 1944 – the year the war ends, with USA / Germany victorious. A number of cities on both sides – including both American “Stateses” – get hit with A-bombs.

7

There was a 1979 reunion movie of the TV series The Wild Wild West. It was set in 1885 and had Michelito Loveless, Jr (son of the original villain from the TV series) threatening to blow up Washington with an atom bomb.

8

Stephen Baxter’s Anti-Ice has the British win the Crimean War and go on to world dominence by exploding an atomic-like bomb over Sevastopol.
They may be using anti-matter; it’s not spelled out exactly, iirc. 20 years since I read it.

9

In the TOS episode, City on the Edge of Forever, peace activists caused the US to slow development of the atomic bomb enough that Hitler was able to develop it first. Things went poorly for Britain & the US at that point.

10

[QUOTE=Ranchoth;17364122*[Queen Victoria’s Bomb]
(Queen Victoria's Bomb - Wikipedia)* by Ronald Clark, in which…well, The Bomb is built in Victorian Britain.
[/QUOTE]

How the heck does Victorian Britain have the ability to create a nuclear weapon?

11

Victorian ingenuity?
And some hand-waving.
Here’s the Wiki page that goes into more detail than I remembered.

12

The 80’s cartoon The Mysterious Cities of Gold contains a flashback indicating that ancient humans had “Weapons of the Sun”, implied to be H-Bombs. Two nations got into a war that destroyed them both, and the world in which the current characters live (16th century Europe and South America) represents a simplification of society.

13
  1. Collect ladies’ underdrawers.
  2. ???
  3. Assemble nuke.
14

Alan Moore did a comic where “Lee won the Civil War by deploying the atom bomb?” “That’s exactly what I’m saying. Everything is different now. Slavery is still legal, and Atlanta is the capital of the Confederated States of America.”

15

But you were willing to buy the idea of Paul Williams creating a nuclear weapon?

16

Yep, and it’s a popular fanon theory that that was the original of the Mirror Universe (which is unlikely given that alien civilizations are radically different in the MU).

17

One of Star Trek’s most famous episodes, City on the Edge of Forever was my first thought.

18

As documented in The End of Eternity, we did develop the atomic bomb early; it wasn’t supposed to happen until the 30th century (spoilers).

19

There was the accidental discovery of radioactive material and its properties . IIRC critical mass was obtained by ramming two laden railway carriages together .

An experimental explosion took place in the Thar desert of India , but some malfunction prevented its actual use in wartime …my recollection is of the Boer war rather than Crimea but I may be mistaken .