DHS calls in sci-fi writers as consultants

[mawilson 2,133]

The feds at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have this week called in

some self-described "deviant" consultants to aid them in the battle against terrorists,

illegal immigrants, smugglers et al.

The deviants in question are a group of science fiction writers, namely Jerry Pournelle,

Arlan Andrews, Greg Bear, Larry Niven, Yoji Kondo and Sage Walker.

"We need to look everywhere for ideas, and science-fiction writers clearly inform the

debate," Christopher Kelly, spokesman for Homeland Security's Science and Technology

division, told USA Today.

The writers are members of Sigma, a "think tank of patriotic science fiction writers"

founded to advise government officials by Arlan Andrews when he worked in the White

House Science Office in the early 1990s. He recruited only authors with advanced

technical or medical degrees, in order to pass the "laugh test."

"If you don't read science fiction, you're not qualified to talk about the future," he told

the St Louis Post-Dispatch.

"We're well-qualified nuts," added Jerry Pournelle, co-author with Larry Niven of the

bestsellers Footfall (alien invasion) and Lucifer's Hammer (comet strike apocalypse).

The educated scribes were invited to attend the Homeland Security Science and

Technology Stakeholders Conference as guests of the DHS. The writers weren't paid,

and like scribblers everywhere seem to have been reluctant to give out their best

ideas for free. According to the Post-Dispatch, all they offered up was:

"material that becomes armor when struck by a bullet; an antibiotic that cures

martyrdom; a satellite that beams solar energy to earth."

Oh, and "mind-reading helmets for bomb-sniffing dogs," apparently.

The armour material is old hat, so to speak. So is the solar-power satellite, which

Pournelle for one has been advocating for decades.

The sci-fi scribes might not have given of their best and freshest at the conference,

but it's certainly true that science fiction has sometimes predicted the course of

technology a long time in advance.

Robert Heinlein for instance, author of Starship Troopers among many others, was

writing about recognizable cellphones in 1948. (In Space Cadet.) He also has a

passage in Friday (1982) in which he gives a fairly prescient idea of how computer

networks could operate in looking for information - years ahead even of Gibson's

cyberpunk works, let alone the consumer web. (Though not, quite, ahead of Lexis-Nexis.)

Still, Heinlein also predicted nuclear-powered rocket ships, household robots which

could "put dishes away after the dishwasher was through", human colonies throughout

the solar system and beyond, "Beanstalk" orbital elevators etc etc. Not to mention a

dystopian future for America in which a crazed religious zealot would establish a

theocratic dictatorship. The all-American hero in that book joins a successful secret

rebellion against the US government. Not something that the feds at the DHS are likely

to smile on.

But the Sigma writers are patriotic as well as qualified, and mostly haven't written

anything off-message like that. They've produced some imaginative stuff nonetheless,

and could well offer the DHS some pointers.

There will always be a stiff laugh test to pass when government takes advice from

novelists. Nonetheless, the feds may have history on their side here. The DHS was

formed as a response to the outrages of 9/11, after all - events fairly similar to the

suicide-747 attack on the US Capitol at the end of Tom Clancy's bestselling 1994 airport

doorstopper Debt of Honor.

Scoffers beware.

Source

[Saddle Bronc 124]

Why not just read L. Ron Hubbard's original (pre-"Dianetics") novels for the ideas?

(note: as a SciFi writer, Hubbard was dismal)

[Sofiyya 1,687]

The feds at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have this week called in

some self-described "deviant" consultants to aid them in the battle against terrorists,

illegal immigrants, smugglers et al.

There's a battle against illegal immigrants?

[mawilson 2,133]

The feds at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have this week called in

some self-described "deviant" consultants to aid them in the battle against terrorists,

illegal immigrants, smugglers et al.

There's a battle against illegal immigrants?

A battle of words so far.

[Niels Bohr 72]

Geezes.

[cartaverde 12]

White, American, upper and middle class novel writers can think of fancy ways to be terrorists.

However, they should hire terrorists for that job. How someone from .e.g Palestine would do terrorism would be way different than how the Terrorism She Wrote authors would write it, but it is more likely to occur. So pick a few Palestinians, a few [insert other countries known for terrorism] and you'll get some better ideas.

And I'd make the applicants write a proper resume for getting that job. So how would you qualify as knowing terorrism? What have you done in real life?

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Why not just read L. Ron Hubbard's original (pre-"Dianetics") novels for the ideas?

(note: as a SciFi writer, Hubbard was dismal)

My friend/editor would disagree with you on that - Hubbard was a pulp writer, more Raymond Chandler / Edgar Rice Burroughs than Arthur C. Clark, Isaac Asimov or Phil #######.

[mawilson 2,133]

However, they should hire terrorists for that job. How someone from .e.g Palestine would do terrorism would be way different than how the Terrorism She Wrote authors would write it, but it is more likely to occur. So pick a few Palestinians, a few [insert other countries known for terrorism] and you'll get some better ideas.

Sounds like a great idea! Let DHS hire some real terrorists to plan terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

(Seriously, not a bad idea.)

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

However, they should hire terrorists for that job. How someone from .e.g Palestine would do terrorism would be way different than how the Terrorism She Wrote authors would write it, but it is more likely to occur. So pick a few Palestinians, a few [insert other countries known for terrorism] and you'll get some better ideas.

Sounds like a great idea! Let DHS hire some real terrorists to plan terrorist attacks on U.S. soil.

(Seriously, not a bad idea.)

Well the BBC did do that reality TV show not so long ago in which the presenters (two ex-burglars) would break into people's houses to show how vulnerable they are to intruders...