Writing Science Fiction for the Government
Yeah, it’s kind of a mind-bender, isn’t it?
So, the few regular readers who are left at this sad, old, mostly-neglected blog know that I’m a big fan of science-fiction. And, when I have time, I read a lot. Granted, since college I think I read more non-fiction than fiction, but, still, I manage to hammer away at it and more than exceed the national average of three to four books per year. Also, I tend to think of myself as a bit of an amateur futurist. By that I mean that I like to look at news stories and speculate on just where that particular trend is headed and what it will mean for us in the future. As it turns out, the U.S. government has similar leanings.
Now, I’ve heard stories about how they gathered together some great sci-fi authors of the moment to brain storm some alien invasion defense ideas, but, frankly, that’s old hat and, well, kind of boring to me. I mean, I think the alien invasion thing is kind of played out now, don’t you? What’s far more interesting to me is a recent story from Wired about science-fiction book pitches to assorted U.S. Government agencies. Apparently, the government can be more forward thinking than you might imagine from more recent news and a number of agencies have solicited book pitches from science-fiction authors based on the agencies’ area of specialty. Yes, basically what I’m saying is they were looking for propaganda pieces cleverly disguised as sci-fi novels.
And, shockingly, some of them actually sounded like they might be good. Imagine, your tax dollars finally put to good use; writing compelling, new science-fiction!
In any case, it’s Friday and you’re bored, so why not go check it out? You might be surprised by who pitched what to the government!
