n-sf: Nanotechnology in Science Fiction #20

ASN (anthony.napier@lexis-nexis.com)
Fri, 19 Sep 1997 17:19:28 -0400

The Nanotechnology in Science Fiction Bibliography Maintained by Anthony S. Napier
Issue #20, September 19, 1997
http://www.erinet.com/prass/nanowars/ninsf/n_in_sf.html

This is primarily a list of Science Fiction novels & short stories that are nanotech related. I have not read everything on this list.

Additions and corrections should be sent to <n-sf@lucifer.com>. Thanks to all who have contributed to this bibliography.



Rating of nanotech content (not implying good/bad)
Four stars  ****     nanotech is the center of the story
Three stars  ***     nanotech is a major component of the story
Two stars     **     nanotech is a minor component of the story

Nanotech may be explicitly or implicitly stated, or be called by different names. People who have read one of the non-fiction books listed below should have a feel for the general definition of molecular nanotechnology.


Non-Fiction books on nanotechnology


1986 Engines of Creation K. Eric Drexler

1991 Unbounding the Future K. Eric Drexler, et al.

1992 Nanosystems - Molecular

      Machinery, Manufacturing,
      and Computation                   K. Eric Drexler

_Further_information_ can be obtained from the sci.nanotech homepage located at URL <http://nanotech.rutgers.edu/nanotech> or Sean Morgan's page at <http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/Nano.html>


T H E - L I S T



"Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not."

Isaac Asimov (1920-92)

Code (default is Novel)


 (C)    collection, anthology
 (N)    novella, novelette
 (M)    magazine, pulp
 (F)    fantasy
 (R)    reissue, reprint


(b) biotech pathway - organic molecules, "wet" environment.

(mm) molecular manufacturing - machine phase, "dry" environment,

indicates the work shows detailed portrayal of nanoengineering.

 (si)   Singularity
 (gg)   Gray Goo   
 (uf)   Utility Fog
 (cr)   Cryonics   

(h-yy) Hugo award winner - year
(n-yy) Nebula award winner - year


Author                    Title                        Date,Code,Rating

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Anderson K. & Beason D. Assemblers of Infinity 1993 4 Anderson, Poul Boat of a Million Years, The 1989 2.4 Anderson, Poul Harvest of Stars 1993 3 Anderson, Poul Stars are Also Fire, The 1994 Banks, Iain M. Feersum Endjinn 1994 3 Banks, Iain M. Excession 1996 2 Barnes, John Kaleidoscope Century 1995 Barnes, John Mother of Storms 1994 2 Baxter, Stephen Ring 1994 2 Baxter, Stephen Timelike Infinity 1993 2 Bear, Greg Anvil of Stars 1992 3 Bear, Greg Blood Music 1985 b 3.5 Bear, Greg Forge of God, The 1987 3 Bear, Greg Heads 1990 2 Bear, Greg Moving Mars 1993 n94 2 Bear, Greg Queen of Angels 1990 3 *Bear, Greg Slant 1997 3 Benford, Gregory Furious Gulf 1994 2 Benford, Gregory Great Sky River 1987 2 Benford, Gregory Sailing Bright Eternity 1995 2 Benford, Gregory Tides of Light 1989 2 Bishop, Michael Secret Ascension, The 1987 2 Bisson, T. Pirates of the Universe 1996 2 Bova, Ben Moonrise 1996 3 Bova, Ben Voyagers 3: Star Brothers 1990 3.5 Brenner, Mayer Alan Spell of Apocalypse 1994 F Brin, David Earth 1990 2 Brunner, John Maze of Stars, A 1991 3 Bull, Emma Falcon 1989 2 Calder, Richard Dead Boys 1995 Calder, Richard Dead Girls 1995 Carter, Raphael Fortunate Fall, The 1996 *Carver, Jeffrey From a Changeling Star 1988 2.5 Carver, Jeffrey Down the Stream of Stars 1990 2 Carver, Jeffrey Neptune's Crossing 1994 2 Clarke, Arthur C. Hammer of God, The 1993 2 *Cramer, John G. Einstein's Bridge 1997 2.7 DeChancie, John Innerverse 1996 3.4 Egan, Greg Distress 1997 Egan, Greg Permutation City 1994 2 Egan, Greg Quarantine 1992 2.5 Elliott, Elton (Editor) Nanodreams 1995 C 4 England, Terry Rewind 1997 1.9 Feeley, Gregory Oxygen Barons, The 1990 3 Flynn, Michael Nanotech Chronicles, The 1991 C 4 Frankowski, Leo Copernick's Rebellion 1987 b 3.5 Gibson, William Idoru 1996 2 Gibson, William Mona Lisa Overdrive 1988 1.9 Gibson, William Virtual Light 1993 2 Goonan, Kathleen Ann Bones of Time, The 1995 2.5 Goonan, Kathleen Ann Queen City Jazz 1994 4 *Halperin, James L. The Truth Machine 1996 Harrison H. & Minsky M. Turing Option, The 1992 2.5 Jennings, Phillip C. Bug Life Chronicles 1989 3 Keith, William H. Warstrider [Series of Books] 1993- 3 Kilian, Crawford Gryphon 1989 3 Kress, Nancy Beggars and Choosers 1994 4 Kress, Nancy Beggars Ride 1996 Kube-McDowell,Michael P. Exile 1992 2 MacLeod Brace, Ian R. Stone Canal, The 1996 *MacLeod Brace, Ian R. Great Wheel, The 1997 McAuley, Paul J. Fairyland 1995 3.5 McAuley, Paul J. Red Dust 1994 3 McCarthy, Wil Murder in the Solid State 1996 McDonald, Ian Terminal Cafe 1994 3 Metzger, Robert A. Quad World 1991 Nagata, Linda Bohr Maker, The 1995 4 Nagata, Linda Deception Well 1997 2.9 Nagata, Linda Tech Heaven 1995 cr 4 Noon, Jeff Pollen 1995 Noon, Jeff Vurt 1993 Platt, Charles Protektor 1996 Preuss, Paul Human Error 1985 b 3.5 *Quick, W. T. Dreams of Flesh and Sand 1988 2.5 *Quick, W. T. Dreams of God and Men 1989 2.5 *Quick, W. T. Singularities 1990 Quinn, Daniel Ishmael 1995 R *Robinson, Kim Stanley Blue Mars 1996 h97 2 Robinson, Kim Stanley Green Mars 1994 h94 2 Robinson, Kim Stanley Red Mars 1992 n93 2 Robinson, Spider/Jeanne Starmind 1995 Rucker, Rudy Freeware 1997 Ryman,Geoff Child Garden, The 1990 Sawyer, Robert J. Foreigner 1994 2 Sawyer, Robert J. The Terminal Experiment 1995 n95 2.5 Smith, L. Neil Venus Belt, The 1980 3 Steele, Allen Labyrinth of Night 1992 3.5 Stephenson, Neal Diamond Age, The 1995 h96,mm 4 Stirling, S. M. Drakon 1996 2.5 Sullivan, Tricia Lethe 1996 Swanwick, Michael Stations of the Tide 1991 n91 2.7 Varley, John Steel Beach 1992 2.8 Vinge, Joan D. Dreamfall 1996 Vinge, Joan D. Snow Queen, The 1980 h81 2.5 Vinge, Joan D. Summer Queen, The 1991 2.5 Vinge, Vernor Fire Upon the Deep, A 1992 h93 3 Vinge, Vernor Marooned in Realtime 1986 si 2 Vinge, Vernor Peace War, The 1984 2.2 Watson, Ian Nanoware Time 1991 Williams, Walter Jon Aristoi 1992 mm 4 Wilson, Robert Charles Bridge of Years, A 1991 2 Wilson, Robert Charles Harvest, The 1993 3.2 Wolverton, Dave On My Way To Paradise 1989 Young, Jim Armed Memory 1996 Zindell, David Neverness 1988 2
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My Favorite Books on the N-SF List - Anthony S. Napier

Books with a "4" rating:
Bear, Greg  ..............................  Blood Music                                                         
Nagata, Linda  ...........................  Bohr Maker, The  
Nagata, Linda  ...........................  Tech Heaven     
Stephenson, Neal  ........................  Diamond Age, The        
Williams, Walter Jon  ....................  Aristoi   

Books with <4 ratings:

Banks, Iain M.  ..........................  Excession    
Bear, Greg  ..............................  Forge of God, The  
Robinson, Kim Stanley  ...................  R G B Mars                                                            
Vinge, Vernor  ...........................  Fire Upon the Deep, A 
Vinge, Vernor  ...........................  Marooned in Realtime  


  

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Honorable Mention (predates modern nanotech concepts)
1941 ...... Microcosmic God ............... Theodore Sturgeon
1942 ...... Waldo ......................... Robert A. Heinlein
1952 ...... Surface Tension ............... James Blish
1954 ...... Autofac ....................... Philip K. Dick
1966 ...... The Mechanic .................. Hal Clement   
1970 ...... Dancer at the End of Time ..... Michael Moorcock
1978 ...... Sight of Proteus .............. Charles Sheffield



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Short Stories or Serials - These are loose items that appear in magazines, collections, etc, amidst other non-nano related works.
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*Brown, Molly Doing Things Differently (M) Interzone #111, British, September 1996 Rating 3 Burns, Stephen L. Down Under Crater Billy (M) Analog, January 1995 Rating 3 Di Filippo, Paul Any Major Dude (C) New Worlds Anthology #1 Rating ? Di Filippo, Paul Up the Lazy River (M) Science Fiction Age, September 1993 Rating 4 Feeley, Gregory Mind's Place, The (C) Full Spectrum 4, 1993 Rating 2.9 Gresh, Lois H. Cafebabe (C) Infinite Loop SF Anthology, 1994 Rating ? Gresh, Lois H. Digital Pistil ? Rating ? Gresh, Lois H. Mandelbrot Moldrot (C) DAW's Mistakonic University Antho, 1996 Rating ? Johnson, Todd Legacy (C) Bolos Book 2, 1994 Rating 3 Kress, Nancy Margin of Error (C) The Years Best Science Fiction #12, 1995 Rating ? McCarthy, Wil Castles (M) Analog, April 1997 Rating ? Niven, Larry Procrustes (C) Crashlander, 1994 Rating 3.5 Stiegler, Marc The Gentle Seduction (C) in collection of same name, 1990 Rating 4 Sterling, Bruce The Shores of Bohemia (C) Globalhead, 1992 Rating 4 Swanwick, Michael Griffin's Egg (C) The Years Best Science Fiction #10, 1993 Rating 2.5 Tonnies, Mac Alchemist's Planet (C) Illumined Black, 1995 Rating 3
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NanoWars, Illustrated Science Fiction by Anthony S. Napier http://www.erinet.com/prass/nanowars/nw.html (ftp available)
NanoWars Chapter 1: Breakthrough                       
1994        

Rating 4
"The year is 2020, and mankind's advancement of technology continues. In fact, it has reached the ignition point!"
NanoWars Chapter 2: Propagation                        
1995        

Rating 4
"Machine fights machine. Do men even matter?"

Nanothinc has a NanoWars page at...
http://www.nanothinc.com/NanoWorld/NanoFun/NanoWars/NanoWars.html



Comic Books
Hardware       
Milestone Comics                                    
Rating 2

Xombi (now discontinued)
Milestone Comics Rating 2

Bloodshot       
Valiant Comics                                     
Rating 3

Doom Patrol
no other info at this time

*Doom 2099
Marvel Comics

Dirty Pair - Sim Hell
Adam Warren

Raven Chronicles, issue 13: "The Leader of the Pack" Caliber Comics



Electronic Text on the Internet

Cooperman, Bob
Essays and fiction attempts taking place in a nanotech future http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/6245/23c1.html Rating ?

Hsieh, Paul
Axioms
*http://www.vix.com/pub/objectivism/Writing/PaulHsieh/axioms.html Rating 2.2

Napier, Anthony S.
Dead Reckoning http://www.erinet.com/prass/nanowars/story/story2.html Rating 4 (mm,gg)

Napier, Anthony S.
The Quiet Revolution http://www.erinet.com/prass/nanowars/story/story1.html Rating 4

Porter, Mitchell
Outward Bound
http://www.thehub.com.au/~mitch/fiction/suncorp.html Rating ?

Vader, Paul
Post-industrial revolution http://www.mcs.net/~pv/web/stories/postind.html Rating 4 (mm,gg)

Van Oflen, Jeff
Notes from the G.O.D. http://erie.csis.gvsu.edu/~vanoflej/NanoTech/TheBook.html Rating 4 (uf)



Motion Picture

Deep Red
1994 MCA/Universal, 85 minutes.
Michael Biehn, Joanna Pacula, John DeLancie. Science fiction: A young girl whose blood conveys immortality, due to an encounter with extraterrestrials, is hunted by a ruthless scientist...
Rating: 4

Terminator 2: Judgment Day
1991 139 minutes.
Although the "n" word is not used, general consensus is that nanotechnology is the only realistic way the T-1000 could be implemented. James Cameron should take note of this when doing T3. Rating: 2.5

VIRTUOSITY
1995 Paramount Pictures, 97 minutes.
Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington
With (silicon-based) nano, VR takes a physical form. Rating: 3.5



Television

Babylon 5
1993 Pilot Movie "The Gathering"
Briefly mentioned at the end of the pilot.

*Bombshell
SciFi Channel Original Movie, first aired August 9, 1997 In the near future, a scientist and his assistant work for Nanolab developing cancer-fighting nano. Pretty much a low point of nanoTV thus far...

Demolitionist, The
1996 [made for Cable-TV movie?]
Richard Grieco, Nicole Eggert
A villian is pursued by a dead policewoman who's brought back to life by a daily dose of life-renewing serum.

Journey to Mars
1996 [made for TV movie?]
On Monday, March 25th, CBS ran a prime time movie of the week titled "Journey to Mars." ...this had to be one of the top 10 worst movies of all time. To compound the matter, it had a nanotechnology theme: "Nanotech devices implanted in the landing module pilot/commander -- designed to systematically destroy neurons and synapses in the cortex, thereby impairing the pilot's memory and ability to land." Very clever -- HA! Rat poison would have been a lot easier and undeniably more cost effective. - pwg@nanothinc.com

Outer Limits, The
"The New Breed" aired (U.S.) 07/09/95
Richard Thomas, Peter Outerbridge, Tammy Isbell A scientist who's trying to find a way to repair damaged cells develops robots of microscopic size - with which a lab assistant secretly injects himself in hopes of curing his cancer.

Red Dwarf
BBC2 TV series. "In the RED DWARF tv show's latest series (VII), the last episode is entitled NANARCHY, and nanites play a particulary central role concerning the main character and the ship of the series title."

Star Trek TNG
The STTNG "nanite" episode "Evolution" aired (U.S.) 09/23/89 http://nanotech.rutgers.edu/nanotech/papers/update7.html#StarNanotale contains comments on this episode.
See Star Trek Appendix for further details on other episodes.

Star Trek VOYAGER
Scorpion Part I
Episode 67, Season 3, aired (U.S.) 05/22/97 *Scorpion Part II
Episode 68, Season 4, aired (U.S.) 09/03/97 Borg assimilation technology is described as machine-phase chemistry. Detailed graphics shows nanomachines attacking biological cells. See Star Trek Appendix for further details on other episodes.

X-Files, The
"War of the Coprophages" aired (U.S.) 01/05/96 Extraterrestrial nanotechnology cocroaches anyone?



Some games that reference nanotech...
Apocalypse ...................  Activision PlayStation (due XMAS 97)
Cybergeneration ..............  RPG board game        
Mission Critical .............  Commercial Software, PC 
NetBots ......................  Networked X11 game available on the net 
Obsidian .....................  Commercial Software, PC, MAC
Outpost ......................  Commercial Software, PC 
SimEarth .....................  Commercial Software, PC, MAC                             

                     


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M A I L I N G - L I S T - I N F O R M A T I O N

Nanotechnology in Science Fiction (N-SF)

This is a forum to discuss any work of fiction that has portrayed nanotechnology in some way. N-SF is an unmoderated list. The hypertext archive of the mailing list can be found on the world wide web at <http://maxwell.lucifer.com/n-sf/archive/>.

This bibliography (you are reading) can be used as a starting point for discussion. "Engines of Creation" by K. Eric Drexler will be used as the baseline definition of molecular nanotechnology (MNT).

To send mail to the group, write to <n-sf@lucifer.com>.

To subscribe, send a message with "subscribe n-sf <your-email-address>" in the body (the subject line is ignored) to the computerized administrator <majordomo@lucifer.com>.

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Nanothinc <http://nanothinc.com/> Book Reviews Wanted

Nanothinc would like to acquire reviews of any material on this list. If you are interested in submitting reviews to Nanothinc, you may send them to <tess@nanothinc.com>. It would be cool if you CC'ed the N-SF mailing list <n-sf@lucifer.com> as well. Thanks.

Nanothinc has a N-SF Book Review page at... http://nanothinc.com/NanoWorld/scifi/sfreviews.html



Appendix 1 - Document History
 #  20  Sep 19, 1997
 #  19  Jul 29, 1997
 #  18  May 07, 1997
 #  17  Mar 18, 1997
 #  16  Nov 13, 1996
 #  15  Sep 04, 1996 
 V 2.3  Jun 13, 1996
 V 2.2  Apr 16, 1996
 V 2.1  Feb 12, 1996
 V 2.0  Dec 07, 1995
 V 1.9  Sep 21, 1995
 V 1.8  Aug 07, 1995
 V 1.7  Jun 22, 1995
 V 1.6  May 10, 1995
 V 1.5  Jan 26, 1995
 V 1.4  Dec 01, 1994
 V 1.3  Oct 28, 1994
 V 1.2  Oct 04, 1994

V 1.1 Aug 22, 1994
V 1.0 Jul 12, 1994

*Distribution List
email:

n-sf@lucifer.com [N-SF Mailing List]
newsgroups:

	sci.nanotech
	rec.arts.sf.written
	rec.arts.sf.movies
	rec.arts.sf.tv
	rec.arts.comics.misc
	comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.misc
	comp.sys.mac.games.misc
	rec.games.misc



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Appendix 2 - Relevant Internet Resources

Internet/WWW Access of this List: The N-SF Home Page http://www.erinet.com/prass/nanowars/ninsf/n_in_sf.html

A form of this list is also maintained at nanothinc.com http://www.nanothinc.com/NanoWorld/scifi/tnscifi.html

*Forsight Update comments on "Nanotech & Science Fiction"

http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Update03/Update03.5.html#anchor968787
http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Update08/Update08.2.html#anchor347966
http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Update09/Update09.5.html#anchor107771

Internet Movie Database
http://us.imdb.com/

Book Catalog with one million titles
http://www.amazon.com/

Rebuttal to Scientific American April 1996 Nanotech Story http://www.foresight.org/SciAmOverview.html

HarperCollins Voyager Science Fiction Site http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/voyager



Appendix 3 - Notes on Star Trek