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:
“One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“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)
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today—but the core of science fiction, its essence ... has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.”
—Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)