This reminds me of a novel I read - whose title I won't mention, due to spoilers - where one alien civilization effectively caused the collapse of another one by infecting them with an engineer bacteria that ate all of their super-conductors.
Geemail1802•4h ago
Reminds me of the Andromeda Strain where a microbe of extraterrestrial origin digested the containment seals being used by the scientists who were trying to study it.
pavel_lishin•2h ago
Not what I was thinking of, but another excellent example.
Did they actually confirm that it was an extra-terrestrial bacteria? I thought they just scooped something up from the upper atmosphere during a test flight. [Edit: looked it up, you're totally right, I'm either mis-remembering the plot, or maybe the movie adjusted this element?]
apothegm•1h ago
Yeah, my memory matches yours. Not extraterrestrial in the sense of “from another planet” but found when investigating the crash of a satellite or something to that effect.
stjo•1h ago
It must be quite a title if it is more revealing than the summary itself.
amluto•1h ago
It’s a rather famous sci-fi universe by a well known author, and I don’t think this particular revelation would spoil much of it.
pavel_lishin•51m ago
Well, the point of me not revealing a title is so that if you run across this book later, you won't think, "OH! This is the one where Pavel said X happens!"
A spoiler by itself, without a link to the book, isn't a spoiler at all, which is why I didn't include the title.
If you're curious, I can drop five recommendations for good books, one of which is the work I'm referring to :)
ne0flex•1h ago
Was curious what book this is, so I copy-pasted your summary and prefaced it with "what book is the one" and it gave me the correct title and author. Looking forward to reading this!
pavel_lishin•52m ago
Would you mind emailing me what it said the book was? I'm curious if it got it right. (I can't imagine there's that many books out there with that plot point, though!)
pavel_lishin•5h ago
Geemail1802•4h ago
pavel_lishin•2h ago
Did they actually confirm that it was an extra-terrestrial bacteria? I thought they just scooped something up from the upper atmosphere during a test flight. [Edit: looked it up, you're totally right, I'm either mis-remembering the plot, or maybe the movie adjusted this element?]
apothegm•1h ago
stjo•1h ago
amluto•1h ago
pavel_lishin•51m ago
A spoiler by itself, without a link to the book, isn't a spoiler at all, which is why I didn't include the title.
If you're curious, I can drop five recommendations for good books, one of which is the work I'm referring to :)
ne0flex•1h ago
pavel_lishin•52m ago
ahazred8ta•2m ago