josh@cs.rutgers.edu (02/22/90)
While I was sitting around with the flu last weekend, I reread "The Venus Belt", by L. Neil Smith. While not a literary masterpiece, it does have a nice picture of a nanotech-like technology applied to settling the asteroids: "Smartsuits bear about the same relationship to space armor that modern scuba equipment has to cumbersome nineteenth-century diving rigs. Everybody's seen them on the Telecom, a rubbery, one-piece second skin... "Despite appearances, the garment functions primarily as an elaborate and powerful computer. Of all the nanoelectronic miracles available to [21st century] civilization, it is the supreme achievement. Each square millimeter of its multilayered fabric measures the wearer's well-being, making appropriate corrections to air flow, humidity, temperature, half a dozen other nuances down to the molecular level. Each square millimeter outside selectively absorbs or reflects a hundred different forms of energy, powering the suit and protecting its owner." The fabric goes unbroken right over your face, but is invisible because "the surface nanoprocessors pick up wave fronts, assemble and present them on the inside of the hood." Now compare this with: "... there it hangs on the wall, a gray, rubbery-looking thing with a transparent helmet. You take it down... "The suit feels softer than the softest rubber ... You could forget that you were wearing a suit at all. What is more, you feel just as comfortable when you step out into the vacuum of space. "The suit manages to do this and more by means of complex activity within a structure having a texture almost as intricate as that of living tissue. A glove finger a millimeter thick has room for a thousand micron-thick layers of active nanomachinery and nanoelectronics..." Where's this last from? Engines of Creation, page 90-91. So what? So EoC was published in 1987. Venus Belt was published in 1981. Actually, I asked Eric about this once and he said he thought someone had mentioned something of the sort. In fact, Smith seems to have heard of Eric's various inventions well before they became generally known-- we find on p. 138 that the characters in Venus Belt have used a "Drexler lightsail" to move their asteroid into its current orbit. --JoSH
dav@island.uu.net (David McClure) (02/26/90)
In article <Feb.22.00.10.10.1990.28416@athos.rutgers.edu> josh@cs.rutgers.edu writes: > >While I was sitting around with the flu last weekend, I reread >"The Venus Belt", by L. Neil Smith... > >"Despite appearances, the garment functions primarily as an elaborate >computer... > -- deleted -- > >The fabric goes unbroken right over your face, but is invisible >because "the surface nanoprocessors pick up wave fronts, assemble >and present them on the inside of the hood." > -- deleted -- > >"The suit manages to do this and more by means of complex activity >within a structure having a texture almost as intricate as that of >living tissue. A glove finger a millimeter thick has room for a >thousand micron-thick layers of active nanomachinery and nanoelectronics..." > >Where's this last from? Engines of Creation, page 90-91. >So what? So EoC was published in 1987. Venus Belt was published >in 1981. > >--JoSH I believe there's another earlier reference from a book called (I think) "Rocannon's World", by (I think) Andre Norton or Ursula Leguin -- I'm not sure about the author, as I read it at least ten years ago at age 13-14. The author describes a very thin (mono-molecular?) invisible suit which completely covers the wearer and provides heat, oxygen, and other various functions (most of which I don't remember). Anyone out there remember this? I'm sure somebody from rec.arts.sf-lovers would know. -- David McClure > My opinions are not necessarily those of || serenity=>acceptance > my employer, or anyone else in this damnfool || courage=>change > world of ours; *think* for yourself. Rock on. || wisdom=>differentiate [I'm afraid such a suit is more in the range of fantasy than science fiction. It's very important to understand the nature of the mechanisms involved, or it will become easy to say, "Wow, nanotech lets you build magical space suits" without being able to distinguish those that are possible and those that are not. Heinlein, for example, had a magical space suit in "Have Space Suit, Will Travel" (not the one of the title, but the one provided by the Mother Thing's people). It is imputed to super-advanced technology, of course, but no attempt is made to elucidate its mechanisms at all. This sort of thing has shown up in science fiction for 50 years. The difference with Smith's smart suit and Drexler's ideas it came from, is that a mechanism, in non-trivial detail, is posited and therefore limitations, as well as amazing abilities, can be predicted. --JoSH]
landman@hanami.eng.sun.com (Howard A. Landman x61391) (02/26/90)
In article <Feb.22.00.10.10.1990.28416@athos.rutgers.edu> josh@cs.rutgers.edu writes: >Where's this last from? Engines of Creation, page 90-91. > >So what? So EoC was published in 1987. Venus Belt was published >in 1981. Yes, but John Varley's "Equinoctial" is copyright 1977. Varley's "symbsuit" predates both of your references by at least 4 years. "Equinox was Parameter's companion, her environment, her space suit, her alter ego; her Symb. "... none of [what she saw] was any more real than the image in a picture tube. Some of it was even less real than that. The shifting lines, for instance, were vector representations of the large chunks of rock and ice within radar range of Equinox. ... all the sensory data she received was through the direct connection from Equinox's senses into her own brain. [Earlier in real time] "The Symb was a soft-looking greenish lump in the center of the room [resembling] a pile of green cow manure. ... She lifted her leg and touched one of her ped-fingers to the blob. It stuck. ... It oozed up her leg, spreading itself thinner as it came. In a short time it was inching up her neck. ... When she opened her mouth the Symb flowed down her throat and trachea. ... Meanwhile another tendril had filled the large and small intestine ... Parameter felt a twinge of pain as a two-centimeter hole was eaten in the top of her head. But it subsided as the Symb began to feel out the proper places to make connections." Of course, the symbsuit is a product of "genetic engineering" built with the aid of alien information intercepted from the Ophiuchi Hotline. But I'm not sure Varley distinguishes nanotech from biotech. Anyway, there are far more details than I care to type in, so I'll leave it to the interested reader to explore Varley's writings for themself. Howard A. Landman landman@eng.sun.com -or- sun!landman [The Symb certainly has a place in the history of the ideas leading up to the nanotech suit. However, I think the derivation of the Symb was essentially to take the entire remainder of the ecology outside the human and collapse it into the smallest package possible. Obviously the green color was intended to suggest chlorophyll, even though that substance would be entirely useless in the story's location (the rings of Saturn, if I recall correctly). Thus the Symb has a reductionist basis (whatever the ecology can do, the Symb can do) as opposed the constructivist basis of the smartsuit (here's a gadget to do this, one to do this, etc). --JoSH]