In Science Fiction
Drexler is mentioned in the science fiction book The Diamond Age as one of the heroes of a future world where nanotechnology is ubiquitous.
In the science fiction novel Newton's Wake by Ken Macleod a 'drexler' is a nanotech assembler of pretty much anything that can fit in the volume of the particular machine - socks to starships.
Drexler is also mentioned in the science fiction book Decipher by Stel Pavlou, his book is mentioned as one of the starting points of the nanomachine construction, as well as giving a better understanding of the way carbon 60 was to be applied.
James Rollins references Drexler's Engines of Creation in his novel Excavation, using his theory of a molecular machine in two sections as a possible explanation for the mysterious "Substance Z" in the story.
Drexler gets a mention in the late Dr. Timothy Leary's Design for Dying in the "Mutation" section, briefly detailing the 8 Circuit Consciousness model. (pg. 91).
Read more about this topic: K. Eric Drexler
Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, science and/or fiction:
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“Whilst Marx turned the Hegelian dialectic outwards, making it an instrument with which he could interpret the facts of history and so arrive at an objective science which insists on the translation of theory into action, Kierkegaard, on the other hand, turned the same instruments inwards, for the examination of his own soul or psychology, arriving at a subjective philosophy which involved him in the deepest pessimism and despair of action.”
—Sir Herbert Read (1893–1968)
“A reader who quarrels with postulates, who dislikes Hamlet because he does not believe that there are ghosts or that people speak in pentameters, clearly has no business in literature. He cannot distinguish fiction from fact, and belongs in the same category as the people who send cheques to radio stations for the relief of suffering heroines in soap operas.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)