3D Printing in Science Fiction

December 22, 2015 8:47 AM

What are some works of science fiction that feature 3D printing or similar technologies?

I'm giving a talk on 3D printing, and I'd like to use examples from sci fi to help imagine how the technology could affect society.

posted by Prunesquallor to Technology (26 answers total)

Does the Star Trek "Replicator" count?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 8:49 AM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

The Kim Stanley Robinson book Aurora, takes place on a generation ship. 3D printers are used throughout and actually are kind of critical to some of the action that takes place.
posted by bondcliff at 8:51 AM on December 22, 2015 [4 favorites]

There's a long description of the function of 3D printers on a generation starship in Kim Stanley Robinson's Aurora.

Ha. Jinx!
posted by pretentious illiterate at 8:52 AM on December 22, 2015 [2 favorites]

If we're going to allow Star Trek replicators, then the fantasy machine that reconstructs Leeloo from The Fifth Element probably counts.

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age features a scene where a group of wealthy aristocrats 3d print an island.
posted by Alterscape at 8:58 AM on December 22, 2015

William Gibson's The Peripheral has a lot of it.
posted by matildaben at 9:01 AM on December 22, 2015

Eric Frank Russell's novelette Hobbyist published in Astounding in September 1947
posted by Rob Rockets at 9:07 AM on December 22, 2015

Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age had "matter compilers" that were in some ways resonant with 3D printing.
posted by Sublimity at 9:14 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Stephenson's "Seveneves" had 3D printers of the familiar sort as the beginning stages of the book are set in the next dozen years. They were partly used to produce a few varieties of robots which had been developed to use different kinds of locomotion to cope with zero-G.
posted by Sunburnt at 9:22 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Spider Jerusalem's apartment has one in Transmetropolitan, but it doesn't work very well.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:22 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

(MeFi's own) Charles Stross's "Rule 34" (set around 30 years hence, IIRC) includes a section about a low-grade criminal who prints illegal products from an illegally-modified 3D printer, where the modification allows it to make contraband items like gun parts. His 3D printer contracts a virus and uses up his feedstock while cranking out unlikely-proportioned sex toys covered with a taunt and I think a ransom note(?) from the virus-writer.
posted by Sunburnt at 9:27 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Cory Doctorow - Printcrime
posted by notned at 10:27 AM on December 22, 2015

Planetfall, by Emma Newman. The protagonist is the 3D printing engineer for a space colony. She's also a "hoarder." Both of these are important in the plot.
posted by Weftage at 10:27 AM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

I came to recommend "Aurora" as well!
posted by Narrative Priorities at 12:04 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Robert Sheckley wrote a story called "The Necessary Thing" about such a device.

The story was collected in the book "The People Trap".
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:12 PM on December 22, 2015

"The City and the Stars" (by Clarke) has a technology like that, though it's more widespread. The entire city is a creation, and can be changed at will. All the citizens are created that way, too.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 12:15 PM on December 22, 2015

The society in Peter F. Hamilton's Great North Road manufactures a range of items from a default "raw" material. An expedition to an alien planet fabricates everything from parkas to modular housing.
posted by audi alteram partem at 12:19 PM on December 22, 2015

I wasn't to third The Diamond Age, because of its introductory scene where the a young child 3D-prints mattresses to cover the entire floor of her home. Then big sister shows up and stuffs them all back into the decompiler so they don't get charged for them and their parents don't blow their stacks. It's a fun vignette that shows how ubiquitous 3D printing doesn't mean a post-scarcity world.
posted by ejs at 1:22 PM on December 22, 2015

Cory Doctrow again - short story in this year's Gardner Dozois "Best of the Year" anthology. Unfortunately I don't have the title with me. But it's essentially a love / Burning Man story built around 3D printing. In fact, there's a couple of 3D printing stories in that anthology.
posted by Cardinal Fang! at 3:20 PM on December 22, 2015

I would personally expand the topic to include any instance of nanomachines, but thats probably too vast.

David Brin's Kiln People 3d prints copies of people.
posted by Jacen at 3:29 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Kiosk by Bruce Sterling fits the bill.
posted by Wrinkled Stumpskin at 4:10 PM on December 22, 2015 [3 favorites]

Back in the mid-90s Dave Luckett wrote a short story called the Patternmaker which was included in a collection of the same name by Lucy Sussex. It was about using 3D printing to make paradoxical shapes, blew my tiny mind.
posted by nicolas léonard sadi carnot at 5:03 PM on December 22, 2015

Maybe someone else can remember the title but there was a sci fi book about a person who lived in a sort of communal guild where all the people pooled their money and resources together and one of the characters owned a sort of franchise 3D printing shop. It ended with the main character having a big showdown with an evil mastermind so the printing part is not critical to the plot. It was part of a series so maybe the printing thing shows up in another book.
posted by fiercekitten at 6:26 PM on December 22, 2015

I had to look back on my reading list - it's Counting Heads by David Marusek
posted by fiercekitten at 6:29 PM on December 22, 2015

John Sandford - Saturn Run
posted by charris5005 at 9:20 AM on December 23, 2015

Big Hero 6 - while a kid's movie clearly falls within the sci-fi genre and includes multiple scenes of Hiro printing objects in his garage.

Additionally, Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties involves the roll-out of wide-spread matter assemblers / 3d printers a la Diamond Age.
posted by Barry B. Palindromer at 9:46 AM on December 23, 2015

Seconding "Kiln People." Could have used a stronger editor (as with much of Brin's work), but some very inventive ideas.
posted by Conrad Cornelius o'Donald o'Dell at 8:21 PM on December 23, 2015