The Wellstone is a 2003 hard science fiction

Hard science fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both. The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Islands of Space in Astounding Science...

 novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Wil McCarthy

Wil McCarthy

Wil McCarthy is a science fiction novelist, Chief Technology Officer for Galileo Shipyards , and the science columnist for Syfy...

, the first sequel to his 2000 The Collapsium. In it he explores the lives of immortal

Immortality

Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...

 humans in the near future. Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally, nanotechnology deals with developing materials, devices, or other structures possessing at least one dimension sized from 1 to 100 nanometres...

 has created wellstone, programmable matter

Programmable matter

Programmable matter refers to matter which has the ability to change its physical properties in a programmable fashion, based upon user input or autonomous sensing...

 that can emulate nearly any other form of matter, and nanotech fax machines that can not only fabricate objects on demand, but store and retrieve human bodies (with minds intact), cure disease or reverse aging, or be used as teleporter

Teleportation

Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...

s. Ultradense exotic matter known as collapsium makes gravity engineering and faster-than-light communication possible. Humanity has formed a solar system-wide society based on monarchy

Monarchy

A monarchy is a form of government in which the office of head of state is usually held until death or abdication and is often hereditary and includes a royal house. In some cases, the monarch is elected...

.

Many of the technologies in this novel are also described in McCarthy's 2003 nonfiction book, Hacking Matter.