In "Prey," Michael Crichton's latest novel, to be released this week, the master of technology-run-amok visions sets his sights on nanotechnology and describes a horde of bacterium-size machines that break out of a lab and evolve into flesh-eating, self-reproducing predators. While even experts in nanotechnology consider it "so new that it barely exists," the science already sparks widespread alarm among environmentalists and disarmament proponents, not to mention science fiction writers.

Over the summer, the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, called on world leaders to declare an immediate moratorium on the commercial production of nano-materials. In the August issue of "Disarmament Diplomacy," Editor Sean Howard made an appeal for an "inner space" treaty "to protect the planet from devastation caused - accidentally, or by terrorists, or in open conflict - by artificial atomic and molecular structures capable of destroying environments and life forms from within."

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