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"A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content."
- Theodore Sturgeon

Minimic Film  
  Very fine message medium.  

For an era in which microfilm was the defining standard of very tiny media for use by spies, shigawire of one-micron diameter is even better for espionage.

Hawat shrugged. "It's a scrap of a note. We took it from a Harkonnen courier. The note was intended for an agent named Pardee. We've good reason to believe Pardee was top man in the Harkonnen underground here. The note--it's a thing that could have great consequence or no consequence. It's susceptible to various interpretations."

"What's the delicate content of this note?"

"Scrap of a note, my Lord. Incomplete. It was on minimic film with the usual destruction capsule attached. We stopped the acid action just short of full erasure, leaving only a fragment. The fragment, however, is extremely suggestive."

Technovelgy from Dune, by Frank Herbert.
Published by Putnam in 1965
Additional resources -

Note also the clever use of the root word for "minimum" - the author is able to invent a new word that yet seems familiar and well-defined. The word "minim" is also used in the novel to denote the smallest usable amount of something.

See also the definition of shigawire, from the same book.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Dune
  More Ideas and Technology by Frank Herbert
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