Casual Fridays

So I went over to the DHS Homeland Security S&T Stakeholders Conference and Exhibition this week - it was being held at the Ronald Reagan Building & International Trade Center. I was meeting a few blokes to chat while they were in town for this conference. I met them in the lobby of the building, we're talking, and up walk these two frumpy looking older men, kinda looking like your Uncle Joe at the family reunion.

Except these two guys weren't just any guys. They start talking with Matt, and I look at their nametags. Greg Bear and Larry Niven... hmmmm... no, it couldn't be. OH MY GOD. THE Larry Niven. "Ringworld" Larry Niven. "Dream Park" Larry Niven. Greg Bear. THE Greg Bear, who wrote "Eon," "The Forge of God,"Moving Mars," "Darwin's Radio." And hey, that old guy in the next conference room who looks like your father on vacation in Florida - that's Jerry Pournelle. As in "Footfall", "The Mote in God's Eye," "Lucifer's Hammer."

Verily, the Immortals themselves have descended from Olympus to dispense their wisdom. What were they in town for? This short article at the conference explained it:

"We want to think about the things you aren't thinking about," science fiction author Greg Bear stated plainly.

"Like antibiotics for martyrdom," Sage Walker mused.

Every eybrow in the room darted upward.

"I'm serious," Walker continues. "Why not? Don't forget I'm a doctor."

And so the conversation went at the closed door session held on Monday by S&T's [Directorate] Rolf Dietrich with some of the premier science fiction writers in the country. Bear and Dr. Virginia Bush (Sage Walker) were joined by Dr. Arlan Andrews, Dr. Yogi [sic] Kondo (Eric Kontani), Dr. Larry Niven, and Dr. Jerry Pournelle. They are all top noch scientists, and - collectively - award-winning authors of hundreds of science fiction novels. Their group, SIGMA, is a "think tank" of real scientists who also think about and write about "speculative science."

This group was asked by ... Dr. Rolf Dietrich, to come together and think about some out-of-the-box ideas and solutions to some of homeland security's greatest problems. And as they began to muse, this meeting crasher heard some eye-opening ideas... on privacy issues, terrorism, reactive armor, bio-hackers, anthrax production, even anti-gravity and anti-matter and how these could be used to solve security and protection problems.

What an incredibly good idea, one that DOD ought to emulate. I've always believed that scifi authors - at least those with scientific upbringings - were better able to peer into the future and accurately identify challenges and trends. Not just those futurists such as William Gibson, but if you want to see the Future Combat Systems in print, just grab one of David Drake's "Hammers' Slammers" novels. Surprising to me how many FCS people had never heard of him before.

The authors were also signing books while they were in town, although I did not get one. Greg Bear has a book out titled "Quantico," which I think I'm going to have to get.

From multiple award winning and New York Times–bestselling author Greg Bear comes a near-future thriller that pits young FBI agents against a brilliant homegrown terrorist. It’s the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, and terrorism has escalated almost beyond control. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem has been blown to bits by extremists, and, in retaliation, thousands have died in another major attack on the United States. New weapons are being spawned in remote basement labs, and no one feels safe.

In North America, the FBI uses cutting edge technology to thwart domestic terrorists. Sat-linked engine blockers stop drug-traffickers cold. Devices the size of magic markers test for biohazards on the spot. 3-D projectors reconstruct crime scenes from hours-old evidence, and sophisticated bomb suits protect against all but the most savage forces. Despite all this, the War on Terror has reached a deadly stalemate.

Now the FBI has been dispatched to deal with a new menace. A plague targeted to ethnic groups— Jews or Muslims or both—has the potential to wipe out entire populations. But the FBI itself is under political assault. There’s a good chance agents William Griffin, Fouad Al-Husam, and Jane Rowland will be part of the last class at Quantico. As the young agents hunt a brilliant homegrown terrorist, they join forces with veteran bio-terror expert Rebecca Rose. But the plot they uncover—and the man they chase—prove to be far more complex than anyone expects.

Screw Secretary Chertoff's speech. I wanted to hear these guys talk. I was reduced to a high-school teenager with eyes the size of saucers. I shook their hands - I haven't washed my right hand since then.

Comments

[BGG]

That's awesome. Must have been a real thrill. These guys do have a lot to offer to national security. Thanks for the book tip too.

[Robot Economist]

What, no hat tip to Greg Bear's Blood Music? It was the original biotechnology turns into grey-goo apocolypse novel.

Its too bad Philip K. Dick isn't around anymore. He really had a knack for predicting the most anticipated future innovations.

[J.]

I'm still catching up on Bear. He's quite a prolific author. I'll check Blood Music out, thanks.

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"I've always believed that scifi authors - at least those with scientific upbringings - were better able to peer into the future and accurately identify challenges and trends."

I'd be skeptical of the "accurately": they'd throw up some scenarios that maybe one wouldn't have thought of, which would have a better chance of incorporating a discontinuity than conventional thinking. I'd give them credit for outside-the-box thinking, but after the meeting's over we'd want that thinking to fit into a new cuboid receptacle.

Frex, given what we know of within-group versus between-group diversity in H.Sapiens, I think that "Quantico" would require a honkin' heap of Disbelief Suspension.

The next 10-20 years are still going to look a lot more like now than we expect. (I guess I always think of Arthur C. Clarke's adage that the impact of a [some] new technology is overestimated in the short term, but underestimated in the long term.)

But I think we have a greater expectation of change from technological advances (e.g. the bomb, electrification, the internet) than we have from social or political events. But every 10-15 years we have a political event or upheaval (the fall of the Eastern Bloc, 9/11, Watergate, Vietnam), and every 30 or so years we have a new social movement - decolonialism, second wave feminism, Leninism, anarchno-syndicalism/narodikism, inter-war pacificism, fundamentalism - which changes the possibilities and problems we face. And we do a really crappy job of anticipating that kind of change, 'cos it's only 20 years later that we see how the so-called 'dead hand of history' was actually draggin us by the leash.

So I guess if SF authors help generate scenarios, that's great. But while technology is a huge driver, it's not the sole driver.

[Grandjester]

Sock Puppet, you are off the mark, these guys kick ass and their forebearers have called the ball on just about everything we have pulled off in the last century. Sure, no jet packs for the masses yet (check out http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/ for some great misses). J, you are a lucky fucking bastard and I will spend my holiday weekend pouting about it!!!

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"Sock Puppet, you are off the mark, these guys kick ass and their forebearers have called the ball on just about everything we have pulled off in the last century."

Look, I've got about 50 linear feet of F&SF on the bookshelves, subscribe to a SF magazine (used to subscribe to more, then realised I didn't have time to read them), and have 12 more boxes of books. And that's not counting the RPG stuff.

But reading SF is a weaker aid to thinking about the future of what we're gonna be thinking in the future than Science, Nature, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review or for that matter classic Dead White Male stuff like Adam Smith or Tacitus.

It's still cool J. got to meet them though.

[J.]

It was something else. Sock Puppet, I also subscribe to F&SF, got a big stack of them but I seem to keep on top of the short stories. I think I can compete with you on boxes of books too - ask my wife.

I'm not sure GJ is saying that reading SF is what we ought to do to prepare for the future, but certainly the SF guys seem to understand future concepts and social implications of science on our lives. Hey, we can all still enjoy it without worrying about miniature black holes in the center of the earth.

[Martin Wisse]

Pournelle and co tried being influential back in the early eighties when they were pushing SDI.

That worked out well.

[subadei]

Legacy of Herot and Inferno are among my all time favorites. As GJ said, you are one lucky bastard.

[Admiral]

They probably don't do this at the DOD for any number of good reasons. Foremost among them are that it's an insanely large and immobile bureaucracy that has an establishment the size of, well, Texas.

Another is that when they do try to put innovation of new ideas in there, other political actors pounce for gain as all the Democrats ludicrously did when they had a test program based on futures markets in predicting terrorism -- an OUTSTANDING idea that could help us a LOT but that's politicians playing games with national security for you.

[Sock Puppet of the Great Satan]

"It was something else. Sock Puppet, I also subscribe to F&SF,"

Me also. Like it better than Asimov's.

"got a big stack of them but I seem to keep on top of the short stories. I think I can compete with you on boxes of books too - ask my wife."

I sympathize. My wife's also been at me to purge, but she doesn't understand the PAIN of parting with said books. I'll get round to reading them all. Honest.

[a517dogg]

I am jealous. "Moving Mars" was my first Greg Bear novel. "The Mote in God's Eye" and "King David's Spaceship" were two of my first and still two of my favorite SciFi books ever.

[HaloJones-Fan]

"...if you want to see the Future Combat Systems in print, just grab one of David Drake's "Hammers' Slammers" novels. Surprising to me how many FCS people had never heard of him before."

Actually, in my experience it's not so surprising...perhaps sadly. For some reason, Drake seems to be the least-read sci-fi author among the modern military/defense-industry population; I'd wager that the majority have never even heard of him.

Part of the problem is that most of them get introduced to mil-sf through John Ringo, and they conclude that it's all like that. Of the rest, most of them stop at David Weber, or possibly Eric Flint.

And, as you say, it's a real shame. "holy crap, we're mounting robot-aimed radar-guided shotguns to shoot down incoming missiles!" Yeah, Drake thought of that thirty years ago. "Hey, let's hang claymore mines on the sides of our tanks to deal with close-quarters infantry combat!" Yeah, Drake thought of that thirty years ago. "Wow, we could use directed-energy weapons to shoot down incoming artillery rounds and rockets!" Yeah, Drake thought of that thirty years ago...