cover image Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution

Unbounding the Future: The Nanotechnology Revolution

K. Eric Drexler. William Morrow & Company, $23 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-688-09124-8

The team of authors of the fine Engines of Creation has succumbed to a premature sequel in this attempt to envision for the general reader an industrial biotechnology revolution. This update of Engines is two-thirds scenarios, most of them cloying ``looking back'' reports from a near future of nanotechnology. The authors' stated purpose--to prepare a channel of understanding for a molecular-level industrial revolution--is sound, but their answers beg at least half their own questions. A true molecular industry probably lies just below the horizon of popular science reporting; this ceasarean-style report of its birth obscures nanotechnology's future possibilities without clarifying the present science. (Sept.)