Meeting of the Sydney Futurian Society: 16th July 1999.

"Bill from Infinitas" is on "Smeg Radio", Wednesday 7 to 8 PM, 2RRR 88.5 MHz. Ian Woolf is on "The Discovery Program", Tuesday 8 to 8:30, 2SER 107.3 MHz.

Janice Gelb, current recipient of the DUFF funding for a trip by an American fan to Australia, is coming to the Futurians en route to AussieCon III, the World Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne this year.

A company in Germany has developed a video camera with wireless communications (like the ones in Aliens). Someone wondered what the relevance of this was to science fiction. Someone else accused the questioner of bringing forth "ego-boo-type" news. This person was accused of being an

An anti-cancer advertisement is using a virtual version of a dead actor, which is not only in questionable taste, but also looks pretty awful. Much more impressive is Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which apparently edited an unwanted limp from Natalie Portman's portrayal of Queen Amidala. Someone asked not to have the movie spoilt for them. ("I haven't see it yet ... now I'll be looking out for the scene where she doesn't limp and it won't be a surprised.")

Cornwall (amongst other places) is to have a total eclipse. This is attracting so much attention it may generate a situation analogous to Niven's Flash Crowd.

Cheapo NASA missions were announced: a cometary flyby, a search for water on Mercury (presumably in permanently shadowed craters?).

Lawyers, Judges and Legal Cases in Science Fiction

• Robert Zalenna(sp?)'s Illegal Alien, where an alien is on trial for murder of a human being. Apparently .
• Mary Doria Russell's Children of God.
• H. Beam Piper's Fuzzy novels, where court cases determine whether Fuzzies are human.
• Frank Herbert's The Dosadi Experiment, where the viewpoint character finds himself on trial simultaneously under two different legal codes.
• C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl's Gladiator at Law.
• The comic book 2000 A.D.
• Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, where a lynch mob drags their victim up to a judge in an effort to get it made legal. Jurors are dragged off the street and often fall asleep, judgement is almost entirely arbitrary, etc..
• Robert A. Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars, where a zygote storage firm was sued for accidentally unthawing one early when the parents didn't want to bring it up.
• Larry Niven's The Defenseless Dead, from The Long Arm of Gil Hamilton, where cryogenically frozen people are being harvested for organs and court cases decide whether they have rights.
• Larry Niven's A World Out of Time, where corpsicles are ground up into memory RNA, injected
• Larry Niven's The Ethics of Madness, where one world has a distinctive handling of insanity.
• Bertram Chandler's Botany Bay on Mars, where people are expected to die at 45, and if they don't get transported to Botany Bay (on Mars). Minor offences increase one's legal age.
• Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. "Sentence first, then the verdict."
• Various Larry Niven stories where the death penalty gets more and more common as a result of demand for transplantable organs.
• The "Baby Case", from a story about something else. The heirs to a staggering fortune fall out about dividing it. Some of them set legal software running, then die leaving no means to turn it off, and the entire estate is still being chewed up in legal fees generations later.
• Terry Nation's Blake's Seven had rigged automated legal case.
• Phillip K. Dick's Minority Report and Robert Silverberg's Up The Line, where you can be arrested for something you haven't done, but would have if we didn't come back to change things.
• A story where you could state your intention to commit a crime, suffer the punishment, then commit it and go on with your life. A bit like buying an indulgence. An analogy was made with the right to pollute, where companies are issued with pollution credits and trade them back and forth. This was further extended to the right (apparently in force in the US) to kill someone who invades your home: perhaps this could also be tradeable?

The next five to ten minutes of tape are just people shouting at each other. Who would dream pollution credits and legalised murder could be such emotive issues.

• A Phillip K. Dick story where the ability to do algebra was the definition of humanity. A character who is a mathematician claims to have forgotten how to do algebra. There are close analogies with Charles Sheffield's Proteus books, where the relevant skill is "purposive form change" operating a machine that allows you to change your body shape, add gills, etc..
• Matt Murdoch, a comic character with superdefects instead of superpowers, who is a superhero and a lawyer.
• A. E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher, where the government is self-serving, evil and corrupt, and justice is a pirate organisation with superior technology.
• A Donald Duck comic with an ancient Inca society in which creating a round object was sacrilegious.
• Cordwainer Smith's Lords of the Instrumentality (from many stories). One story had a court case where the witness is permitted to lie, unless asked a question about human relationships. A Lord of the Instrumentality (a unisex term) could execute another Lord, but would be then subject to an inquiry. If the decision to execute was found to be a bad one, he would be killed and his name inscribed on a very dishonourable list. If the decision was a good one, he would be killed and his name inscribed on a very honourable list. Lords in greater numbers had more rights.
• Some Star Trek episodes: one where gaol sentences are spent in a sort of VR so you come out and it's only a few hours later.
• Simon Lang's (really Darlene Hartman's) All the Gods of Eisernon, where the Federation is presided over by the council of seven, which has six people (the truth gets one vote).
• A Timothy Zahn story, where alien conquerors of Earth impose a noble-sounding "basic law": "no organisations larger than ten thousand people and membership is voluntary" that of course ruins everything.

Next Week, in honour of anticipated American guests: Displaced People in Science Fiction.

I welcome feedback at David.Bofinger@dsto.defenceSpamProofing.gov.au (delete the spamproofing).