n-sf: Addition to nanotech bibliography

Chris Phoenix (Chris.Phoenix@eng.efi.com)
Tue, 13 May 1997 14:15:25 -0700

I posted this on sci.nanotech recently, but it didn't make it into your bibliography. If you need more information (copyright date? Publisher?) let me know.

I've seen nanotech in two works of fiction recently. In both cases, it came from outer space--humans didn't have it yet.

_Rewind_ by Terry England is a science fiction novel about a near-future earth. An alien spacecraft has landed, exchanged culture for several years, and then taken off. Several adults were kidnapped, and children left in their place. The children contain the personalities, memories, and DNA of the former adults. The story is about what happens to them. Near the end of the book, the aliens say that they used biology-based nanotech to make the change. The process took several days. Although nanotech was a necessary plot device, it was not at all the focus of the book.

"Raven Chronicles", issue 13: "The Leader of the Pack" (from Caliber
Comics): A team of science/paranormal investigators is called to investigate the results of a fatal attack by dingos (wild Australian dog-like animals). The corpses are not decaying at all, though a strange, very small microbe is very active in them. As the plot unfolds, we find that the dingos have large slanted-lozenge eyes, like the popular alien-abduction aliens. Then we see a human with the same eyes, who had killed and eaten one of the dingos when stranded in the outback. Then we find out that a green meteor crashed a few years ago. One of the scientists proposes that an alien craft crashed, and medical nanomachines used to protect the crew escaped and tried to
"repair" the dingos and the human. Eric Drexler is mentioned by name.

Chris

Ps. I still grind my teeth when I see _Assemblers of Infinity_ at the top of the list with a rating of 4, but no warning that although the book is about nanotech, the science is *very* bad. A "scientific accuracy" rating column would be a great addition--it would let people know which books to give their friends to introduce them to nanotech. (AoI would be a disaster for that purpose. Michael Crichton could have written it-- it's that technophobic.)