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"As the rate of technological development speeds up, the gap between science fiction and what we’re living now is getting narrower all the time."
- Richard Morgan

Disruptor Bomb  
  A bomb with a very special purpose; when detonated in space, it makes it impossible to detect the center of the explosion from the dispersion of the fragments.  

In the novel, the protagonist wishes to divorce himself from humanity for a time. Not an easy thing to do when space travel is commonplace, and technology makes it easy for people to live wherever they like.

...he had carried out one final evasive maneuver ... a disruptor bomb, preprogrammed, had blasted the ship to molecules and sent the fragments traveling on a billion conflicting orbits through the universe...The bomb was designed to provide fifty false vectors per square meter of explosion surface, a virtual guarantee that no tracer could possibly be effective within a finite span of time.
Technovelgy from The Man in the Maze, by Robert Silverberg.
Published by Avon Books in 1969
Additional resources -

Those who believe that no one thinks about the fragments of explosive devices in this much detail are directed to the Ordnance Test and Evaluation Division of the U.S. Navy. Some typical user questions:

  • What is the fragmentation pattern of a bomb when it is detonated?
  • What is the fragmentation distribution pattern?
  • What are the bomb fragment velocities for each and every individual fragment?
  • How many fragments are generated by a bomb, and what are their distributions and velocities?
This device is intended to work on a large object, on a cosmic scale. To see a nanotechnological device that works in the microcosm, see the entry for ballisticule, from The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from The Man in the Maze
  More Ideas and Technology by Robert Silverberg
  Tech news articles related to The Man in the Maze
  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Silverberg

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