The spiders in Spidersilk the novel use a substance called spider silk to help protect the main character, Mark, from intruders. In our own world, spider silk has been a hot topic lately. Not long ago, a group of scientists successfully produce spider silk that’s tougher than anything else we’ve made thus far. They sprayed the spiders with carbon nanotubes and graphene flakes, which strengthened the fibers. For more on this study, check out this link:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1504.06751