N.I.C.E.

From Zeugma

N.I.C.E [an acronym standing for the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments] is the name of an organization in C.S. Lewis' That Hideous Strength first mentioned in section 4 of the first chapter, "Sale of College Property."  The organization has a plot to take over the world by building a factory and reshaping nature, much like in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. -SM

Members of N.I.C.E

• The Fairy: AKA Miss Hardcastle. Sadistic torturer who  is used to interrogate people when necessary.
  
• The Head: aka Francois Alcasan. Literally, the head of a scientist that was preserved after his execution and kept alive thanks to modern technologies.
  
• The Deputy Director: aka John Wither who is the real leader of N.I.C.E.
• Feverstone: Responsible for Luring Mark into the clutches of the evil N.I.C.E clan with his political powers of persuasion.
  
• Frost: Wither's assistant who is in the know about the macrobes unlike most other members.
  
• Filostrato: Scientist that wants to break the human dependence on anything organic. Keeps The Head alive.
  
• Jules: Fake Leader set in place in order to be manipulated. Doubles as a writer for his other job.
  
• The Mad Person: AKA Reverend Straik, a man emotionally scarred by the death of his daughter sent to make contact with the macrobes. (R.E.B)

 

==Real Life Versions of the N.I.C.E.==

• The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is an independent organization based in England (hmm, isn't That Hideous Strength set in England?) "responsible for providing national guidance on the promotion of good health and the treatment of ill health" (from their official <a href="http://www.nice.org.uk/">website</a>).
• Keeping with our theme of technology, NICE systems is "the leading supporter of Insight from Interactions solutions and value-added services, powered by advanced analytics of unstructured multimedia content-from telephony, web, radio and video communications" (from their official <a href="http://www.nice.com/">website</a>).  That's alot of technical mumbo-jumbo, but essentially they are a company, with corporate offices all over the world, that ensure safety and security for organizations in the enterprise and security markets (such as American Express, T-Mobile, JP Morgan, Federal Express). 
• Also keeping in tune with our theme of technology, <a href="http://nice.sourceforge.net/">NICE</a> programming language is a new computer programming language that "extends the ideas behind object orientation in order to better support modular programming and static-type safety.  It also incorporates features from functional programming, and puts into practice state-of-the-art results from academic research"          
• New Immigrant Community Empowerment (<a href="http://www.nynice.org/home.html">NICE</a>) is a "non-profit organization that uses organization and public education to ensure that new immigrants are active, informed, and influential in civic, governmental and public affairs.  Central to NICE's mission is challenging the access gap between recent immigrant communities and government, seeking systematic solutions to improving immigrant's voting rights, full language access, health care, and workplace protections under local, state and federal laws" that is based out of New York.     -M.D.