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ITT: Original Story Ideas

Started by Cramulus, May 11, 2009, 09:40:54 PM

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Cramulus

A group of people are working on a collaborative wiki project, and eventually realize that one of the contributors isn't even a real person. As it turns out, he's posting from beyonnnnd the graaaave

the book comes to a climax in a cyber-seance, where the heroes communicate with the dead guy via IRC. To lay him to rest, they must wage a wikipedia edit war on his behalf to make sure his life's work isn't trolled and vandalized.

Eater of Clowns

Quote from: Cain on July 13, 2009, 12:38:00 PM
Kettles boil quicker when you don't watch them.  An apple a day physically repels doctors...whether you want to see one or not!

I think thats an awesome premise actually.  Very Terry Pratchett-esque.

Slightly different idea in the same vein, a world where literally that which does not kill you only makes you stronger.  The entire world shifts from pain aversion to pain seeking behavior with accidental deaths skyrocketing from those trying to push their physical limits.  The survivors of such radical measures become virtually indestructible.  Governments regularly abuse their own soldiers within inches of their lives in an arms race based on superhuman combat.  Police forces need to likewise train their officers in order to combat gangs swelling with Herculean members.  "Non-lethal" methods of subduing criminals such as tazing and pepper spray are useless, as the dosage required to stop a veritable behemoth would kill any "average" human.  Our hero is a journalist investigating what brought this phenomenon about two generations ago, and stumbles upon a terrible truth.  He is hunted by private and national interests to silence his discovery, which includes how to reverse the shift.  He succeeds, only to bring society to the brink of collapse, every aspect of life having depended on our newfound strength.
Quote from: Pippa Twiddleton on December 22, 2012, 01:06:36 AM
EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 07, 2014, 01:18:23 AM
EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

Quote
the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

Kai

"could also see potential blockbusters where proselytizing alien armadas are used to explore our relationship with religious traditions and what happens when two immovable forces meet."

From a post on the Weird World blog speculating on the future effects of District 9 on alien portrayal.
If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Remington

Oh no... thought Alice as she watched the velociraptor pull itself out of the smoking ruins of the Time Machine, Not again.
Is it plugged in?

Rococo Modem Basilisk

Our universe suddenly transitions to operating not on physics, but on aristotlean logic. Ravens quickly become black holes, and anyone who changes their mind ceases to exist, since they are a contradiction in the unified and artificially divided 'now'.


I am not "full of hate" as if I were some passive container. I am a generator of hate, and my rage is a renewable resource, like sunshine.

AFK

It's 7 o'clock in the evening.  John Brown is just sitting down to do his calculus homework.  Suddenly, his desk starts to shake and vibrate.  Panning over, we see that his Texas Instruments graphing calculator is the force.  The shaking becomes more violent and is now affecting the whole house.  To John's astonishment, the calculator starts to unfold, and increase in size.  It is growing legs, and arms.  From his backpack, his compass emerges, undergoing a similar transformation accompanied by his ruler.  John looks up at what was his graphing calculator and asks: "Who...who are you?"

"I am Parabolous Prime!  And this...is a Sine of the Times!"

Coming in the Summer of 2010....Transformers 3: Rise of the Nerdobots!"
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Kai

If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water. --Loren Eisley, The Immense Journey

Her Royal Majesty's Chief of Insect Genitalia Dissection
Grand Visser of the Six Legged Class
Chanticleer of the Holometabola Clade Church, Diptera Parish

Cain

#67
Cram, you want me to sticky this in Literate Chaotic, for easy reference?

Edit: too late, already moved it.

Cain

From former British ambassador, Craig Murry:

QuoteCraig Murray, British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, stumbles across the fact that the British government is routinely receiving intelligence from torture, through the CIA. He knows that the CIA is flying people in to Uzbekistan to be tortured. He directly documents a number of false flag bombings and other devices designed to exaggerate the al-Qaida threat in Central Asia.

He dutifully reports all this back to his superiors in London. He is recalled, told that this is UK policy and he should shut up. Continuing his investigations in Tashkent, he is suddenly faced with eighteen serious disciplinary allegations. They include criminal allegations like selling visas for sex, and an accusation that he is an alcohlic.

He is told the allegations will be heard in secret and he is not allowed to tell anyone, not even to prepare a defence. He has a nervous breakdown. Downing St leaks details of the more lurid allegations to the tabloids but this backfires. Murray is known in media circles and his human rights work is respected. The accusations meet with widespread media derision, and Murray is acquitted on all counts.

Returning to Tashkent in triumph, he collapses after two days with multiple pulmonary emboli (blood clots in both lungs). He nearly dies and is in a coma for five days. There is never an explanation of the cause of so many blood clots, and doctors are suspicious. Unexpectedly he recovers, but is given six months to three years to live due to resulting pulmonary hypertension. He is dismissed as Ambassador when one of his telegrams on torture and intelligence is leaked to the Financial Times - who nonetheless do not publish the most damning bits.

Murray proves to have the extremely rare ability to regrow the arteries in his lungs, and starts to recover. He tries to make public the British government's complicity in torture, releasing documents on the internet and publishing Murder in Samarkand, which tells the above story.

Murray stands against Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Blackburn in the 2005 General Election. The BBC make a fly-on-the-wall documentary about Murray. Esther Oxford, the Assistant Director and cinematographer on the documentary, lives with Murray for four weeks to film it. After the election Oxford and her camera are even admitted to the operating theatre for Murray's heart surgery.

Murray becomes good friends with Oxford and presenter John Sweeney. But when the documentary is made, The Ambassador's Last Stand concentrates heavily on Murray's personal eccentricities and thus discounts his allegations of British government complicity in torture. The Murrays and Oxfords remain friends, however. Murray meets Esther's father, the virologist Professor John Oxford, and Murray's wife Nadira dances at Esther's wedding.

Murray gives evidence to the European Parliament on UK complicity in torture. Returning on the Eurostar, he sits with a Tory MEP, a descendant of T E Lawrence. The MEP shows Murray on the train Lawrence's original map of proposed boundaries for the Middle East.

In researching the possible dangers from avian flu, Prof Oxford exhumes a victim of the Spanish flu of 1919, who was buried in a lead coffin. The corpse is not just anybody - it is Sir Mark Sykes. Sykes is the diplomat who negotiated the infamous Sykes-Picot map, dividing the Middle East on colonial lines between British and French puppet regimes. This is done contrary to the hopes of Lawrence for a strong Arab nation, and behind the back of Woodrow Wilson. Sykes dies on the way home from the negotiations.

Six months after Sykes is exhumed, a global flu pandemic is first identified in Mexico.

All of the above is true.

The first half of the story, as contained in Murder in Samarkand, is the tale of a genuine government conspiracy to use torture, falsify intelligence and smear an innocent man to cover it up.

In the second half I conflate my tenuous connection with John Oxford, an interesting meeting on a train and the Sykes/Lawrence link, plus the timing of Sykes' exhumation and the outbreak of swine flu. I really don't believe those are any more than mild coincidences. But I can see inspiration for a novel in there if they were beefed up a bit.

Cain

"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R'lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them."
- Old Castro, the Call of Cthulhu

Astronomist Peter Armstrong has noticed something strange about the gravitational effects Betelguese is having on the local area of space around it.  While the star has been shrinking rapidly for a number of years, the events he is now seeing are inexplicable - until he recieves a mysterious message, and is nearly killed.

The stars will soon be right again.  Betelguese is a dying star, every astronomer knows that, but what they don't know is that when it dies, it will set into motion a terrible chain of events.  It is no coincidence that the three Great Pyramids are aligned to match with the stars of Orion's belt.  Or, as the Egyptians called the constellation back then, Osiris. Sirius, the dog star, was his wife, Isis, and the seasonal change of the stars represented the death of Osiris at the hands of Set, and his resurrection by Horus. 

But now the victory of Set is assured, written in the heavens.  The age of Horus will pass, and the Age of Set will ascend.  The stars will be right again.  Cultists on earth prepare, knowing they must time the rituals for when Betelguese's nova is apparent over the night sky of the earth.  The light, brighter than the moon, that would light up the night sky would serve as the liberating force, breaking the aeons old shackles that have prevented Them from once again ruling over the planet.

That is, unless Peter and his mysterious informant can stop them.

LMNO

Dan Brown can go fuck himself.



Although, since Betelguise is 640 light years away, it must have gone nova in 1369.

Cain

That was the part that was going to be Dan Browned.  Well, that and the possibility of Cthulhu rising out of the depths and eating Indonesia.

LMNO

I say go Quantum with it.  Use Bell's theorem, with the implication that information travels faster than light (perhaps even getting tachyons in the act), and then the Old Ones can respond to Betelguise's explosion immediately.

Cain

Well the idea was it was already exploded, but the equipment had only just been made to detect it had gone, in which case the main character might need to be some top guy at NASA or something.  The key event was going to be the sign of the supernova over the earth - the light passing through the solar system is the key to the rituals, what powers them to release the Old Ones from captivity.

LMNO

Ah... Gotcha.  Not bad.  I think with a couple of stretches, that would work.