A cherished – and perfectly true! – anecdote about the Golden Age of science fiction is that Cleve Cartmill’s description of an A-bomb in his 1944 story “Deadline” prompted a visit to editor John W. Campbell from a U.S. Army intelligence officer worried about leaks in the Manhattan Project.
Robert Silverberg sifted through the government’s file on the investigation and wrote a highly amusing two-part article that appeared last fall in Asimov’s.
If you’re as far behind in your web reading as I am, this still may be news to you… Here are the links: