TopFic: 3D Printers

School bullying. Shootings. Drug dealing. Paranoia. Good intentions; bad results.A distraught mother tries to take revenge on the cheerleader bullying her daughter… A pair of grad students find out the hard way that they’ll have a lot easier time selling party drugs than saving the world from Big Pharma… An inventor hires a hitman to kill his next target with a polymer hammer. Any tool can be a weapon, he thinks. Legislation cannot stop violence, he pleads. But his hitman “friend” has other ideas…

3D printers have taken over headlines in the news across the country and the world. The emergence of a working polymer gun raises more than few questions. Will we need background checks for the use of printers? For access to plans? For purchasing polymer? Where does the surveillance begin and end?

Dedicated to hacking the world of publishing, Electric Sheep Press introduces our inaugural TopFic book TopFic: 3D Printers. Short for Topical Fiction, this nascent series of fast-paced, on-target political fiction will be published in the moment whenever hot-button topics hit the presses. While the public and the media discuss, “What’s happening now,” in current events, ESP explores the implications of emergent news items.

In this edition, we look at the potential uses and misuses of 3D polymer printing and extrapolate to eventual molecular printing. Is it safe to distribute the plans to make weapons with 3D printers? What will happen as owning these types of printers becomes more affordable and accessible to the public? What’s the next step? What happens when we can print our own drugs and pharmaceuticals, using molecular printing?

Oh, and as to the cover. We know you can’t just print a fully-assembled gun. We’re making a point, kids. It’s funny.