Towards a Novel Future

The recent JCAMD issue celebrating 25 years of that journal is full of articles speculating on the future of the field over the coming 25 years (note that these are available free online for 3 months and 6 of the 32 are Open Access). For me, as a science fiction fan, one particular article stands out: Alpha Shock by Mark Murcko and Pat Walters, which imagines a future where drug design will have virtually (le mot juste, eh?) eliminated those pesky experiments.

Science fiction articles don't appear very often in scientific journals (the double entendre aside), so I was intrigued by how the reviewers handled this. Through various nefarious and downright dastardly means, I managed to get a peek at the reviewers' reports and here are some highlights:

"A real Page-Downer of a PDF. I was gripped from the Introduction right through to the Conclusion."
- Reviewer 1

"8 out of 10. A story of great entertainment in the field."
- Reviewer 2

"P2, paragraph 3: Several misspellings. In the future, are there no spell checkers?"
- Reviewer 3

"Rattles along at a rollicking pace. And that's just the abstract!"
- Reviewer 1

"I laughed. I cried. Then I read the article."
- Reviewer 2

"Publish with minor revisions to add tension."
- Reviewer 3

Can anyone think of other examples where fiction has been included in a chemistry article?