The Wellstone
''The Wellstone'' is a 2003 hard science fiction novel by Wil McCarthy. It was the first sequel to 2000's '' The Collapsium'', starting what was to become a four-part Queendom of Sol series. Overview In ''The Wellstone'', McCarthy explores the lives of immortal humans known as ''immorbids'' in the future. Nanotechnology Nanotechnology, also shortened to nanotech, is the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the particular technological goal o ... has created the ''wellstone'', programmable matter that can emulate nearly any other form of matter, and nanotech fax machines that can not only fabricate objects on demand, but store and retrieve human bodies (with minds intact), cure disease or reverse aging, or be used as teleporters. Ultradense exotic matter known as ''collapsium'' makes gravity manipulation and faster-than-light communication possible. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wil McCarthy
Wil () is the capital of the ''Wahlkreis'' (constituency) of Wil in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Wil is the third largest city in the Canton of St. Gallen, after the city of St. Gallen and Rapperswil-Jona, a twin city that merged in 2006. The municipality of Bronschhofen merged into Wil on 1 January 2013. After the merger the Community Identification Number changed from 3425 to 3427.Amtliches Gemeindeverzeichnis der Schweiz published by the Swiss Federal Statistical Office accessed 2 January 2013 In 1984, Wil was awarded the for the development and preservation of its architectural heritage. Geograph ...
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Superluminal Communication
Superluminal communication is a hypothetical process in which information is sent at faster-than-light (FTL) speeds. The current scientific consensus is that faster-than-light communication is not possible, and to date it has not been achieved in any experiment. Superluminal communication other than possibly through wormholes is likely impossible because, in a Lorentz-invariant theory, it could be used to transmit information into the past. This complicates causality, but no theoretical arguments conclusively preclude this possibility. A number of theories and phenomena related to superluminal communication have been proposed or studied, including tachyons, neutrinos, quantum nonlocality, wormholes, and quantum tunneling. Proposed mechanisms Tachyons Tachyonic particles are hypothetical particles that travel faster than light. These would allow superluminal communication, and for this reason are widely believed not to exist. By contrast, tachyonic fields quantum fields with i ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Teleportation In Fiction
Teleportation is the theoretical transfer of matter and/or energy from one point to another without traversing the physical space between them. It is a common subject in science fiction and fantasy literature, film, video games, and television. In some situations, teleporting is presented as time traveling across space. The use of matter transmitters in science fiction originated at least as early as the 19th century. An early example of scientific teleportation (as opposed to magical or spiritual teleportation) is found in the 1897 novel ''To Venus in Five Seconds'' by Fred T. Jane. Jane's protagonist is transported from a strange-machinery-containing gazebo on Earth to planet Venus. A common fictional device for teleportation is a "wormhole". In video games, the instant teleportation of a player character may be referred to as a warp. List of fiction containing teleportation Teleportation illusions in live performance Teleportation illusions have featured in live perfor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nanotechnology In Fiction
The use of nanotechnology in fiction has attracted scholarly attention. The first use of the distinguishing concepts of nanotechnology was "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959. K. Eric Drexler's 1986 book ''Engines of Creation'' introduced the general public to the concept of nanotechnology. Since then, nanotechnology has been used frequently in a diverse range of fiction, often as a justification for unusual or far-fetched occurrences featured in speculative fiction.Bly, Robert W., 2005, ''The Science In Science Fiction: 83 SF Predictions that Became Scientific Reality'', BenBella Books, Inc., . Notable examples Literature In 1931, Boris Zhitkov wrote a short story called ''Microhands'' ( Микроруки), where the narrator builds for himself a pair of microscopic remote manipulators, and uses them for fine tasks like eye surgery. When he attempts to build even smaller manipulators to be manipulated by the first pai ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hard Science Fiction
Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell's ''Islands of Space'' in the November issue of '' Astounding Science Fiction''. The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction,) first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the "hard" (natural) and "soft" (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as "hard" SF, such as Isaac Asimov's ''Foundation'' series, built on mathematical sociology. Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful. History Stories revolving around scientific and technical consistency were written as early as the 1870s with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Novels By Wil McCarthy
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the la, novella, a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ''novellus'', diminutive of ''novus'', meaning "new". Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, Ann Radcliffe, John Cowper Powys, preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels. According to Margaret Doody, the novel has "a continuous and comprehensive history of about two thousand years", with its origins in the Ancient Greek and Roman novel, in Chivalric romance, and in the tradition of the Italian renaissance novella.Margaret Anne Doody''The True Story of the Novel'' New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996, rept. 1997, p. 1. Retrieved 25 April 2014. The ancient romance form was revived by Romanticism, especially th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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American Science Fiction Novels
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the " United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2003 Science Fiction Novels
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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2003 American Novels
3 (three) is a number, numeral and digit. It is the natural number following 2 and preceding 4, and is the smallest odd prime number and the only prime preceding a square number. It has religious or cultural significance in many societies. Evolution of the Arabic digit The use of three lines to denote the number 3 occurred in many writing systems, including some (like Roman and Chinese numerals) that are still in use. That was also the original representation of 3 in the Brahmic (Indian) numerical notation, its earliest forms aligned vertically. However, during the Gupta Empire the sign was modified by the addition of a curve on each line. The Nāgarī script rotated the lines clockwise, so they appeared horizontally, and ended each line with a short downward stroke on the right. In cursive script, the three strokes were eventually connected to form a glyph resembling a with an additional stroke at the bottom: ३. The Indian digits spread to the Caliphate in the 9th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hacking Matter (book)
''Hacking Matter'' is a 2003 book by Wil McCarthy. It deals with "programmable matter" (like colloidal films, bulk crystals, and quantum dots) that, he predicts, will someday be able mimic the properties of any natural atom, and ultimately also non-natural atoms. McCarthy predicts that programmable matter will someday change human life profoundly, and that its users will have the ability to program matter itself - to change it, from a computer, from hard to soft, from paper to stone, from fluorescent to super-reflective to invisible. In his science fiction, he calls this technology " Wellstone". The book includes interviews with researchers who are developing the technology, describes how they are learning to control its electronic, optical, thermal, magnetic, and mechanical properties, and speculates on its future development. References External links Book home page includes free PDF version. This article in Wired 9.10 was expanded into this book. * "Beyond the Periodic Tab ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monarchy
A monarchy is a form of government in which a person, the monarch, is head of state for life or until abdication. The political legitimacy and authority of the monarch may vary from restricted and largely symbolic (constitutional monarchy), to fully autocratic (absolute monarchy), and can expand across the domains of the executive, legislative, and judicial. The succession of monarchs in many cases has been hereditical, often building dynastic periods. However, elective and self-proclaimed monarchies have also happened. Aristocrats, though not inherent to monarchies, often serve as the pool of persons to draw the monarch from and fill the constituting institutions (e.g. diet and court), giving many monarchies oligarchic elements. Monarchs can carry various titles such as emperor, empress, king, queen, raja, khan, tsar, sultan, shah, or pharaoh. Monarchies can form federations, personal unions and realms with vassals through personal association with the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Exotic Matter
There are several proposed types of exotic matter: * Hypothetical particles and states of matter that have "exotic" physical properties that would violate known laws of physics, such as a particle having a negative mass. * Hypothetical particles and states of matter that have not yet been encountered, but whose properties would be within the realm of mainstream physics if found to exist. * Several particles whose existence has been experimentally confirmed that are conjectured to be exotic hadrons and within the Standard Model. * States of matter that are not commonly encountered, such as Bose–Einstein condensates, fermionic condensates, nuclear matter, quantum spin liquid, string-net liquid, supercritical fluid, color-glass condensate, quark–gluon plasma, Rydberg matter, Rydberg polaron, photonic matter, and time crystal but whose properties are entirely within the realm of mainstream physics. * Forms of matter that are poorly understood, such as dark matter and mirror ma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |