U.S. Mission for Sci-Fi Writers: Imagine That (Novelists Plot the Future Of Homeland Security)

The Washington Post ^ | May 22, 2009 | David Montgomery

[Stoat]

The line between what's real and what's not is thin and shifting, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has decided to explore both sides. Boldly going where few government bureaucracies have gone before, the agency is enlisting the expertise of science fiction writers.

Crazy? This week down at the Reagan Building, the 2009 Homeland Security Science & Technology Stakeholders Conference has been going on. Instead of just another wonkish series of meetings and a trade show, with contractors hustling business around every corner, this felt at times more like a convention of futuristic yarn-spinners

Onstage in the darkened amphitheater, a Washington police commander said he'd like to have Mr. Spock's instant access to information: At a disaster scene, he'd like to say, "Computer, what's the dosage on this medication?"

A federal research director fantasized about a cellphone that could simultaneously text and detect biochemical attacks. Multiple cellphones in a crowd would confirm and track the spread. The master of ceremonies for the week was Greg Bear, the sci-fi novelist whose book "Quantico" featured FBI agents battling a designer plague targeting specific ethnic groups.

(edit)

The cost to taxpayers is minimal. The writers call this "science fiction in the national interest," and they consult pro bono. They've been exploring the future, and "we owe it to mankind to come back and report what we've found," said writer Arlan Andrews, who also is an engineer with the Navy

 

 

[Jack Hammer]

This sounds like the whole trouble with the television show “24.”

The government has gotta stop p*ssing around with all this PC nonsense, and admit to itself and everyone else that 99.9% of all terrorists are Muslims, and start profiling and keeping watch.

It AIN’T gonna be a committee of Evil White Males, with vast wealth and secret administrative power, funding some bunch of whacked out morons from Sangala perpetrating plots within plots within plots. It’s gonna be a hundred or so young Moslem males with explosive belts blowing themselves up simultaneously at shopping malls and train stations, with a few car bombs at important highway bridges and office buildings thrown in for good measure.

You want futuristic science fiction terror conspiracy? How about this: a Muslim president born in a foreign country, who refuses to produce a bona fide birth certificate, decides to trash the economy for the next fifty years, nationalize the banks and important industries, and take the nation down the very same communist road the Soviets adopted a hundred years ago and then abandoned eighty years later in the moldy, decaying ruins of their nation.

In the process, he surrenders American sovereignty to United Nations control and convinces everyone to sleep through ther nuclear ascendancy of Iran. Israel is destroyed; the Middle East becomes a theocratic military bloc with nukes; the CIA is hobbled with several MORE layers of oversight; and USSOCOM is virtually put out of action with YET MORE accretions of pacifist nonsense added to the rules of engagement. Meanwhile, the ACLU convinces everyone that anything less than hotel-style accommodations with wide screen television and 24 hour room service is “torture.”

Nightmare? You bet.

And it’s happening right now, without the need for prediction or description at any highfalutin’ conferences of sci-fi or thriller writers. Just read the papers - with eyes OPEN.

Is there any batch of Hollywood writers who, in their wildest flights of fancy, could come up with anything remotely so outlandish and unbelievable?

Americans have less to fear from terrorists than they do from their own materialist self-indulgence, intellectual laziness, and moral laxity. And THAT is terrifying.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

[DuncanWaring]

Glenn Beck was saying a year or so ago that “In a year you’ll wake up and you won’t recognize this country”.

I found it a bit of a stretch.

It’s happened.

[Travis McGee]

Yep, I’d have been published by the majors years ago if I featured white racist villains and federal agent heros.

[Travis McGee]

You should read my third novel.

[GeronL]

You’d have sold movie rights by now

[Travis McGee]

No doubt.

[GeronL]

You’d be one of those hypocritical rich leftists who campaign for everyone else to live in 500 sq ft apartments and drive tuna cans.

bad Travis, bad

[Travis McGee]

I just found out that James Patterson, among manyother famous authors, just scribbles an outline and hands it off to a paid hack. A few months later, he reviews a manuscript, revises it and puts his name on it. That’s the secret of writing a best seller a year.

1. Be famous already for some good early novels, and have name recognition. Come up with a new idea and an outline.
2. Get somebody else to do the actual writing, often several books at a time by multiple writers.

I should have guessed. I always suspected it, but now it’s been confirmed.

[GeronL]

I had the plan that if I won the lotto, I would pay writers to write novels based on an idea I had. But they would get their name on it and all that. I wanted to be a sugar daddy or something. Come on Mega Millions!

[Travis McGee]

Ideas are easy, I have notebooks full. Getting 200K words of readable prose on paper is a lot harder, let me tell you.

[Stonewall Jackson]

I just finished reading Foreign Enemies and Traitors. Now I need to go back and read all three back-to-back.

It would be interesting to see a branch-off or two, possibly following some of the minor characters from the first two books, showing life in the Free States.

[GeronL]

I always seem to write 5 or 6 pages and then lose interest, thinking nobody is ever going to read them. I got several in the works right now, but who knows?

I posted some of the first or first several pages over at LibertyFic but thats basically a 2-person board right now.

[Travis McGee]

I really want to start a new storyline. As an author, it becomes very confining to limit myself to an entire set of fictional/historical facts. My next book will also be “future fiction” but with a different set of postulations, and all new characters.

[Travis McGee]

It’s very hard, as you know.

[Stonewall Jackson]

I know what you mean. I have a filing cabinet that is half-full of story outlines, character sketches, maps, timelines, etc...

But despite my best intentions, they rarely get past this stage. I am currently in the middle of a story that follows a group of young preppers (not preppies) as they have to escape the Baltimore-DC area following a total collapse of society. One of the young adults has an uncle who lives on a farm in Wyoming, which is their ultimate goal, but first they have to travel, on foot, across the entire United States.

Right now, I have about 15K words typed out and have a basic storyline written out for the rest of the story, so hopefully I will be finished in another month or two.

[Travis McGee]

What is the total word count you’re aiming for? 150K words will run about 300 pages in book size.

[Stonewall Jackson]

I am hoping to get 160-180K.

I know where I am going with the story, it is simply a matter of getting it out of my head and onto paper. ;-)

[kitchen]

Now in its desperation, the DHS has resorted to hiring science fiction writers to suggest things to do with taxpayer money?

As I recall, a year or two ago one of the ideas that came from this event was a means to get some control over emergency medical costs. That being, to start a rumor in the illegal alien community that there was a thriving organ harvest program from undocumented patients. A few spirited away and deported, followed by a whispering campaign - "Remember Juan? He went to the ER with a hangnail and disappeared. They say his kidneys were worth thousands of dollars..."

[Travis McGee]

That’s the trick! “Bleeding onto paper.” (Or a keyboard.)

[haroldeveryman]

There’s an idea! The DHS can open a UFO Division to investigate Juan’s abduction. Janet should be able to draw on existing DHS expertise on “right wing extremists”.