nanobot n.
a nanoscale self-propelled machine, esp. one that has some degree of autonomy and can reproduce; cf. slightly earlier nanorobot n.
Science
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1989 Re: DNA Mutation Elimination in sci.nanotech (Usenet newsgroup) 2 May
Wouldn’t want to blast a cell because a nanobot spotted a strand of DNA for a mitochondrian [sic] and mistook it for a malformed gene.
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1989 Assessing Molecular & Atomic Scale Technologies (Policy Research Project on Anticipating Effects of New Technologies, Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs) 4
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I want assurances that this technology is so well controlled that I will not have to worry that someone is spiking my morning water with it. Maybe we should get a nanobot detector.
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1990 Master of the House in Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction Sept. 97
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Paul Cook
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The horror Hastings had contracted was a bioengineered nanobot, self-replicating and terribly efficient, which had only one function: to seek out RNA replicators in bone-marrow mitochondria, and change the bonding message for cell-wall elasticity…. The nanobots also had an ingenious dormancy program so that they could hide from macrophages or other nanobots the doctors Upstream used to combat Hasting’s horror.
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1992 Steel Beach 115
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John Varley
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The term ‘nanobot’ means a very small self-propelled programmed machine, and that includes many other varieties of intracellular devices than the ones currently under discussion.
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1992 Steel Beach 143
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John Varley
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The nanobots in the pills were too cheap to salvage; when they'd done their work they simply turned themselves off in your kidneys and you pissed them away.
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1993 Will the Mastery of Nanotechnology Allow us to Tame the Wild Molecule? in Science Fiction Age Jan. 26/1
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Given the technology to fabricate virus-sized electromechanical devices, there would be no reason to prevent us from designing cholesterol-chompers, a sort of arterial ‘roto-rooter’, or even virus-destroying ‘nanobots’ to recognize and mechanically disassemble unwanted viruses and bacteria within the body.
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1994 Ring (1996) 23
Stephen Baxter
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She subvocalized a command to send nanobots scouring through her bloodstream; she sobered up fast, with a brief shudder.
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1999 All Tomorrow's Parties vii. 32
William Gibson
Nobody knew exactly what it was that had spilled… The government was using nanobots to clean it up through.
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2001 Locus June 29/3
He knows how to put his own stamp on some of the basic shared problems of characters in oh-god-i'm-being-taken-over-by-a-virus/nanobot/alien-intruder-inside-my-mind plots.
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2006 Ghost Brigades (2007) xi. 253
John Scalzi
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Jared maneuvered himself to look at Arist and drank it in until his BrainPal, sensing the first tenuous effects of the atmosphere, wrapped him in a protective sphere of nanobots that flowed from a pack on his back and secured him in the middle, to keep him from making contact with the sphere and crisping himself where they intersected.
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2016 War Factory xviii. 488
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Neal Asher
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Their bodies might contain some stray useful data—perhaps recorded to the memory of a medical nanobot.
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2025 To Reap, To Sow in Analog Science Fiction & Fact Mar.–Apr. 70/2
Lyndsey Croal
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I talk about my various trials, the exploding vegetables, and the solution I found with the nanobots. As I'm speaking about the programming of the nanobot swarm, their behavior and how they interact with the plants, the way I've trained them to communicate with one another and the plants, to start and stop growth at the necessary moments, I can see I've captured the room's attention.
Research requirements
antedating 1989
Earliest cite
Usenet posting on sci.nanotech
Research History
Dewi Morgan submitted a 1990 cite from Paul Cook.Clive Shergold submitted a 1989 cite from a working paper.
Last modified 2025-11-18 02:57:31
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