Fullerenes in popular culture

Examples of fullerenes in popular culture are numerous. In fact, fullerenes appeared in popular culture well before science started to take serious interest.

In New Scientist there used to be a weekly column called Daedelus written by David Jones, which contained humourous descriptions of unlikely technologies. In 1966 the columnist included a description of the C60 and other forms of graphite. This was meant as pure entertainment. Also in the New Scientist magazine, a free book was enclosed entitled, "100 Things to Do Before You Die" and one of which was to kick a buckyball. Science fiction writer Neal Stephenson uses buckyballs as nanotechnological containers in his 1995 cyberpunk/postcyberpunk novel The Diamond Age. Buckyballs show up in Green Mars by Kim Stanley Robinson as a result of the fall of the first space elevator onto the surface of Mars. In the Walt Disney film, Flubber, the formula and molecular structure of the Flubber was modeled after buckminsterfullerene. In the Global television series ReGenesis, buckyballs are the primary component of a HazMat suit produced by government contractor, Shining Armor.