🚀 go-pugleaf

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]