Fiction
Silicon has been a theme of non-carbon-based-life since it also has 4 bonding sites and is just below carbon on the periodic table of the elements. This means silicon is very similar to carbon in its chemical characteristics. In cinematic and literary science fiction, when man-made machines cross from nonliving to living, this new form would be an example of non-carbon-based life. Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, these machines are often classed as "silicon-based life". Another example of "silicon based life" is the episode "The Devil in the Dark" from Star Trek: The Original Series, where a living rock creature's biochemistry is based on silicon.
Read more about this topic: Carbon-based Life
Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“For if the proper study of mankind is man, it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
“The beginning of human knowledge is through the senses, and the fiction writer begins where human perception begins. He appeals through the senses, and you cannot appeal to the senses with abstractions.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)
“It is with fiction as with religion: it should present another world, and yet one to which we feel the tie.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)