Nelson sent me a wild one from USA Today:Looking to prevent the next terrorist attack, the Homeland Security Department is tapping into the wild imaginations of a group of self-described "deviant" thinkers: science-fiction writers.
The writers make up a group called Sigma, which writer Arlan Andrews put together 15 years ago to advise government officials. The last time the group gathered was in the late 1990s, when members met with government scientists to discuss what a post-nuclear age might look like, says group member Greg Bear.
Now, the Homeland Security Department is calling on the group to help with the government's latest top mission of combating terrorism.
2 comments:
This has all happened before...
Robert Heinlein wrote stories for Astounding for close to three years, becoming the main writer there before working as a civilian engineer for the US Navy at the Philadelphia shipyard during WW2. Heinlein was not the only SF author working there on research projects; he was joined by Isaac Asimov (a biochemist) and L Sprague de Camp (an engineer). In the words of de Camp, A.B. Scoles, the newly appointed director of the Materials Laboratory of the Naval Aircraft Factory at the time, decided “Why not get some of Heinlein’s writing colleagues, who had been so glibly creating spaceships and death rays, put them to work in the Materials Laboratory, and see what they could do?”
In the story posted on BMU today, one might also add that SF writers might be in a better position to separate fact from fiction...
Bravo Dr. Saunders! We all know Heinlein as a very forward thinker, but I am sure most of us never suspected at what level that rose to!
I know that I will be reading this as part of the next program. Thanks so much for the input.
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