The Crack of Doom

A scientist works out how to release the energy bound in matter and concludes that the world would be better ended, and a small group has to stop him. Cromie published it in 1895, half a century before the physics caught up, and the description of what such a detonation would do is uncomfortably close. Sixty plates of moonlit seas, coasts and mountains by painters including Aivazovsky and Jettel carry the dread of a world under a night that may not end.