Non-Meeting of the Sydney Futurian Society: 18th February 2000.

Due to the absence from the records of any attendance sheet, we can assume that no members of the Futurians were present. Anyone present who was a member in previous meetings is therefore assumed to have been expelled. The author hopes his expulsion was for embezzling since he'd like to have got something out of it. Some non-member gatecrashers included:

• John August;
• David Bofinger (non-secretary);
• Ronald Clarke;
• Kevin Dillon;
• Gary Dalrymple;
• Peter Eisler;
• Gina Sartori (standing in for Gina Sartore, who would have been here if the attendance list had survived);
• Ted Scribner;
• Brian Walls; and
• Ian Woolf.

It had been planned to watch some videos. One was ex-member John August's amateur tape of Aussiecon III, and the other a TV episode Tomorrow Calling inspired by a Harlan Ellison story. Unfortunately the Futurian member tasked with bring the latter hadn't shown up, and the identical non-member with the same name claimed to know nothing about it. John August had only brought his video camera and nobody could persuade the video to listen to it. Both plans were delayed to next meeting.

Non-member Gary Dalrymple reported that Australia has been put on the market. Australia Pty Ltd seems to be a cybersquatting shelf company with control of several Australia-related domain names. There was some description of whether cybersquatting was illegal and in what sense.

Gary also said something very funny about psychics in England (that the public service recognises them as a profession?) but the tape lost it.

In related news, astrologers have split. Concern was expressed that having two competing professional organisations might sully their reputation. Since no members of the Sydney Futurians were apparently present, the meeting was constituted as the inaugural meeting of the Futurian Society of Sydney, First Reformed Splitters. (Convening as a lynch mob was narrowly defeated by a vote, records of which were fabricated after the non-event by the non-secretary.)

It's been practice for a long time in some countries to support agriculture. So some farmers were being paid extra to produce, say, alfalfa. Unfortunately this led to a glut of alfalfa (and corresponding shortage in those little plastic punnets) and so more enlightened governments came to pay people for not producing alfalfa. Some people became very rich not producing enormous amounts of alfalfa. Now the Nigerian government is paying women to not be prostitutes. Taking into account the state of the Nigerian economy and hence the strength of Nigerian currency, this could be considered not paying prostitutes not to have sex. The society awaits the Nigerians' "other, other operation".

German researchers have found that drink driving is correlated with the phase of the moon. We assume this is somehow related to yardarms.

A secret U.S. plan for ending the Gulf War has been released. This involved projecting an enormous hologram of God, and using microwave-induced vibrations in people to allow God to speak to the Iraqi masses and condemn Saddam's rule. The plan was shelved for several reasons, some of them technical, some of them related to the fact that Iraqi's are not, contrary to popular belief, entirely idiots, and some related to the difficulty of portraying God to a society which lacks a consensual image, because creating images of God is banned. The idea previously appeared in Heinlein's Sixth Column.

Some science fiction terms have been credited in a dictionary read by expelled Futurian Brian Walls.

• Cyberpunk: Bruce Bethke, who writes that he "claims to have invented the term, as do any number of other people".
• Space Opera: Wilson Tucker, early 1940s.

Non-non-member Jim Shellins (sp?), author of Active, Passive, Neutral has expressed interest in coming to the May meeting. Nobody has read his book, but the non-secretary felt it was a good sign that the author had resisted the temptation to make it a trilogy called Active, Passive and Neutral.

There's an old wharf building in Pyrmont which had been used as the temporary temple to mammon while the permanent one was being consecrated. It's to become a space museum, and the centrepiece will be a Soviet "Buran" space shuttleski. Apparently the Russians built it because they feared the American Space Shuttle would be used to bomb Moscow (Soviet cold war justifications for military spending made American ones look supremely rational). Once installed it will be possible to walk through it. The non-secretary works on another of the numerous Pyrmont wharves being used for non-wharf activities, and was able to watch the Buran being unloaded from a barge. An Australian connection is that something believed to be a scale model of this vehicle, while still secret, was photographed by an Australian P-3C maritime patrol aircraft on the deck of a Soviet ship.

The dismembered John August will be speaking to staff at the particle physics group in Sydney University on Ritzian alternatives to special relativity.

John also reports that L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth will be made into a movie. The combined enthusiasm of the room for this concept was collected and stored in a tic-tac box. (OK, that may just be the non-secretary speaking.)

It was noted that Edwina Harvey's Relaxacon conflicts with the Futurians meeting for April. The consensus of the meeting was that Something Should Be Done About It, such as rescheduling our meeting, or holding an impromptu one at the relaxacon. There being no members present, however, the motion lapsed for want of ... well, anything.

• likes verbiage,
• felt it scanned better,
• thinks they're kind of cool, and
• could (the power).

"Mystery Cult", As Defined By the Secretary

An example from science fiction is the Institute, from Jack Vance's Demon Princes series. In one of the later books a character reaches the institute's inner circle, one rung down from the very top. He is told that the upper echelons of the institute see their role as one of balance, and hinder their subordinates as often as they aid them. The character immediately withdraws from institute activities and lives in rustic simplicity until the plot interferes.

Competing Definition of "Mystery Cult", Supported By Backsliding Recidivist Hyenas

A Definition of "Conspiracy"

Definitions of "Secret Society"

• Some people thought a secret society was anything that kept secrets. The problem with this is that almost any organisations keeps some secrets.
Another thread was that membership had to be secret, but this applies to any criminal or guerilla or resistance organisation.
Another definition was an organisation whose very existence was kept secret from (at least) non-members, although most bank robbery groups would qualify on this definition.
• The operating definition seemed to be anything from any of the three above that's kind of interesting.

Peter Eisler's Impromptu Attempt at Categorisation With Examples

• Rulers: Phillip E. High's Reality Machine
• Rebels: James Morrow's City of Truth
• Police: Nick Pollotta's Bureau 13
• Magic: Lawrence Watt-Evans' Rebirth of Magic
• Psychic: ...
• Supernatural: ...
• Elite: Sinister Barrier
• Criminals: ...

The Non-Secretary's More Leisured Attempt to Categorise Suggested Examples

• "We're evil, so we have to keep secret to avoid suppression"
  • The government organisation in the film La Femme Nikita (remade as The Assassin)
  • Phillip K. Dick's The Unteleported Man
  • The men in The Stepford Wives
  • Gordon Dickson's Way of the Pilgrim
  • John Carpenter's They Live
  • Daphne DuMaurier's The Blue Lenses
  • John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos
  • A. E. van Vogt's Slan
  • David Brin's Earth
  • The Secret (Magic?) Life of Jack Parsons (a rocket scientist, Los Angeles science fiction identity and collaborator with Alister Crowley in an attempt to manufacture an homunculus)
  • Chris Carter's The X-Files
  • Edge of Darkness
  • Phillip K. Dick's Roog, that only dogs can see
  • The Faculty
  • "Death to Humans" in Vernor Vinge's A Fire Upon the Deep
• "What we do wouldn't work if people knew we were here"
  • Isaac Asimov's Second Foundation and later parasitic works
  • The Michael Douglas movie The Game
  • Dark City
  • Poul Anderson's Time Patrol
• "It's not quite clear why we keep secret, but David Bofinger has an explanation"
• Chris Carter's The X-Files
• "We keep secrets to gain a tactical advantage"
  • Frank Herbert's Dune and later saprophytic works
  • Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat
  • Fritz Lieber's Conjure Wife
• "We don't keep secrets, it's just not easy to explain"
  • Gordon Dickson's Dorsai series (the Exotics)
• "The powers that be hate us, we have to be secretive to survive"
  • Greg Egan's Quarantine (the Reformed Ensemble)
• "We keep secrets to control our own members dangerous enthusiasm"
  • Jack Vance's Demon Princes series (the Institute)
• "The powers that be are evil, so we have to be secretive to resist"
  • The Matrix
  • Underground fandom in Fallen Angels by Niven, Pournelle and Flinn (rumour has it, including Flinn to avoid a legal requirement to write the next Niven and Pournelle book for a particular publisher)
  • Robert A. Heinlein's Revolt in 2100
  • Robert A. Heinlein's Sixth Column
  • A. E. van Vogt's The Weapon Shops of Isher
  • The Readers in Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451
  • Robert de Niro's rebel plumber in Brazil
• "We admit our existence, but keep secret our larger purpose"
  • Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity
  • Larry Niven's Amalgamated Regional Militia
• "We are strange, and people are xenophobic"
  • John Wyndham's The Chrysalids
  • John Wyndham's The Tomorrow People
  • Zenna Henderson's The People
  • Robert A. Heinlein's "Howards", e.g. from Methuselah's Children
  • Kornbluth and Pohl's The Marching Morons
  • John Varley's The Barbie Murders
• "We wouldn't want ... people to panic ... yeah, panic, that's it"
  • Majestic in Dark Skies
• "We aren't secretive, because people already believe we exist, we just don't give them proof"
  • The evil Jewish conspiracy in a Hugo Waldrop story (apparently written to illustrate that no subject was taboo)
• "The enemy are secretive, so we are too"
  • The juvenile books and TV series Animorphs
• "It's not clear why we are secretive"
  • Notional biblically-inspired organisations established by Jesus between the ages of seven and twenty-five
  • The reconstructing priests in the Babylon Five episode Sleeping in Light
  • Highlander Two
  • Highlander
• "For any reason you could name, one of the organisations in this book keeps secrets"
  • Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus. This is notable partly for its philosophy of "guerilla ontology", where the factual and fictional elements are interleaved, without any clue in the text as to which is which.
• "We like our privacy"
  • International Rescue in The Thunderbirds
• "It's not clear why we are secretive"
  • SHADO in UFO
• "Everybody else is a soulless zombie ... well, that's what we think"
  • Ian Watson's Hard Questions
• "Maybe it's become a bit of an obsession"
  • Section One in the TV series Nikita
• "We aren't secretive ... we just honestly don't know what we're doing ourselves"
  • The sewing circle in The Snowball Effect(?)
• Some real life secretive organisations
  • The Fabian society
  • The "thirty-six faceless men" of the Labor caucus
  • The Freemasons
  • The Carbonari of nineteenth century Italy
  • The Assassins
  • The Thule society in Nazi Germany
• "We are into magic and all that ... I guess it just comes naturally?"
  • Lawrence Watt-Evans' Rebirth of Magic
  • Gunn's The Magicians
  • Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum
  • A story in which all scientists are actually sorcerers
• Stories that I'm assured have something to do with the night's topic
  • Mack Reynolds' Trample an Empire Down
  • Various H. P Lovecraft stories
  • A Robert Bloch story made into the movie Four Rooms by Quentin Tarentino
  • A Randall Garrett story
  • Somebody's Entoverse
  • Various movies by Stephen King
  • Fritz Lieber's Those Who Awake
  • The Cabbalistic mathematicians from Pi

Unmember Peter Eisler produced a science fiction paperback that claimed to cover every theme in science fiction, and had an appendix that listed them. An attempt was then made to pluck the topic for the next meeting from it, but seems to have failed. Next month's topic is to be Fashion, Fad and Frippery in Science Fiction.

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