My brother had frozen in place, his whole body canted forward like a hunting cat, and his eyes fixed on the smouldering embers in the fireplace just visible behind our father's folded form. It was the first fire he'd seen for years.

If even a fraction of the imagined applications pan out, nanotech will have an immense impact in all areas of human life, from medicine to transportation to commerce to war.

"What the hell," I thought. "It looks better than Guitar Hero . And what kind of video game columnist has never played a Wii?"

swirling with faces I don't know they / mouth words contort