JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
I'm currently reading Retour à zéro (Return to Zero) by Stefan Wul.
In the book our hero gets a hitherto incurable disease but scientists in the lab next door are working on a miniaturisation device. They shrink five submarines to microscopic size and then inject them into our hero (the submarines are coated in a protein layer that will fool his leukocytes into not attacking them). Once inside, and having located the alien pathogens, the crews of the subs emerge from their craft and start to hack the things to pieces with their swords - their power weapons being to dangerous to use inside a patient they are trying to save. After a while they have killed enough of the buggers,and released enough of their inner chemical weirdness (disguised by their anodyne outer shell), to trigger the body's immune system into action. Everyone RTBs including the clumsy sod who got caught up in the patient's blood stream - after a quick trip via heart and lungs he ended up far enough from any vital organ and could be syringed out.
I was under impression that the whole miniaturized submarine / medical team concept originated with Fantastic Voyage. I can't find any other uses of this idea before the movie. This book was written in 1956, ten years before the film was released.
Does anyone know of any other uses that predate 1966?
In the book our hero gets a hitherto incurable disease but scientists in the lab next door are working on a miniaturisation device. They shrink five submarines to microscopic size and then inject them into our hero (the submarines are coated in a protein layer that will fool his leukocytes into not attacking them). Once inside, and having located the alien pathogens, the crews of the subs emerge from their craft and start to hack the things to pieces with their swords - their power weapons being to dangerous to use inside a patient they are trying to save. After a while they have killed enough of the buggers,and released enough of their inner chemical weirdness (disguised by their anodyne outer shell), to trigger the body's immune system into action. Everyone RTBs including the clumsy sod who got caught up in the patient's blood stream - after a quick trip via heart and lungs he ended up far enough from any vital organ and could be syringed out.
I was under impression that the whole miniaturized submarine / medical team concept originated with Fantastic Voyage. I can't find any other uses of this idea before the movie. This book was written in 1956, ten years before the film was released.
Does anyone know of any other uses that predate 1966?
