Obligatory science-fiction link: in Harry Harrison’s The Stainless Steel Rat’s Revenge, the main character poses as a representative of an intergalactic weapons manufacturer to infiltrate the militant world of Cliaand:

I unlocked the case and flipped back the lid. The armament specialist glared down at the various components in their padded niches. I explained.

“My firm is the originator and sole manufacturer of the memory line of proximity fuses. No other line is as compact as ours, none as versatile.” I used tweezers to take a fuse from a holder. It was no larger than a pinhead. “This is the most minuscule, designed to be used in a weapon as small as a handgun. Firing activates the fuse which will then detonate the charge in the slug when it comes near a target or predetermined size. This other fuse is the most intelligent, designed for use in heavy weapons or missiles.” They all leaned forward eagerly when I held up the wafer of the Mem-IV and pointed out its singular merits.

“All solid-state construction, capable of resisting incredible pressures, thousands of G’s, massive shocks. It can be preset to detonate only when approaching a specific target, or can be programmed externally and electronically at any time up to the moment of firing. It contains discrimination circuits that will prevent explosion in the vicinity of friendly equipment. It is indeed unique.”

There was no talk of his wares guiding the explosive bullet/warhead/whatever, simply adding some intelligence to when, where, and whether it detonates, but I can foresee this real-world example adding such capabilities in the future as well.

(Of course, I’ll believe it when I see it — too many of these pie-in-the-sky tech advances get mentioned once or twice, then vanish, never to be seen again. But it’s exciting to think that it might actually work.)

They’re also exploring other possibilities, including other ideas from science-fiction movies.

In any case, I’m happy to see that we’re taking steps to ensure that what happened to the dinosaurs won’t also happen to us. It’s a remote possibility, but even remote possibilities can happen regularly over a long enough period of time.

[...] I remember reading a science fiction story about a computer worm that searched for people this way: going from computer to computer, trying to identify a specific individual.

I immediately thought of The Adolescence of P-1, one of my teenage favorites, and I was tickled to see that someone else had the same thought in the comments.

[...] This is why one of the great contributions of science fiction is its ability to create monsters and technologies from the ether. When they show up out of nowhere, they challenge us to think more broadly and to make new connections. [...]

That’s one of the things — maybe the main thing — that I love about science fiction myself: the new connections and possibilities that it provides to my mind.

It is Anderson that geekdom now mourns.