2008/08/11 00:00:00
By Don Vaughan
In 1985, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle published Footfall (Del Rey), an epic novel about an alien invasion. Early in the story, as the alien spacecraft rapidly is approaching the Earth, the U.S. president convenes a special intelligence group to advise the National Security Council. Among the experts is a group of science fiction writers, including one modeled after Robert Heinlein, one of the genre’s most visionary and influential storytellers.
“When we wrote Footfall, it had seemed to us that if there actually was an alien ship sighted coming toward Earth, someone would remember that there was a retired Navy officer named Heinlein who thought about this kind of stuff,” says Pournelle. “It would be almost inevitable that they would ask him to form some kind of advisory group. Who else would you ask? [Science fiction writers] are experts on things like that.”
In May 2007, 22 years to the month after the publication of Footfall, fiction became fact when a group of science fiction authors was invited to sit in on the 2007 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Stakeholders Conference in Washington, D.C.
This time, however, the issue at hand wasn’t invading aliens; it was the global war on terrorism.
The six writers in attendance — Arlan Andrews Sr., Greg Bear, Virginia Ann Bush (who writes as Sage Walker), Yoji Kondo (who writes as Eric Kotani), Larry Niven, and Jerry Pournelle — are members of a unique organization known as SIGMA, which Andrews first conceived 15 years ago as a source of pro bono consultation to the federal government and organizations that “need the imagination that only we writers can provide.”
The idea for the creation of SIGMA came to Andrews when, as a fellow at the Department of Commerce and later at the White House Science Office, he watched “creative, visionary people [get] laughed at by mundane bureaucratic forecasters” for daring to suggest research funding for then-novel concepts such as nanotechnology and virtual reality
“That resonated with me,” says Andrews, a former entrepreneur who now works as a supervisory environmental engineer for the U.S. Navy in Corpus Christi, Texas. “I went back to my office and wrote what I called a manifesto saying that the future was too important to be left to ‘forecasters.’ I thought, who are the best people to talk about future technologies and put some real futurism into government forecasts? Naturally, it’s science fiction writers.”
There’s precedent for such a concept. H.G. Wells, author of The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, met with both Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt to discuss the future of science, notes Bear. And for decades, a group of independent scientists known collectively as Jason has advised the U.S. government on matters of science and technology.
In the early days of SIGMA, participants were required to have a doctorate in a technical field. “That requirement was so as to pass the ‘laugh test,’ ” explains Andrews. “I figured if we were all professional writers and had Ph.D.s, it would be an easier entrée into the circles of D.C.”
A doctoral degree no longer is required to join SIGMA, whose membership now totals in the mid-30s, though a third of its participants do hold advanced degrees in hard sciences. Bear, whose newest novel, Quantico (Vanguard Press, 2007), offers an intriguing near-future look at the war on terrorism, is one of the exceptions — he came to the group with an English degree. However, Bear is a dedicated and thorough researcher whose fiction often reads as if written by a scientific expert. His novel Darwin’s Radio (Ballantine Books, 2000) even was reviewed in the journal Nature and became a hit with the biological community.
SIGMA came to the attention of the DHS following a solicitation in the newsletter of the Science Fiction Writers of America by Capt. Chris Christopher, USN-Ret., deputy director (acting), Corporate Communications, Directorate for Science & Technology (DS&T).
“The purpose of SIGMA members coming to the conference was for them to meet us, [to] learn the kind of science and technology that we’re digging around for in support of the DHS mission, and to see if there was a way for us to work together for mutual benefit,” says Christopher, a lifelong science fiction buff who has read the works of many of the writer attendees. “Obviously, for the science fiction guys, ideas are what they are about, and seeing what we’re working on and the kinds of things we’re thinking about may be fruitful for them in terms of developing future stories.
The DS&T is divided into six divisions aligned with disciplines that will remain of great security concern for some time to come, Christopher explains, such as chemical and biological defense. Cutting across the six divisions are three directors: the director of research, who oversees the basic research being done in government and university laboratories; the director of transition, who takes the resulting technology and turns it into useable products; and the director of innovation.
The director of innovation receives just 10 percent of the total DS&T budget and uses those monies to fund higher-risk research projects. “We expect most of those projects to fail,” notes Christopher. “For the highest-risk projects, 90 percent may fail; but with those that do succeed, the payoff will be huge capability jumps for us. That’s the area we’re having the SIGMA folks look at initially, to help make sure we are thinking far enough out of the box.”
Unlike years past, when the idea of consulting science fiction writers likely would have resulted in guffaws, Christopher’s suggestion to bring SIGMA on board was well received.
“The consensus was that it was worth a shot, especially since it wasn’t costing us anything,” Christopher says. “And it certainly has gotten us a lot of attention, which has been a good payoff, because a lot of people now know about the [DS&T] who did not know it existed before.”
At the conference, the writers were encouraged to talk with DHS researchers and stakeholders about their needs and concerns regarding the future of the security fight and see what they could come up with. Nothing was off the table, and no idea was too wild.
“They gave us carte blanche,” says Andrews. “We asked up front during the in-brief with Chris Christopher and [deputy director of Innovation] Rolf Dietrich if we had to be politically correct, and we were told not to censor ourselves in any way.”
Free to let their imaginations run wild, the writers generated thoughtful, sometimes fanciful ideas on a broad range of issues. Pournelle, for example, suggested a reevaluation of the Bertillon system, a highly accurate method of identification devised by Dr. Alphonse Bertillon that relies on the measurement of facial features.
“This system would be good for crowd surveillance,” Pournelle says. “I suggested that the DHS turn some interns loose on the Bertillon system, which fell out of use in the 1930s, and see if it could be used as part of security monitoring.”
When asked about innovative ways to fight fires in buildings and mines, Andrews conceived of a grenade that might release a wall of insulating foam that would seal off a passageway so people could escape.
Niven suggested looking into antimatter as a fuel source. He also encouraged research into ways to focus dark energy, which on a small scale would be antigravity, and pointed out the potential value of so-called “impact armor,” a soft material that turns hard when struck.
Bush, a retired emergency physician, and Bear came up with one of the conference’s more unusual concepts — a special cap worn by search dogs that would interpret the animals’ brain waves and tell their handlers specifically what they were reacting to.
However, it’s important to note, says Christopher, that SIGMA was brought in not just to think up wild concepts but also to look ahead at how Americans might react to the deployment of new technologies.
“Science fiction has always been concerned with the effects of science and technology on people and society,” notes Christopher. “The science fiction writers can provide great value by helping us envision what kind of reactions and modifications of behavior we might expect if a certain technology were to be implemented, such as the use of biometrics to access behavior at airports. Will ordinary people start doing things like wearing hats and covering their faces [because they don’t like it]? And if that’s the case, what are the possible implications of that response? Thinking about how people will react to the things we have to do to protect them is important in enlisting their support for those ideas.”
For their part, the writers were eager to lend their unique expertise to the ongoing war on terrorism.
“It was apparent that the people doing the work in Science and Technology at DHS are bright, articulate, well-intentioned, and determined to do their best to make sure another [Hurricane] Katrina-style fiasco does not occur ever again,” observes Bush. “So if we accomplished nothing other than showing they are willing to try anything to make things better, even to listen to science fiction geeks, well and good.”
The DHS is evaluating the ideas generated by the SIGMA members and looks forward to an ongoing relationship with the organization, says Christopher.
“If we’re really in the business of trying to mobilize our entire scientific resources to fight the war on terror, then science fiction writers are a very important arrow in our quiver,” he notes. “I will be astonished if, over time, some really good things don’t come out of this and some really great stories don’t come out of it on their part.”
From Science Fiction to Science Fact
Science fiction writers are, by definition, visionaries, so it should come as no surprise that many of the things we now take for granted first were conceived of years ago in their vivid imaginations. Ray Bradbury, for example, in his short story “The Veldt,” describes a household entertainment system that bears a striking resemblance to what we today call virtual reality.
Other now commonplace items first thought of by science fiction writers include:
