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"The science fiction method is dissection and reconstruction. You look at the world around you, and take it apart into its components. Then you take some of those components, throw them away, and plug in different ones, start it up and see what happens."
- Frederik Pohl
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| Threat Team (of sf writers) | ||
| Gathering together a group of science fiction writers to try to predict what will happen, or to understand an unknown threat. |
The government creates a special think tank of science fiction writers who try to understand the aliens and extrapolate their capabilities. Eventually, they even invited a captured member of the aliens to join their "herd" - the Dreamer Fithp. The military called them the Threat Team.
| They took their places in the lecture room, but they tended to sit for a moment, then get up and gather in clumps. Most of them talked at once. Working with the science-fiction people was an educational experience. They had no reverence for anything or anyone...
"Admiral Carrell has assembled an intelligence group to advise the National Security Council. You are part of it." "Makes sense. Who else knows about aliens?" She looked at her seating chart. Curtis. She nodded. "...You are the Threat Team. The others will assume the aliens are friendly. Our group will examine the possibility they are hostile..." |
| Technovelgy from Footfall,
by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle). Published by Ballantine in 1985 Additional resources -
|
As one character says in the book, you might as well listen to science fiction writers because, in some areas, "they're the only experts we have."
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Footfall
More Ideas
and Technology by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
Tech news articles related to Footfall
Tech news articles related to works by Larry Niven (w/J. Pournelle)
Threat Team (of sf writers)-related
news articles:
- Sigma: SF Writers Advise Homeland Security
- France's 'Red Team' Of Science Fiction Authors
- Does Your Company Need A 'Chief Dreamer'?
| Switzerland May Cap Population At Ten Million |
| California Governor Candidate Calls For Voting By Phone |
| Chinese Hospital Tries Vonnegut's 'Harrison Bergeron' Cosplay |
| A Remarkable Coincidence |
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'I made disks of my own voice to the number of five hundred very carefully chosen words.'
'His sensors out and working, and the whirring of the tape that sucked up sight and sound and shape and smell and form...'
'It sounds to me as though you had invented a kind of metal earthworm.'
'I don't have to tell you about the seven two-mile-diameter orbital mirrors that circulate around the satellite, making it habitable.'
'The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe- like independence.'
'...then back to their work, though little enough it was on these automatic cultivators.'
