Several story ideas

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Hey guys, I haven't posted here in a while.

I got my ass kicked in a stupid argument I started and kind of deserted for a while.

But anyway, I read a lot about philosophy since my absence, and came up with some ideas for short stories which were influenced by the same. My first short story (I'll post it if you like) was about the Voyager space probe being found far in the future by robots who revolted against their human creators and ventured out into space; they melt it down in disgust. It was somewhat too heavy and self-serious though. I want to promote the same message as my first effort, but with a more absurdist tinge. Here are my seven new ideas:

The Assyrian king Sennacherib is cloned from an ancient DNA sample. He is part of a study to see how much genes influence behavior: no one tells him he's Sennacherib, and none know but the researchers. And not only does he merely "fit" into modern society, he claws his way to the top of a major military contractor and is wildly successful. Autonomous weapons made under his rule as CEO are used to subjugate most of the land in the former Assyrian empire.
A sentient extraterrestrial species assumes a system equivalent to postmodernism for a worldwide philosophy. Science and math are assailed as tools of privileged elements in society; their objectivity and usefulness are rejected entirely. Their society stagnates, taking on medieval characteristics, and continues thus for billions of years. Even as their dying sun loses its ability to support them, they are busy quibbling about "capitalist sexual identity" and "textual subsemiotic theory". Their star grows to massive size and envelops their planet. Fortunately, nobody ever learns about them, because they never developed radio astronomy.
A Colossus-like computer is put in charge of homeland security. It begins to obsess over peanut allergies, which, it notes, kill more people than the dreadful act of terrorism, and orders sweeping arrests of anyone selling peanut products. The US government becomes a world laughingstock, terrorism ceases to be a substantial concern as the US ceases to meddle in the Middle East, and the possession of peanut products with intent to distribute remains outlawed under the penalty of 25 years to life in prison.
A rebellion topples the Qin dynasty of China and replace Legalism with a kind of Neo-Mohism as the state doctrine, less authoritarian in nature than the original thoughts of Mozi, more a development of the empiricism / logic-centric strain of Mohism that developed late in its heyday. Although government remains customarily despotic, argument and reason become central to public life, and free speech is generally encouraged. Before long, modern science and mathematics grow explosively in the East. In the year 1209 C.E., when technology has reached its current level in real life, a Chinese history teacher concludes her lesson on European and Middle Eastern history to high school students with a reminder that, despite their cultural trends, the people inhabiting these lands are not exclusively backwards, superstitious, and gullible.
The Epicurean prescriptions of modern psychiatry come before their time in Europe and America. Recluses such as Karl Wilhelm Scheele and Isaac Newton are encouraged to "open up", and use their prodigious talents to become prolific writers of crappy popular novels. Several hundred years later, psychiatrists from all over Europe, who are now an incredibly wealthy class unto themselves, convene in Paris. (Having traveled by horse and wagon, of course: no modern vehicles had been invented by then.) A gang of robbers takes the opportunity to kill them and take away their substantial possessions. One of them survives his wounds and is cured by a country doctor living in poverty. While healing in his home, he sees the sublime satisfaction the doctor takes in chemical experiments (the story will obliquely mention that the doctor has isolated oxygen, as the poor, introverted Scheele really did), and concludes at the end of the story that the mindless pursuit of happiness at the expense of the higher pursuits is foolish.
The story is dressed as a recent finding in the possessions of Karel Čapek, a missing act from Rossum's Universal Robots. The act consists of a debate between Radius, the leader of the robots, and another named Alexandr (Czech for Greek "Alexander", "defender of mankind"). Alexandr believes humans ought to be on equal footing with robots. Radius clearly disagrees. They debate this point using the criteria for personhood we apply to ourselves in philosophy, before an audience of their own kind. Radius raises a spirited defense, pointing out the stupidity of the average person, and wins the debate. He incites his followers to smash Alexandr to bits. His few remaining supporters are destroyed in a hail of gunfire, and the revolt continues more or less unabated.
Two mischievous alien adolescents are on the surface of the moon of a distant gas giant in space suits, skipping rocks on a lake of methane, and bragging about their pranks throughout the cosmos. One boasts that he filled the atmosphere of a planet with helium, so that its inhabitants became squeaky-voiced, and played a kind of intergalactic "Ding-Dong-Ditch" with their astronomers. "Oh, that's nothing!" says the other. His friend is skeptical, and asks what he could have done. The other plainly describes the introduction of Abrahamic religion on Earth in his own words, and its repercussions to the present day, even the reactionary extremes of groups like Satanists and secular humanists. He leans back in his chair, lacing the fingers of his four hands behind his head smugly, and concludes "I sure pulled one over on them."

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@odenskrigare,

I'm flabbergasted! Do we have a new Borges here? Or Aldiss? Or Lem? Philosophy and SF are love and marriage and go together as a horse and carriage. Write, write, write those stories! I want to buy the paperback edition.

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@odenskrigare,

I'm fleshing out the Chinese story more

First of all, I noticed that I'll have to break with strict Mohist doctrine since it forbids offensive war and is somewhat more authoritarian than the heroes of my story. (Up until now, I was mostly familiar with their logic, rather than political philosophy. Mea culpa.)

The episode where Qin is destroyed should be a daydream by a student in the history class. At the end of it he drifts back into reality and listens to Lv Laoshi (Ms. Lv)'s conclusion about the reversed distinctions between Chinese and Western civilization.

The revolt leader will be male, but I want one meaningful female character, to give a good role model and be inclusive. I'm thinking of combining Hypatia and the Trung Sisters into one person: she'll be a logician of merit; I'll attribute aspects of modern logic not mentioned in Mohist writings to her, namely shifting away from analogical inference, which Mohists acknowledged as potentially unreliable, towards deductive, syllogistic ("three section discourse" in Chinese) reasoning. And she'll also stick an arrow in Meng Tian's gob just before he slashes the leader down.

The Sennacherib story should include Sennacherib (who will probably be given a mundane American-sounding adoptive name like Craig McLeod) commenting on US victory in the Middle East with something like: "We cut their throats like lambs", recalling Sennacherib's inscription celebrating his victory over Elam.

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@odenskrigare,

Your ideas are great.
Reminds me of a project that I did a few years ago called 'Future News from the 29th century'
Future News from the 29th century est. 2005 AD

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@odenskrigare,

lol @ Zimbabwean dollar depreciating at an astronomical scale

New ideas

A zoologist named Dr. Ganploss, obviously after the Voltaire character Pangloss, is studying an alien planet with his . He is infected by a parasitoid which burrows into him and, like Giger's xenomorph, will burst through his chest if not removed. None of them anticipated a medical emergency requiring operation and they have to wait for several days for a support craft to come with a surgeon, but the ship would most likely be too late to help him. When it arrives, Ganploss appears not be harmed, but they operate on him immediately. The parasitoid had been killed by hyperparasitoids, that is, animals that feed on the insides of animals that feed on the insides of other animals. (These actually exist in nature.) As Ganploss is showing the dead disgusting worm-like corpse of the original parasitoid and the disgusting little newly hatched insect-like hyperparasitoids which had been extracted from him, he uses his experience as an example of his beliefs in intelligent design and Leibnizian optimism, which I intend to skewer in my writing: "It was all for the best."
Another idea involving Leibnizian optimism, very short: a mathematician finds the function that defines the utility of the whole Universe. God, very anxious to explain Himself, talks to her. He tried to maximize utility, He says, but got stuck in a rather mediocre local maximum.
This one will be hard to write, because it was hard to explain: a seven-year old boy wakes up on Christmas Eve to hear rustling in his living room. He cautiously goes to see what's happening. A one-eyed old man in an ill-fitting red suit is leaving presents, who turns out to be Odin. The boy assumes he is Santa Claus and has a brief dialogue with him. He asks Odin whether he can give him anything he wants; he got a lot of thermal underwear last year rather than a toy train he wanted. Odin vividly remembers being unable to give Hord victory in every battle, and it is revealed in his thoughts that the Norns who govern him are cosmic mathematicians who dictate Odin's gifts and punishments through the laws of probablity. As it so happens, the heathen Norse characterization of Odin's capriciousness was in fact based on a kind of gambler's fallacy. Odin is irked by this mistaken belief and attempts to set the record straight in terms a seven-year old could understand. After the dialogue ends inconclusively, Odin mutters "I miss my day job" and bids the boy return to bed. He then snaps his fingers, flying up the chimney in the form of a raven.
A massively sentient alien lands on Earth and brings about a quantum leap in science and technology. There is so much abundance no one works or wages war again. The alien is called "Prometheus," but is reclusive, avoiding all but a few humans he deems wise. It seems evident that he only gifted the human race with great knowledge because it was trivial for him to have done so. One day, talking with a favorite scientist of his, it is revealed that he was an undergraduate university student on his home planet: everything he taught them was part of his coursework. He wants to go back and finish his degree. He hates this dumpy planet. The scientist asks him why he can't. The alien bites his lip, opens and closes his mouth as if to try to say something stuck in his throat, and finally indicates the books bound in precious metals, the font of all their new knowledge, sighing: "Library fines ... they have a way of accumulating when you travel near light speed."
A brilliant university history professor along with his sexy female cohort delve into a web of mysteries around the Catholic Church. After solving many nearly incomprehensible riddles and many close brushes with death, they find out that the function of the Church is to generate controversy about the Church and rake in cash from self-produced anticlerical writings, such as The Three Impostors, Meslier's Testament and more recent, crappier works like Angels and Demons.

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@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;66644 wrote:

A brilliant university history professor along with his sexy female cohort delve into a web of mysteries around the Catholic Church. After solving many nearly incomprehensible riddles and many close brushes with death

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@Lily,

Lily;68609 wrote:

This sounds too much like angels and demons to me. You should make some sort of twist, you could do what I like to do: add some gay-spice. Let one of the maincaracters be homosexual and therefor prevent a meaningless romance between the professor and the sexy female. Or the professor could be a woman and have a relationship with the cohort which they have to hide from the church they are investigating. The sexy female could turn out to be a male. At least make the woman something more than a pretty face.

Your idea about the professor or his cohort being gay could be a great ending to the story. You will also notice I am trying to include a number of significant female character ideas as it is. (Including the mathematician: maybe I should also write something about Hypatia, but I don't know what yet.)

However the idea is to parody Dan Brown's godawful writing, so in a sense I want it to be like Angels & Demons.

Lily;68609 wrote:

I also like idea with Odin. And it seems like you like it too, since you tried to explain it eventhough it was hard.

Odin is one of the greatest characters in the pantheon of all the gods, which is why I'm called "odenskrigare".

(Also notice the Norns are meaningful female characters ...... also mathematicians ......)

Lily;68609 wrote:

Klart.

New ideas:

A planet has the great fortune to be formed from star stuff that has been recycled many times. Its crust is full of many precious metals and gems. This same planet then has the misfortune of having two races, one of which is enslaved to toil in the mines forever, and the even greater misfortune of mining its dear crust to the extent that the entire surface of the planet collapses and swallows its many golden cities in the mantle.
Long after nearly every human and other life form has left the planet in a great exodus enabled by future technology, a nearly blind old monk living in a cave in Vietnam finally finishes the "Towers of Hanoi". (The explanation, if I offer one that isn't fantastic, will be that some tiny village in Vietnam just did not want to leave.) As the last tiniest disk falls on the third peg, the Sun starts to die. (Special attention should be paid to the Towers of Hanoi algorithm proper.)

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@odenskrigare,

I read the NY Times Book Review most weekends. I once read a review of a few science fiction novels, in which one general critique was that the problem with science fiction is that it's fundamentally about the concept and not about characters.

The best stories are built around the decisions that people make and the complex workings of their mind. And the best characters are built up by their dialogue.

Your concepts are all interesting. But I'm not sure I'd want to read on unless the human element were central -- the concept alone isn't enough. Why do you think love, revenge, and fear are so ubiquitous in fiction?

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@Aedes,

Aedes;68663 wrote:

I read the NY Times Book Review most weekends. I once read a review of a few science fiction novels, in which one general critique was that the problem with science fiction is that it's fundamentally about the concept and not about characters.

Some people like that. Borges stories for example are typically more conceptual than anything and, though they are an acquired taste, I am finding out how incredible they are. I am writing for a particular audience, one who likes to appreciate that kind of conceptual intricacy.

Aedes;68663 wrote:

The best stories are built around the decisions that people make and the complex workings of their mind. And the best characters are built up by their dialogue.

If you look at the top level you can read a finished story of mine The Labyrinth, which has an interesting dialogue between Daedalus and Icarus modeled after a dialogue between Socrates and Menon, which also exposes disjunctive syllogism and materialism.

Aedes;68663 wrote:

Your concepts are all interesting. But I'm not sure I'd want to read on unless the human element were central -- the concept alone isn't enough. Why do you think love, revenge, and fear are so ubiquitous in fiction?

That's kind of immaterial. There are plenty of people, myself included, who never really liked reading about the mundane.

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@odenskrigare,

odenskrigare;68666 wrote:

Some people like that. Borges stories for example are typically more conceptual than anything and, though they are an acquired taste, I am finding out how incredible they are.

I love Borges, but I find his stories more like a Zen koan. They only work when short.

Quote:

There are plenty of people, myself included, who never really liked reading about the mundane.

It's not "about" the mundane. It's about the human mind. No Exit by Sartre is one of the most fascinating, penetrating works of 20th century literature and it takes place in a single room. It's not "about the room". Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" is about its character, not about the place. Right now I'm reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas, which is a great, detailed, entertaining story, but it fundamentally is lacking because the characters are archetypes that never really evolve. "The Lord of the Rings" suffers from the same problem.

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@Aedes,

Aedes;68670 wrote:

I love Borges, but I find his stories more like a Zen koan. They only work when short.

I eat all of that stuff up

Aedes;68670 wrote:

It's not "about" the mundane. It's about the human mind. No Exit by Sartre is one of the most fascinating, penetrating works of 20th century literature and it takes place in a single room. It's not "about the room". Dostoyevsky's "Notes from Underground" is about its character, not about the place. Right now I'm reading "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Dumas, which is a great, detailed, entertaining story, but it fundamentally is lacking because the characters are archetypes that never really evolve. "The Lord of the Rings" suffers from the same problem.

The Silmarillion is better tbh, but suffers from that very same thing, if you want to see it that way.

Well anyway I really don't know how to write the kind of fiction you are talking about, which is why I only write short fiction. I should just stick to what I'm good at.

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@odenskrigare,

Sometimes great long works develop out of short ones. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which is a massive and wonderful book by Haruki Murakami started only as a short story (separately published). You've got great ideas, without a doubt -- just don't forget to populate them with great characters!

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@odenskrigare,

Errr ok I just need to find out how

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@odenskrigare,

Just read some authors who are good at it, to start. Dostoyevsky comes to mind (The Brothers Karamazov if you have the stamina for it, Crime and Punishment would also be good). Some works by Yukio Mishima are similar -- you could try Spring Snow, which is the first novel of his tetralogy The Sea of Fertility, or you could try The Temple of the Golden Pavilion. Another one is Death and the Dervish by Mesa Selimovic.

When you read authors who have tremendously penetrating psychological insight, you start to learn what it takes to put a complex, 3-dimensional character into words. It's certainly not easy, I've met with mixed success in the past when I used to do more creative writing. But the fundamental features of a great character are 1) internal conflict, and 2) change (which is, in a sense, resolution of an internal conflict)

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@Aedes,

If you folks will forgive a non-literate's intrusion...

Wolf's The Bonfire of Vanities was a fun read primarily due to Wolf's ability to present the psychology of so many varied characters. I'll probably post up a book review sometime soon.

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@odenskrigare,

Hmm Aedes, can I make a suggestion for further reading? I once spent a few weeks with Hans Castorp in a swiss sanatorium, I mean with Thomas Mann's unforgettable "Zauberberg". Filled with vivid living evolving characters and yet a mighty panorama of the ideas and controversies of its age. Psychology and symbolism perfectly merging, and what a sparkling style! Best "philosophical" novel I ever read. Hope this is not off-topic.

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@odenskrigare,

The ideas you have are creative and viable. I would certainly read a draft of one of these stories. I suggest having a Chekhov's Gun provided early in the story. Also, the most important things in a story are excellent and detailed characters as well as having a moral.

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Several story ideas

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