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Comment by OriPekelman | Hacker News Reader

OK kids, I need help here. There was a sci-fi novel, probably the sixties, called something like "little bugs have little bugs on them". The premise was basically that.. A cold war where one side puts bugs on the bugs of the other side. Rings any bells? Potentially there were also some aspects of bug driven assassinations... But I am unsure. This thing been bugging me.

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I think I may have found it on the wikipedia page for nanotechnology in fiction:

> The 1984 novel Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem tells about small bacteria-sized nanorobots looking as normal dust (developed by artificial intelligence placed by humans on the Moon in the era of cold warfare) that has later came to Earth and are replicating, destroying all weapons, modern technology and software, leaving living organisms (as there were no living organisms on the Moon) intact.

It's not a perfect match for your description, nor is it from the 60s, but it was the closest match I could find. Is that the book you were thinking of?

OK. The plot thickens. https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/big-fleas-have-little-fl... so .. this is the phrase I remember. Probably the "motto" used by the SF author. Now I remember Peace on earth... and BTW à propos the article cited .. the spy bugs there have very partial vision .. and if I remember correctly they recompose scenes from the multitude of images... I think this is as far as I am going to get. Thank you!

Yep, right on. Remember Feynman also said 'there's plenty of room left at bottom'.

Sounds like Corona

Don't forget Danny Dunn: Invisible Boy. Professor Bullfinch's 'dragonfly' is already obsolete.

Seriously? I am dry here. Could HN not be useful for once?

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