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"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
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| Toothbud Transplant | ||
| Implanted teeth that mimic the dentition of other species. |
Feeling predacious, and you are bothered by people who look at the flat surfaces of molars and conclude that humans are basically vegetarians? Read on.
| The one who showed up at the loft door with a box of diskettes from the Finn was a soft-voiced boy called Angelo. His face was a simple graft grown on collagen and shark-cartilage polysaccharides, smooth and hideous. It was one of the nastiest pieces of elective surgery Case had ever seen. When Angelo smiled, revealing the razor-sharp canines of some large animal, Case was actually relieved. Toothbud transplants. He'd seen that before. |
| Technovelgy from Neuromancer,
by William Gibson. Published by Phantasia Press in 1984 Additional resources -
|
Transplanting a tooth to another person is not a new idea; in fact, slaves in ancient Egypt were sometimes forced to give their teeth to their pharaohs! In case you're wondering, it didn't work very well; problems of histocompatibility rendered the technique valueless.
However, autogenous tooth transplantation (moving a tooth from one position to another in your own mouth) works quite well in a variety of cases. For example, a person with a damaged molar is examined and found to have an unerrupted molar somewhere else. The damaged tooth is removed, the unerrupted molar is transplanted to the new spot.
No one has yet transplanted a tooth bud (also called a tooth germ); this is the developing tooth, the structure from which the adult tooth develops. See the Science Fiction in the News story Tooth Bud From Stem Cells Looms Large for an update on this topic.
Case's girlfriend and bodyguard Molly had an unusual form of modification - surgically inset glasses.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Neuromancer
More Ideas
and Technology by William Gibson
Tech news articles related to Neuromancer
Tech news articles related to works by William Gibson
Toothbud Transplant-related
news articles:
- Tooth Bud From Stem Cells Looms Large
- Bioengineered Mouse Tooth Bud Successfully Implanted
- Teeth From Stem Cells
- Please, Please Let There Be Regenerated Teeth
| Illustrating Classic Heinlein With AI |
| Brainoware Reservoir Computation Of Biological Neural Networks |
| Forward CarePod The AI Doctor's Office |
| Octopus Suckers Inspire Transdermal Patches |
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'What is your population', I asked. 'About eighty millions.'
'THE autobus turned silently down the wide street of Hydropole. Robot-guided, insulated from noise and cold...'
'The car had no steering wheel, and no one drove!'
Now that's power walking that Hugo Gernsback would have approved.
'It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct...'
'...he rewired the delivery robot so that it would serve him midnight snacks.'
'On went the electric-yacht faster and still faster.'
'...the huge vessel had spun, with a sickening lurch, through a complete half-circle, the instant the power was reversed.'
'...he realized that it was not quite a clear lens. Speckles of colored brightness swirled and gathered in it.'
'...a universal cryptogram — yet it is one which can be interpreted by any intelligent creature on any planet in the Solar System!'
