This review is part of a collection written for the Futurian Society of Sydney, other Futurian-related stuff can be found at my page for such things, other non-Futurian related stuff can be found at my home page.

Eighty-Second Meeting of the Martian Academy for the Advancement of Terrestrial and Lunar Studies

My lords, ladies and apicals, glorious leader posnitch, members and fellows of the Martian Academy for the Advancement of Terrestrial and Lunar Studies: I thank you from the very core of my spiracles for the opportunity to report to you on this remarkable find. Can you perceive me from up the back, archacademic Grilnaz? It appears not ...good, I shall proceed then. As an incidental opening remark I shall mention that archacademic Grilnaz's inferior quasi-wife is a demon on the mating sands.

The artefact was recovered by my second terrestrial expedition from a residential unit on the eastern coast of the fourth-largest land mass isolate. It consists of a long thin strip of metallised polymer, wound onto rotating spindles and enclosed in a polymeric casing for protection from the harsh terrestrial environment. A serial number ``TDK'' suggests that many other artefacts of this type probably exist, and will undoubtedly be found once adequate funding for a third expedition is forthcoming from the academy.

The metallic coating was intended to record information, representative of the audible form of one of the languages used by the native sophonts of Earth. The metal has, of course, been oxidised by the extreme heat and fiercely corrosive atmosphere of Earth, but retains sufficient residual magnetism to permit the sounds to be replicated. Several humans here at the academy, captured during our first expedition two years ago and subsequently fitted with docilator implants, are familiar with more recent dialects of this language and memory RNA extracted by the brain homogenising process was ingested by one of my assistants to produce a translation.

This makes it clear that the sound recording is intended to be only part of a record of a meeting. The other components were recorded in the script form of the language on sheets of a material derived from plant fibres. Unfortunately these sheets all went missing in the home of the secretary of the meeting, and must be considered lost. The lost information includes the names of those present. Also, recording was, through the stupidity of the meeting secretary, not initiated until midway through the meeting.

Despite these limitations this document constitutes an important contribution to our understanding of this vanished culture, and justifies enormous amounts of funding. Here, then, are words spoken by Earthling bipeds of the late classical period.


Meeting of the Sydney Futurians: 19th February 1999.

Someone (Kevin Dillon?) reported that Robert E. Howard made statements that suggested he had been possessed by a spirit, that forced him to write Conan stories. After a great deal of occult study, the spirit was identified as ``the desire to be rich'', apparently the root of all evil and a lousy author. Analogy was made with the particles of inspiration described by Terry Pratchett, normally seen carrying great inspirations to lousy writers, but perhaps in this case carrying a lousy inspiration to a good writer. Something similar may explain Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.

Jamie Lee Curtis is in a movie called Virus, based on a comic book, directed by John Bruno (who did the ?). James Cameron "had an interest" but foolishly decided to do Titanic instead.

Memoires of a Geisha has fallen through, so Steven Spielberg's next project may be Phillip K. Dick's Minority Report. This is about idiot savant precognitives working for the police in the future. William Tenn apparently has a story about the reverse of this: you register your intention to commit a crime, then get punished for it, then commit the crime. Lewis Carroll did something similar in Alice in Wonderland. Robert Silverberg had a preventative version in Up the Line.

Tom Cruise sued some people for saying that he was *** NO CARRIER ***

Damien Broderick has a book out about immortality.

The latest One Nation advertisements apparently resemble the propaganda from Starship Troopers. It's not clear whether this is a reference to squashing cockroaches and claiming to be ``doing one's bit'', or whether One Nation actually believes that immigrants are farted out of enormous insectoids. Clarification to follow.

SETI think they've found some interesting things, which aren't aliens, but they are interesting, but not aliens, but they can't tell us what they are, not that they are aliens, and not that they are covering anything up, but they aren't aliens, something else entirely.

The Festival of Science Fiction for Secondary Students and adults happened at the Sydney Observatory and the Powerhouse Museum. This all happened in January and we missed it because nobody knew it was going to happen.

The Valhalla is in its final throes, alas. One of the final movies is The Princess Bride, apparently there is a sequel in preparation called Buttercup's Baby.

It has been suggested that there are still active volcanos on Mars. This might provide a source of water for future colonies.

The solid rocket boosters on the space shuttle are recoverable, but every now and then NASA loses one. There's a particular gadget on the booster, that is very expensive to produce especially since the production line has been shut down. NASA is now running short of the these gadgets, and has asked a museum, to which they gave one, to return it. The museum was quite surprised to be told that they had flight-capable hardware.

Someone tried to explain about Kennewick Man. The conversation broke down in arguments about how to pronounce ``Urumqi'', but apparently he's an unusually tall European Caucasian found in the Tarim basin, having died there quite a few millennia ago.

Yet another person believes they have found the universe's missing mass.

The British are reluctant to put nasty stuff into TV show names. For instance Buffy (vice Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and Teenage Mutant Turtles.

New Zealand is considering giving human rights to chimpanzees. This is easy for them because there is no experimentation on apes in New Zealand. The sheep will not be enjoying similar protection, nor will the Rugby Union team. There was some discussion of whether "poor people" should have similar rights.

One of those human rights appears to be AIDS, which has now been definitely traced to the lowland chimpanzee, pan troglodytes troglodytes. This is a bit of a change from earlier beliefs that it came from monkeys. Pan trog trog is quite rare and may become extinct in the wild as a result of habitat destruction and hunting. The hunting (or, rather, the field-dressing afterwards) is the likely method by which AIDS reached humans.

Some horrible figures were quoted for AIDS in East Africa. Mortality due to AIDS may approach mortality due to all other sources by 2010.

Boeing is testing the Airborne Tactical Laser, a cut-down version for Chinook helicopters of the Airborne Laser being developed for a 747. This is a "whacking great" chemical oxygen iodine laser, the aim is to get the weight down to half a ton.

NASA is spending $600K on an anti-gravity drive based on spinning superconductors. The inventor claimed to have reduced the weight of an object by 2%. We suggest a diet instead. NASA's tentative conclusion: it doesn't work. They're going to keep trying, though. Well, I suppose it keeps them off the streets.

New three-dimensional display system involving a holographic lenticular screen, and no silly glasses. It only works over a 15 degree angle, which isn't good enough for movies or even TV but is pretty good for a computer monitor.

David Bofinger pointed out a document on how Jerry Pournelle got thrown off the ARPANET. It's something of an axing of him by those involved in making the decision, anyone who knows of a document putting Jerry's side, I'd be grateful if you would mail me.

NASA is considering sending an aeroplane to Mars. The air on Mars is about 1% that of Earth, another reason it is hard to fly in is because the speed of sound is quite low (because it's cold). So if you use a propeller it can't move too fast or it goes supersonic and becomes inefficient.

Cherries contain a pain-killer: about twenty cherries (not specified whether John West or rejects) are as effective as one aspirin. In fact the chemical in cherries is rather better than aspirin.

A new drug has been developed to replace Viagra. It has the advantage of fewer side effects. (For instance, it doesn't affect your sex life?) Apparently it's a nasal spray, so Pinocchio may have been onto something.

After a lot of discussion, somebody vaguely recollected the theme for the night. There was an argument about the Tunguska event, and a discussion of the nature of truth. Some rather tasteless and blasphemous remarks were made concerning the Great Green Arkelsiezure.

The sun doesn't generate bursts of gamma rays that destroy all life on earth.

Perhaps this statement needs more explanation. Most stars of Sol's general type do generate such bursts. The fact that the sun is very unusual in being so stable is perhaps a partial answer to the Fermi paradox (see my bitter comments on Frank Drake's lecture).


Saturn and the Saturnian System in Science Fiction


At this point the primitive recording device ran out, the remainder of the meeting has been lost. This record stands as a final monument to a culture simultaneously fascinating, vital to our understanding of terrestrial history and amenable to investigation on a very reasonable budget.

I thank you for your attendance at my symposium. In particular, thanks to Archacademic Grilnaz, for controlling the unfortunate flatulence problem evident from these, his confidential medical records.


Annex

The preceding document, it will be obvious, dates from the middle decadent period of the Martian civilisation. It appears no third expedition was sent, or if it was no records from it survive. The records above languished in the academy's vaults through the Martian collapse, and were not disturbed during the Jovian annexation. They were eventually recovered several teraseconds down the line by chronoargonautics group six, who filed it on their return as routine.

The importance of this find was not recognised until much later (to the extent that statement has meaning) when the techniques for paratemporal probability integration were perfected. A study by the PPI group in worldline Earth/RomanEmpireNeverFell/61990 concluded that the documents had in fact been critical to the timestream. CG-9 was tasked with recovering the paper version of the minutes, reuniting it with the magnetic medium, and handing it to the incompetent secretary so it could be published.

CG-9's entry point was ten megaseconds down the line of nominal, but the operation was conducted regardless. This inaccuracy was defended by CG-9 as being "at least the right local year ... just" and "close enough for government work". On return to headquarters in 61990 they found that the entire PPI group had been taken away for involuntary psychotherapy, and chose not to attract undue attention to themselves. All members of CG-9 were erased from actual and potential history during the great butterfly squashing and now definitely never existed.

The description below was written by the secretary as an effort to include the recovered material without needing to actually rewrite. We express no opinion on its importance or the sanity of the PPI agents who thought it vital.


Present were:

The regular room wasn't open, and our club criminal hadn't brought his lockpicks. So the Futurians moved into the room next door. This left us lined up in rows, and occasionally talking to the back of each other's heads.

Carole Knight discussed a Sydney Morning Herald article "Jung at Heart". This took us on to discussion of Joseph Campbell, Vogeler's "Heroic Journey" model of plotting, and the theory that Frank Herbert's Dune concerns the dynastic rivalry of the Habsburgs and Hohenzollerns. Unfortunately none of the conclusions made it to paper.

Brian Walls reported that Dick's story Minority Report will be made into a movie by Spielberg.

Ian Woolf asked if anyone had heard about an error in SETI that had led to an astronomical discovery. David Bofinger suggested Tesla's discovery of whistlers, but Ian was thinking of something recent. Ian went on to say that SETI was looking for lasers.

David Bofinger said that he thought the surprising lack of gamma-ray bursts from the sun was a part of the solution to the Fermi paradox. (Most stars zap all life on the planetary surface regularly, preventing intelligence from arising. Our sun is unusual in this respect.)


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