Putting the science in fiction - Dan Koboldt, Chuck Wendig 2018
Believable nanotechnology
Things to know for when Skynet takes over
By Dan Allen
Should nanotechnology be a “get out of jail free” card for fiction writers? Many undisciplined authors treat nanotechnology as a mystical, unexplainable method for accomplishing anything. This is the same as magic, and that sort of writing is more aptly called science fantasy. If you want to write fantasy, if Iron Man’s Extremis formulation seemed believable to you, or if you want nanotechnology to be nothing short of divine omnipotence, read no further.
But if you want to understand the basics of nanotechnology, how it works, and how to write about it in a compelling way, you are on the right page. Just as Harry Potter can’t do magic without a wand, a mistborn can’t do magic without ingesting metals, and the tooth fairy won’t take your tooth if it isn’t under your pillow, there are basic rules to nanotechnology. To avoid mistakes that make your story read like a fourth grader’s nonsensical ramblings rather than a piece of seriously awesome fiction, let’s start with a short list of nanotechnology no-no’s:
1. BOGUS: Nanobots take over everything or impart limitless energy to their hosts without any source of power.
2. BOGUS: Nanotechnology transforms living tissue into materials that aren’t found in the body, like metal armor.
3. BOGUS: Nanotechnology is an electronic device you can spray from a can complete with batteries, radios, processors, and software.
Did you feel yourself starting to argue that last one? Shouldn’t nanotechnology be able to do all those things? Isn’t that what nanotechnology is all about: invisible engineering? Hold that thought. We’ll come back to it.
Believable science fiction activates a reader’s analytical mind, just as a note at the right frequency will cause a tuning fork to resonate. We want to find things that resonate with our readers, and we don’t have to work too hard. Most of us understand the following basic principles from everyday life:
1. Conservation of matter (nanotechnology cannot make something from nothing)
2. Conservation of energy (making and breaking chemical bonds takes energy)
3. If it sounds ludicrous, it probably is—but not always!
Beyond the obvious conservation laws, there is one core concept to writing realistic nanotechnology fiction, which almost all writers miss: the idea is that the smaller something gets, the more specific, and limited, is its functionality. Nanobots, by their nature, have very limited—possibly just one—molecular function. They simply don’t have enough atoms or ways to configure them to do more than one basic thing. Collections of them working together, like proteins in a body—that’s a different story, but the blueprint for all that is millions of base pairs of DNA. Complexity requires organization. Organization requires specialization. Specialization requires variety, and variety requires exactly that: many things. But with nano-size, you only get one or two basic arrangements of the pieces. It’s how those pieces come together that will form the basis of transformative nanotechnology.
Given that fundamental concept, how you wreak utter mayhem with nanotechnology, harness it, or stop it is the clarion challenge for both writers and engineers. The short introduction in the next section to the foundations of nanotechnology will give you numerous launching-off points for book research and idea discovery.
Foundations of nanotechnology
The concept of nanotechnology arguably began with a speech by one of mankind’s greatest minds, Richard Feynman, at Caltech in 1959 called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom.” At the dawn of the electronic age, the visionary physicist proposed radical ideas about the possibilities of controlling the world at the very small scale, from storing entire libraries on the head of pin (which we now do) to designer nanoscale machines and ingestible nanoscale medical diagnostics and robots (some of which are in FDA trials).
But how small is a nanometer (10-9 or 0.000000001 meters)?
Imagine a dog. It’s about a meter long. How many fleas can you fit on the back of the dog? Several thousand, easily. A flea is about a millimeter, give or take—a thousandth of a meter. Now imagine a flea blown up to the size of a dog. How many bacteria can you fit on the back of a flea? A few thousand, comfortably. Bacteria are typically a few microns (millionths of a meter). Now image a bacterium blown up to the size of a dog. How many proteins can you fit on the back of a single bacterium? Thousands.
Now, at the size scale of a protein, we are finally measuring in nanometers. That’s how small a nanometer is. And each nanoscale protein has how many atoms? Guess. That’s right, thousands (give or take). This size scale can now be readily imaged with electron and atomic force microscopes, and scientists have begun to not only manipulate matter on the nanometer size scale but also create functional nanodevices that move, or break bonds, or light up when something is detected—like artificial proteins or lifeforms.
Let’s dig a little deeper. By nature, nanotechnology is an interdisciplinary field with foundations in four different areas from which innovations begin and combine.
Nanobiology
Proteins are a few nanometers across, made up of groups of atoms (amino acids) linked together in a string that folds up into a functional nanomachine, nature’s original “nanobots.” Proteins make and break molecules, allowing us to metabolize energy and build new cells. Some proteins change configuration when they receive a chemical signal or are hit by light, like those used in our nervous system and eyesight. Others harvest electrons or aid in chemical reactions. For instance, a protein called glucose oxidase takes electrons from glucose by oxidizing them (like burning sugar). A diabetic’s glucose test strip is loaded or “functionalized” with them—that’s nanobiotechnology.
Proteins are the biological starting point of nanotechnology and provide a terrifying example of what happens when things go wrong. A misfolded protein, called a prion, if ingested will cause other proteins to misfold, resulting in a chain reaction that slowly turns your brain to mush: mad cow disease. If ever there was a rational basis for a doomsday nanotechnology disaster or zombie apocalypse, it is prions.
DNA is another nanostructure whose building blocks are called nucleic acids. Complex sugars (polysaccharides) are a third class: small, simple molecules joining together to form massive structures like redwood trees. And of course, there is the most dangerous form of nanobiology: the virus, a nanoscale object containing only DNA (or RNA) and proteins, capable of causing a cell to make copies of it until the cell bursts, releasing more viruses. All these kinds of biological replication by self-assembly are “bottom up” methods. But biological nanotechnology is only one corner of the four-sided interdisciplinary nanotechnology pyramid.
Nanochemistry
The second corner of the nanotechnology pyramid is chemistry. Chemists have made complex self-assembling nanostructures of all shapes and sizes using the basic buildings blocks from biology: proteins, DNA, and sugars, and added their own new categories: glowing nanocrystals able to detect cancer and nimble porphyrins that form complex 3D structures, not to mention soccer ball-shaped fullerenes (“buckyballs”) that can be made into sensitive detectors as well as nanocages for delivering medicine to target cells.
Nanofabrication
The third foundation of nanotechnology derives from photolithography, nanoimprint, and other clean room “fab” technologies used in the manufacture of microchips. These top-down approaches are now defining transistors with minimum dimensions of only 16 nanometers, with 12 nanometers on the near horizon. We are literally making transistors the size of proteins. Commonplace nanotechnology (or microtechnology) includes transparent transistors (used in LCD screens) as well as printed flexible circuits, batteries and antennas, and complex microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Notably, MEMS devices can harvest energy from vibrations and passing radio waves.
Nanomaterials
The last nanotechnology frontier is materials science, which has been working at the nanoscale since Roman times. Steel is a nanotechnology invention. Carbon dissolved in iron forms nanoscale defects when the iron is cooled. The defects are all tangled up in the iron crystal, like a nanoscale nappy hair rat extending all the way through the material. When the steel is stressed, the defects, all pulling on each other, can’t migrate away from the stress point. So the steel doesn’t deform. It is both hard and shatter-resistant, a property that pure crystals can’t achieve.
Other nanotechnology materials innovations include superhydrophobic coatings—water literally balls up on a surface and rolls off—as well as growth of nanostructured crystal layers used in lasers and LEDs that engineer the quantum properties of electrons, and graphene and carbon nanotubes with astonishing world record properties like tensile strength and thermal and electrical conductivity.
Writing about nanotech
Any of the four foundations can be the starting point for a nanotech adventure. Try this simple 3-step process:
1. DO SOME EXPLORING. Find out about something in nanoscience that gets your mind whirring or your heart racing. Call a professor or a graduate student in their laboratory—they’ll talk your ear off. Reality is the conception point of great science in fiction.
2. REASON TO EXTREMES. Considering the technology you learned about, ask yourself a “what-if” question. This is the birthplace of sciece fiction—a dangerous curiosity of the unknown. At the end of this step, you should have both fanciful, mind-teasing possibilities as well as some serious and possibly unforeseen consequences for your technology run amok. For examples of reasoning to extremes, consider genetic engineering in Gattaca or cybernetics in the Star Trek Borg.
3. CREATE NATURAL LIMITS. Just like you need energy to grow, build muscle, or repair damage, so do all forms of nanotechnology. The likeliest energy source is unfortunately you, or perhaps sunlight. This brings up another useful limit: degradation. Small nanoparticles do not have thick layers of skin to protect them from solar UV light, heat, or reactive chemicals. Nanobots would tend to degrade quickly in sunlight or outside their designed environment such as the body. The body may also metabolize them, so perhaps you need a ready supply. Consider the economics of nanobots—people needing to constantly ingest or implant them to keep the benefits. Consider toxicity. Consider allergies or built-up immunity. Consider needing to take special vitamins or minerals to allow the nanobots to do their work.
With these basic concepts and tips, you are well equipped to write a compelling nanotechnology SF adventure. As for reality, will nanobots someday be implanted in our bodies to fight disease? Will they change our very nature and our society? In 1959 Feynman said yes, and he’s been right on everything else so far!