Unique Sci-Fi. What Would You Like to See?

[Taft]

I'm working on coming up with ideas for a novel. Like most writers, I want my next book to be unique. So many people write the same-old things (examples: *"First Contact" novels...I don't care if I never read another one again. *Matrix-like cyberpunk books. How many more of these can we stand?).

What kind of sci-fi books/stories are you sick of?

Also, are there any things you haven't yet seen that you'd like to see? Any avenues of sci-fi that you feel haven't been explored, or are under explored?

 

[Paige Turner]

More cowbell!

Actually, I like a good Apocalypse, but maybe with a fresh up-beat take. Apocalypso, if you will.

 

[weaveworld]

A good Apocalypse always goes well for me.

Preferably with mutants who haven't been able to get death cloaks
(have you seen the glittery number, mutant number 6 wears in 'The Omega Man')

But then again, who says mutant and fashion can't mix!

 

[BookStop]

I am a sucker for time travel. Maybe try to prevent an apocolypse via time travel. Ok, I know it's been done, but there have to be twists to the story yet discovered.

Look at Cowboy Feng's Space Bar and Grille. Steven Brust found an interesting and entertaining twist.

 

[cskendrick]

It's the nature of the sci-fi/fantasy beast to deal in legends, and that means dealing with epic-scale themes.

A lot of the basic patents are out there -- time travel, genetics, before/during/after apocalypse, alien invasion, alternate history, dimension travel, hyperspace, no-hyperspace, plague, new life form evolves/is made and challenges Humanity for dominance, religion based on new science, colonization of strange environments (oceans, worlds, space itself, other dimensions, other eras).

However, there's always room for a money-maker, a better timeship, or hantavirus, or world-eating form of gray goo.

At the end of the day, every story is about people -- not always humans, but they're about people of some sort, with conflict, challenges, obstacles, antagonists, demands they change, resistance to change, and ultimately undergoing some sort of token transformation in order to maximize their chance of victory...and usually the story ends well for somebody, if not always for the protagonist.

There's plenty of adventure left in this milieu for an army of writers, capable of making a good story about a robot and his pet PC and how the two of them flee servitude among Humanity only to find that the entire rest of the galaxy has a genocidal attitude toward machine intelligence.

Oh, boy...what to do.

You did ask for an odd idea.

 

[edott]

More cowbell!

Actually, I like a good Apocalypse, but maybe with a fresh up-beat take. Apocalypso, if you will.

Apocalypso, LOL you are killing me that is too funny.

 

[heron]

how about sci-fi from a health and safety officials point of view.
"no,no,no young man i dont care if you are an all powerfull jedi you are not fighting over that lava pit"

 

[Taft]

There's plenty of adventure left in this milieu for an army of writers, capable of making a good story about a robot and his pet PC and how the two of them flee servitude among Humanity only to find that the entire rest of the galaxy has a genocidal attitude toward machine intelligence.

I like it!

 

[weaveworld]

A story where Dysons rule the world with a iron suction pipe.



Die dust bunnies die!!!!

 

[cskendrick]

Crazy Ideas A-Go-Go

1. The merchant species that drops by Earth, peddling its wares, yet has no concept of the time value of money.
2. There is long-lost Atlantean civilization, Human, and an exploration is launched to find it...or whatever zapped it.
3. An intergalactic explorer ship does that crazy roundtrip-'round-the-cosmos thing, only it takes the better part of a billion years, and the adventurers find that virtually every form of life around is sentient or partly so, as an adaptation to surviving the presence of long-extinct Man...but they throw a huge "Welcome Home, Homo sapiens!" party, so it's all good.
4. Resurrection of the dead (in new and genetically top-shelf bodies!) appears as a spontaneous mutation. For some reason, secular and religious leaders are discomfited by the development.
5. We learn that head lice are in fact the dominant species of life on Earth, and that most of the really strange things that people do can be understood, if you just recognize the simple truth that lice rule.

 

[alicebandassassin]

lets fase it dont belive the end of the world stuff anymore they always manage to avoid it some how i do like the idea of diverse realty though and how small thing can change people so mutch

 

[Thadlerian]

I'd love to see some more profoundly innovative political themes.

Example: A poor society prospers by letting rich people from far-future (boring) utopias hire scores of the people to enact the ideologies of the rich people's choosing. Like, two bored young men could hire a nation each, making one of them communist and one theocratic, and see how it works out, with revolutions, wars, propaganda, etc. Perhaps they themselves could participate as leaders, just for fun. Entertainment is the keyword here.

 

[cskendrick]

Part of something I'm working on is the discovery (in the story world) that there are alternative universes -- composed exclusively of virtual particles and resonances, and set exclusively in the past, and depending on how improbable they are in comparison to the baseline reality (ours), that's what it costs to obtain information from them.

And information is the name of the game. An entire civilization rises, based on the use of 'sideband' to speed up computer research, support a wide variety of virtual entertainments, occupations and solutions to everyday problems. All you have to do is go a few Planck moments back and to the side, do so multiple times, and you're parallel-testing reality.

It's such a common practice, people automatically conduct their interpersonal relations using sideband (Can I trust him/her? Is he/she the one? is s/he lying? Should I get on that airplane, or not?)

It's also used to prevent and investigate crimes. (yeah, yeah. Precrime. "Minority Report." I know.

But the criminals have access to the exact same technology. They can model out what the cops are doing, what they're watching, what's most likely to get the loot and make the getaway.

And everybody's more or less cool with the situation, because everyone figures that whatever happens in sideband has no effect on "real" reality.

After all, that's what the government's been telling people for the past hundred years.

It just happens to be wrong. All the 'optimizing' of reality for those who have access comes at an economic cost (for lack of better terms, in 'luck') to those who do not...and after a century of this practice, the well's starting to run dry even for the elites.

Forget "Peak Oil". Try "Peak Luck".

 

[kyektulu]

Cskendrick, I think that is a good idea you have there.

 

[Milk]

I have a few ideas just off the top of my head of things I would like to see more of, or at all.

1. More futuristic Science Fiction that has no alien life whatsoever. We travel to the stars and theres no other life but humans... Red Dwarf had this which I thought was rather brilliant. A future --far future that only has us, or one in which Humans are the first intelligent race ever.

2.A government ruled by a Medical-ocracy.

A future where in which medicine can fix just about anything to the point of people being near immortal, but its extremely pricey.

The entire economy and government is set up around health coverage.
'Full coverage' means godlike and immortal... No coverage is resinged to slave status--wastelands disease etc etc.

Health insurance providers and pharmacuetical companies are the governing body.


Hey I live in the USA-- We have no public health care, medicine and coverage is obscenely expensive here so I see this trend getting worse. Well what if it became a totalitarian medical ruled nation/world-- but doctors could fix anything? This would give them obscene power.

All very similiar to some of the ideas from Gateway Series Frederick Pohl used but expanded further.




3.
Heres another idea I would like to see put into a book.

A futuristic Sci Fi book where the very concept of outer space is controversial to the society it describes. A future where the general population doesnt believe that anything exists in outer space. That outer space exists at all, let alone travel there.. because there is only 'the bible" and other planets arent mentioned in the bible therefore they dont exist. But while all this happens other technologies ( non space travel propulsion ones) continue to improve (Christian approved technology of course) . Till one day a scientist creates some method for space travel by accident while working on something unrelated-- he makes a trip to outer space by himself in some vehicle-- and then returns to spend a considerable effort convincing others to go with him on a journey to the stars. Then he brings back proof and decides that humanity was stunted somehow and that humans' goal should have been expanding into space all along, this of course brings genocide and the destruction of the entire human species from all the religous wars that follow. argueing over the idea of outer space and what that means.... etc etc..


4. A futuristic society where overpopuation is encouraged. Our protagonist is the only person on the planet who doesnt want 2 dozen children. A future where there is no technology that doesnt relate to maternity. To the point where all material on the planet must be converted into more people... Like a hollowed out swizcheese ball world of masses and masses of people who's main goal in life is to produce as many children as possible. No one on the planet is interested in anything else except making babies, lots of them,( except our hero of course). Not for some darker purpose like exporting people offworld to dinner plates, but simply because thats all people care about in this setting-- having more kids-- making more people. oh and there is no space travel, there is only the Earth getting more crowded.

 

[Tau Zero]

I've always thought this would be good idea for a writer. Humans make it to the stars and join a galaxy teeming with life. But no being in the galaxy is bigger, badder, or tougher than humans. I mean we are the extreme of life forms; the heavy worlders; the toughest sons of bitches to walk any planet. My 5 foot tall 87 pound delicate flower of a daughter could, in hand to hand combat, demolish any alien there is with ease. What would it do to our society to know that we're the ass-kickers of the galaxy. Space would be a haven for people with tiny egos! And the galaxy rushes to develop some weapon that can stop us. Stopping a human is pretty easy, but were not going to tell them that!

 

[Cobolt]

Another idea would be a story based on humanity in the far distant future travelling far and wide and interacting with other humans, ones that have adapted to their environment, ie. an ocean planet with aquahumans, a fire planet where their skin is of rock or scales but definetly human.