The idea of programmable matter occurred to me in 1998. I was working on a short story that later evolved into a novel called
and eventually into a series of books collectively known as The Queendom of Sol, a future history of the solar system (and some parts beyond). As Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” so in my books I sought to include technologies that felt like magic but had a basis in real science. Programmable matter certainly fit the “magic” part. This marvelous substance could be used to build anything from a chair to a spaceship and could transform itself almost instantly. A table could behave as if it were made out of gold one moment, out of diamond the next.
The “real science” part came from tiny semiconductor objects known as quantum dots, which confine electrons to a ...
