About six months, I did a story on bulletproof human skin, a transgenic art project created by Jalila Essaidi and the Forensic Genomics Consortium Netherlands.
But does it work? Tune into the testing phase at 3:00.
(Bullet-proof human skin video)
It turns out that their current implementation does not stop a full-seed bullet; however, it does stop a bullet at a lower speed.
As Achilles knows, it's important to have bulletproof skin all over, including your heels. Other (more recent) sfnal examples include skinweave from an old cyberpunk role-playing game, and this similar example from Sos the Rope by Piers Anthony:
"The surgeon placed flexible plastic panels under the skin of his belly and lower back, tough enough to halt the driven blade of a knife or sword."
MIT Computerized Bionic Leg Is Part Of The User
'The leg was to function, in a way, as a servo-mechanism operated by Larry’s brain, through the mediation of the electronic brain in the leg.' - Charles Recour, 1949.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!)
is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for
the Invention Category that interests
you, the Glossary, the Invention
Timeline, or see what's New.
Boy Makes Biomimetic Turtle Robot
't came out into plain view. Darkington glimpsed a slim body and six short legs of articulated dull metal.'
Elon Musk Wants Data Centers In Space
'Internally it’s made up of millions of components, but the most important ones are the thinking and memory parts of the Mind proper.'
Origin F1 Humanoid Robot's Facial Skin
'I could look down at that face of carefully molded synthetic rubber, tinted the exact shade of the doctor's living flesh.'