Essays. Catscan Columns

The issues that enmeshed me in 1990 are not going to go away. I became involved as a writer and journalist, because I felt it was right. Having made that decision, I intend to stand by my commitment. I expect to stay involved in these issues, in this debate, for the rest of my life. These are timeless issues: civil rights, knowledge, power, freedom and privacy, the necessary steps that a civilized society must take to protect itself from criminals. There is no finality in politics; it creates itself anew, it must be dealt with every day.

The future is a dark road and our speed is headlong. I didn't ask for power or responsibility. I'm a science fiction writer, I only wanted to play with Big Ideas in my cheerfully lunatic sandbox. What little benefit I myself can contribute to society would likely be best employed in writing better SF novels. I intend to write those better novels, if I can. But in the meantime I seem to have accumulated a few odd shreds of influence. It's a very minor kind of power, and doubtless more than I deserve; but power without responsibility is a monstrous thing.

In writing HACKER CRACKDOWN, I tried to describe the truth as other people saw it. I see it too, with my own eyes, but I can't yet pretend to understand what I'm seeing. The best I can do, it seems to me, is to try to approach the situation as an open-minded person of goodwill. I therefore offer the following final set of principles, which I hope will guide me in the days to come.

I'll listen to anybody, and I'll try to imagine myself in their situation.

I'll assume goodwill on the part of others until they fully earn my distrust.

I won't cherish grudges. I'll forgive those who change their minds and actions, just as I reserve the right to change my own mind and actions.

I'll look hard for the disadvantages to others, in the things that give me advantage. I won't assume that the way I live today is the natural order of the universe, just because I happen to be benefiting from it at the moment.

And while I don't plan to give up making money from my ethically dubious cyberpunk activities, I hope to temper my impropriety by giving more work away for no money at all.

CATSCAN 11 "Sneaking For Jesus 2001"

Conspiracy fiction. I've come across a pair of especially remarkable works in this odd subgenre lately.

Paul Di Filippo's treatment of the conspiracy subgenre, " My Brain Feels Like A Bomb" in SF EYE 8, collected some fine, colorful specimens. Di Filippo theorizes that the conspiracy subgenre, anchored at its high end by GRAVITY'S RAINBOW and FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM and at its low end by quite a lot of cheesy sci-fi and gooofy spy thrillers, is unique to the twentieth-century, and bred by our modern (postmodern?) inability to make sense of an overwhelming flow of high-velocity information.

This may be true. I'm not inclined to challenge that sociological assessment, and can even offer some backup evidence. Where is that postmodern flow of information more intense, and less basically comprehensible, than in the world of computing? Thus is bred the interesting sub-subgenre of computer paranoia fiction -- hacker conspiracy! I now propose to examine two such works: the movie (and book) SNEAKERS, and the novel (and prophesy?) THE ILLUMINATI.

Let's take the second item first, as it's much the more remarkable of the two. The ILLUMINATI in question today has nothing to do with the Robert Anton Wilson ILLUMINATI series; in fact, its weltanschauung is utterly at odds with Wilson's books. Wilson's paranoid yarn is basically a long, rambling, crypto-erudite hipster rap-session, but Larry Burkett's ILLUMINATI is a fictional work of evangelical Christian exegesis, in which lesbians, leftists, dope addicts and other tools of Satan establish a gigantic government computer network in the year 2001, with which to exterminate all Southern Baptists.

I recommend this novel highly. Larry Burkett's ILLUMINATI has already sold some 100,000 copies through Christian bookstores, and it seems to me to have tremendous crossover potential for hundreds of chuckling cyberpunk cynics. To my eye it's a lot more mind-blowing than any of Wilson's books.

The Robert Anton Wilson oeuvre is perenially in print in New Age bookstores, and quite well known in the SF category racks. Therefore the CATSCAN reader may already be aware that the so-called "Illuminati" were a freethinking secret society purportedly founded in the 1770s, who had something to do with Freemasonry and were opposed to established Church authority in Europe.

So far, so good. It's not surprising that a with-it hipster dude like R.A. Wilson would use the historical Illuminati as a head-trip springboard to mock All Things Establishment. The far more surprising matter is that some evangelical Christians, such as the Reverend Pat Robertson, not only take the 217-year-old and extremely dead Illuminati seriously, but are also currently dominating the social agenda of the Republican Party. Reverend Robertson's latest "non-fiction" tome, THE NEW WORLD ORDER, is chock-a-block with straightfaced and utterly paranoiac Illuminati-under-the-bed terrormongering. Robertson publicly credits the "satanic" Illuminati conspiracy with direct authorship of the French Revolution and the Bolshevik uprising, as well as sponsorship of the Trilateral Commission and the comsymp "Eastern Establishment" generally. The good Reverend also expresses the gravest possible reservations about the occult Masonic insignia on the back of the one-dollar bill.

George Bush himself, best-known public advocate of a "New World Order," is cast under suspicion in Robertson's work as an Illuminati tool, and yet Bush gave his accuser prime-time TV in his party's National Convention. One can only marvel!

As a comparative reality-check, try and imagine Robert Anton Wilson delivering his Hail Eris rap at a Democratic Party Convention (while the audience, nodding on national television, listens in sober respect and acts really glad to be clued-in). Odd enough for you? Now imagine ontological anarchists re-writing the Democratic Party platform on abortion, sexual behavior, and federal sponsorship of the arts.

Larry Burkett has taken this way-out sectarian extremist theo-gibberish and made it into a techno-thriller! The result is a true mutant among novels. How many science fiction novels begin with a disclaimer like this one?

"My biggest concern in writing a novel is that someone may read too much into it. Obviously, I tried to use as realistic a scenario as possible in the story. But it is purely fictional, including the characters, events, and timing. It should not be assumed that it is prophetic in any regard. As best I know, I have a gift for teaching, a talent for writing, and no prophetic abilities beyond that of any other Christian."

I was so impressed by this remarkable disclaimer of Mr Burkett's that I tracked down his address (using the CompuServe computer network) and I succeeded in interviewing him by phone for this column. I learned that Mr Burkett has received some six thousand letters about his novel ILLUMINATI from eager readers, many of them previously aware of the Illuminati menace and eager to learn yet more. And yes, many of those readers do believe that the Mr. Burkett novel is an inspired prophecy, despite his disclaimer, and they demand his advice on how to shelter themselves from the secret masters of the coming Satanic computer-cataclysm.

Even more remarkably, a dozen correspondents claimed to have once been Illuminati themselves, and they congratulated Mr. Burkett on his insights into their conspiracy! Mr. Burkett described this last category as featuring "three or four letters that were fairly lucid."