H. G. Wells described the situation with cold fusion in his 1913 S.F. novel "The World Set Free" which is about nuclear energy. A character describes the world as it was before the coming of ultra-cheap, plentiful nuclear energy and a nuclear war:
". . . Everywhere there were obsolete organisations seizing upon all the new fine things that science was giving to the world, nationalities, all sorts of political bodies, the churches and sects, proprietorship, seizing upon those treat powers and limitless possibilities and turning them to evil uses. And they would not suffer open speech, they would not permit of education, they would let no one be educated to the needs of the new time.... You who are younger cannot imagine the mixture of desperate hope and protesting despair in which we who could believe in the possibilities of science lived in those years before atomic energy came.... 'It was not only that the mass of people would not attend, would not understand, but that those who did understand lacked the power of real belief. They said the things, they saw the things, and the things meant nothing to them.... 'I have been reading some old papers lately. It is wonderful how our fathers bore themselves towards science. They hated it. They feared it. They permitted a few scientific men to exist and work—a pitiful handful.... 'Don't find out anything about us,' they said to them; 'don't inflict vision upon us, spare our little ways of life from the fearful shaft of understanding. But do tricks for us, little limited tricks. Give us cheap lighting. And cure us of certain disagreeable things, cure us of cancer, cure us of consumption, cure our colds and relieve us after repletion....'" http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1059/1059-h/1059-h.htm Chapter 1, Section 3 of this book reads like my book. No coincidentally; I read this years ago, before it was converted to e-text. So did Arthur Clarke, of course, and it was one of the inspirations for "Profiles of the Future." To find this section look for this text: "Holsten, before he died, was destined to see atomic energy dominating every other source of power, but for some years yet a vast network of difficulties in detail and application kept the new discovery from any effective invasion of ordinary life. . . ." - Jed
