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"...the elements of cyberpunk have dissolved into the whole SF genre, so it’s hard to find anyone writing who doesn’t owe serious debts to Gibson and his crew."
- Richard Morgan

Metalite  
  Strong metal you can see through.  

Instinctively, as he watched the mon­ster approach them across that black rock plain, he moved forward until he stood a little in advance of the others, his huge form bulking the transparent metalite suit.
Technovelgy from Black Destroyer, by A.E. van Vogt.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1939
Additional resources -

From the alien viewpoint:

He had time to see that the creatures wore things over their real bodies, shim­mering transparent material that glit­tered in strange, burning flashes in the rays of the sun.

Here's a bit more description:

There are ways of getting phosphorus out of the human body. For instance, a quick way was what happened to the workman who helped build this ship. Remember, he fell into fifteen tons of molten metalite—at least, so his relatives claimed—but the company wouldn’t pay compensation until the metalite, on analysis, was found to contain a high percentage of phosphorus—"

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Black Destroyer
  More Ideas and Technology by A.E. van Vogt
  Tech news articles related to Black Destroyer
  Tech news articles related to works by A.E. van Vogt

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MIT Self-Assembling Reprogrammable Materials

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