OA is my Iain M. Banks substitute

[Drashner1]

As far as an OA article goes, I think that other intoxicants/drugs will follow nicotine in this delivery method (caffeine and melatonin are already available from some suppliers), THC being the logical first big expansion--I imagine we will see this out of Washington or Colorado sometime soon, considering all the legal hash oil production going on in those areas now. More sophisticated "e-rigs" might be able to mix drug and flavor combinations at user request--probably by voice command. A nanotech rig would probably synthesize the drugs and flavoring agents on demand.

Sounds interesting. As a starting point (assuming you haven't seen it already), may I refer you to the current EG pages on drugs:

http://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45c7f87fe575f

What you're describing would fold in here in the form of one or more EG articles, depending on how you're wanting to structure things.

In terms of the actual technology, this would probably be something that would start in a more primitive form (meaning, around what we can do now and a bit beyond) and then advance from there to some much more advanced level.

While voice command (or maybe a simple 'wheel' or 'dial' around the waste of the e-cig) would probably be available in the early/mid Interplanetary Age, in the later IP Age and beyond, control might come from a DNI interface (assuming they become so common, small, and cheap that nobody thinks anything of wasting one on an e-cig Seems likely that at least some cultures might do it that way.

Synthesizing the drugs and flavoring agents on demand via nano would probably be doable, more so with some sort of designer molecule 'base' that can be rapidly restructured by the nano into whatever drug is desired. The biggest limitations would be waste heat, time, and the limited supply of feedstock available inside the unit. A possible workaround for much of this would be to have the e-cig use its DNI wireless system to also interface with local nanoforges and download a given blend template to whichever one is convenient. You take it out of the forge, plug it into the ecig and off you go. Essentially unlimited supply that you can access anywhere with a nanoforge.

Perhaps e-cigs would contain an onboard matter supply (perhaps the pack of cigs unit) for times when the user is away from ready access to nanoforges. Otherwise they just use larger nanoforges in the area to make what is desired faster while remaining very compact (essentially just the size of a cigarette (or cigar if you prefer that sort of thing).

My ideas on Superior family structure are pretty vague at the moment, but I think the "Shaper Ring Council" from Sterling's Schismatrix with it's planned clan structure might be a good starting point.

That would work as a starting point (with a bit of tweaking so we aren't just copying his stuff of course), although likely only in some Superior clades and cultures. OA encompasses tens of millions of solar systems and there are literally literally over 300 trillion of them around. So lots of different cultures who will do things lots of different ways. Not that you need to describe every variation of course. But a broad cross section of some examples would be a good thing to include, even if you then decide to drill down in more detail on one particular type of culture, such as something inspired by the Shapers.

Hope this helps,

Todd