ITT: Original Story Ideas

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

Don't have a story to go with this, but what if people's souls were depicted in story appearing as books dealing with translation between chinese and english, in a parody of the Chinese Room thought experiment.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

In the year 1350, aliens land in South America and for about a hundred years the americas are the site of a trading post and open port for a wide variety of highly advanced extraterrestrial civilizations, most of whom hate or distrust each other. Despite attempts to limit the amount of technology and science absorbed by the humans through this exchange of cultures, human indigenous americans manage to obtain alien weapons, transportation mechanisms, and advanced medical techniques. In 1450, without much warning, the aliens all leave: political situations on their home planets make the use of earth as a trading post untenable. In 1480, the IncoAztech Empire colonizes europe and enslaves much of the population. The islamic scholars of north africa make a plea to the caliphate: save our brothers who are performing cultural exchange with the european christian heathens by forming a pan-african space program with stolen native american technology in order to contact some of the alien races that were formerly using earth as a trading post.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

An extended interview with former members of japanese biker gangs, wherein they re-tell stories of their youth. Over time, the stories get stranger and stranger, initially in ways that westerners could just attribute to "crazy japan" -- terms in european languages that were appropriated into slang based on absurd mistranslations, custom seat-backs that are so tall that they can brush the undersides of bridges if driven straight-on. Slowly, the stories get increasingly surreal, and eventually, entirely supernatural. A former gang boss talks about the time he saw an exact duplicate of himself wearing a rival gang's jacket, and fought his doppelganger to the death before stealing the jacket and creating an alliance between the gangs. One night when a number of affiliated groups rode together only to become lost, finding themselves in a town seemingly identical to the one they just left but with no people, only a multitude of cats staring at them impassively from every surface. Eventually, one of them explains that the subculture owes its longevity to annual human sacrifices of junior members to tengu, who consumed the intestines of these initiates in exchange for magical protection of members from the police. The interviewer explains that, during the interview, the people he was interviewing seemed to grow smaller and smaller. At the end of the interview, he finds that everything in the room, with the exception of himself and the walls and ceiling, has shrunk to approximately one fifth its original scale. The tiny former yakuza chuckle menacingly as he tries to squeeze himself out of the building through the now tiny door, only for him to find himself surrounded by cats, sitting on all surrounding surfaces, staring impassively at him. He gets into his car and races into the night, only to wake up the next morning, parked, on the breakdown lane of a highway on a completely different island.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A scientist developing an AI robot isn't worried about the possibility of his creation turning on him or going on a rampage. To the contrary he's counting on it. The core emotional drive of this artificial intelligence is designed to be a desire to serve and obey and it's meant to stay that way no matter what other development the intelligence experiences. The final test of this is, after a period of training, socilization, and testing, to order the android to explosively self destruct and destroy itself, it's creator/master, and several bystanders.


ANOTHER IDEA:
The Chrome Gunman, a superhero whose power is that his body is made entirely out of guns. His origin story is kind of a mix of the Tin Man and the chick from Grindhouse, where the guns have been added after accidents in lieu of prostetic limbs until eventually his entire body is replaced.

[minuspace]

Saw a rendition of the brain-synch trope recently.  Team develops tech to read brain-waves.  Tech starts turning into surveillance device (thought-crimes) by military involvement.  From passive control, technology reversal continues toward active thought manipulation:  instead of for reading thoughts, the device is used to transmit thoughts into the subject's mind, being actively controlled like a puppet.  They have one subject shoot their own dog, or a sibling etc., for proof of concept.  Because the surveillance aspect is already implemented for all members of research team, it becomes impossible to stop the tech being deployed, as every attempt at sabotage is subverted at the very moment of conception.  So hero goes off to study with Buddhist monks so he can clear his mind and evade thought-monitoring security measures that prevent him from shutting-down big-brother.  And then there's something unclear about how he must sacrifice his shot at nirvana in order to save the world.  Not bad, could have been better.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A totalitarian government's brainwashing techniques are a little too effective at turning people into mindless zombies, resulting in a zombie apocalypse.

[minuspace]

A totalitarian government's brainwashing techniques are a little too effective at turning people into mindless zombies, resulting in a zombie apocalypse.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

An extended interview with former members of japanese biker gangs, wherein they re-tell stories of their youth. Over time, the stories get stranger and stranger, initially in ways that westerners could just attribute to "crazy japan" -- terms in european languages that were appropriated into slang based on absurd mistranslations, custom seat-backs that are so tall that they can brush the undersides of bridges if driven straight-on. Slowly, the stories get increasingly surreal, and eventually, entirely supernatural. A former gang boss talks about the time he saw an exact duplicate of himself wearing a rival gang's jacket, and fought his doppelganger to the death before stealing the jacket and creating an alliance between the gangs. One night when a number of affiliated groups rode together only to become lost, finding themselves in a town seemingly identical to the one they just left but with no people, only a multitude of cats staring at them impassively from every surface. Eventually, one of them explains that the subculture owes its longevity to annual human sacrifices of junior members to tengu, who consumed the intestines of these initiates in exchange for magical protection of members from the police. The interviewer explains that, during the interview, the people he was interviewing seemed to grow smaller and smaller. At the end of the interview, he finds that everything in the room, with the exception of himself and the walls and ceiling, has shrunk to approximately one fifth its original scale. The tiny former yakuza chuckle menacingly as he tries to squeeze himself out of the building through the now tiny door, only for him to find himself surrounded by cats, sitting on all surrounding surfaces, staring impassively at him. He gets into his car and races into the night, only to wake up the next morning, parked, on the breakdown lane of a highway on a completely different island.

I'd watch/read the hell out of that.

[Freeky]

An extended interview with former members of japanese biker gangs, wherein they re-tell stories of their youth. Over time, the stories get stranger and stranger, initially in ways that westerners could just attribute to "crazy japan" -- terms in european languages that were appropriated into slang based on absurd mistranslations, custom seat-backs that are so tall that they can brush the undersides of bridges if driven straight-on. Slowly, the stories get increasingly surreal, and eventually, entirely supernatural. A former gang boss talks about the time he saw an exact duplicate of himself wearing a rival gang's jacket, and fought his doppelganger to the death before stealing the jacket and creating an alliance between the gangs. One night when a number of affiliated groups rode together only to become lost, finding themselves in a town seemingly identical to the one they just left but with no people, only a multitude of cats staring at them impassively from every surface. Eventually, one of them explains that the subculture owes its longevity to annual human sacrifices of junior members to tengu, who consumed the intestines of these initiates in exchange for magical protection of members from the police. The interviewer explains that, during the interview, the people he was interviewing seemed to grow smaller and smaller. At the end of the interview, he finds that everything in the room, with the exception of himself and the walls and ceiling, has shrunk to approximately one fifth its original scale. The tiny former yakuza chuckle menacingly as he tries to squeeze himself out of the building through the now tiny door, only for him to find himself surrounded by cats, sitting on all surrounding surfaces, staring impassively at him. He gets into his car and races into the night, only to wake up the next morning, parked, on the breakdown lane of a highway on a completely different island.

Enki, you have some of the greatest ideas for stories.  Just thought I'd let you know.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

One of those go-back-in-time-and-kill-hitler stories, but instead of killing Hitler they're going to go back and save Archduke Ferdinand and thus prevent the events which created the environment which turned Hitler into a monster.

Alternately they go back and make sure that Hitler succeeds as an artist, thus preventing him from going into politics.

EDIT:

Related idea:

Time travelers prevent World War 2/Naziism/The Holocaust. They return to find that everyone is now really antisemitic because the holocaust never caused it to fall out of favor.

Alternately they come back and everything is a bit backward technologically because all the tech advances that happened because of the war happened much later (or fewer happened if the Pacific campaign still took place)

Related: or they come back and now the Pacific Campaign had a much much higher body count and lasted much longer because Einstein never fled to the USA and thus the Atom Bomb was not developed in time (it was still developed later)

Alternately they come back and the USA is still extremely isolationist, to a point that's even more inappropriate than their meddlesomeness is now.

Alternately they come back and the world is now under Soviet control. The Soviets are no less corrupt for having dominated the world.

EDIT:
Also, it should go without saying that no one from the original timeline who was born after the 1940's still exists in the new timeline.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

An extended interview with former members of japanese biker gangs, wherein they re-tell stories of their youth. Over time, the stories get stranger and stranger, initially in ways that westerners could just attribute to "crazy japan" -- terms in european languages that were appropriated into slang based on absurd mistranslations, custom seat-backs that are so tall that they can brush the undersides of bridges if driven straight-on. Slowly, the stories get increasingly surreal, and eventually, entirely supernatural. A former gang boss talks about the time he saw an exact duplicate of himself wearing a rival gang's jacket, and fought his doppelganger to the death before stealing the jacket and creating an alliance between the gangs. One night when a number of affiliated groups rode together only to become lost, finding themselves in a town seemingly identical to the one they just left but with no people, only a multitude of cats staring at them impassively from every surface. Eventually, one of them explains that the subculture owes its longevity to annual human sacrifices of junior members to tengu, who consumed the intestines of these initiates in exchange for magical protection of members from the police. The interviewer explains that, during the interview, the people he was interviewing seemed to grow smaller and smaller. At the end of the interview, he finds that everything in the room, with the exception of himself and the walls and ceiling, has shrunk to approximately one fifth its original scale. The tiny former yakuza chuckle menacingly as he tries to squeeze himself out of the building through the now tiny door, only for him to find himself surrounded by cats, sitting on all surrounding surfaces, staring impassively at him. He gets into his car and races into the night, only to wake up the next morning, parked, on the breakdown lane of a highway on a completely different island.

Enki, you have some of the greatest ideas for stories.  Just thought I'd let you know.

It's true. He does.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

An Artificial Intelligence is developed and it becomes malevolent and eeeeeevil. Unfortunately for the AI it's an android application so all it can really do is mess with it's user's settings and make crank calls. The call is coming from onside the phone...

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A fractured take on the Cthulhu Mythos wherein the mythos gods are all social justice warriors and the reason Azathoth is their leader is because nobody wanted to run against a retarded candidate.

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

A strange kind of political and economic cohesion develops from a set of otherwise unafilliated countries that support open borders, dual citizenship, and universal guaranteed income, wherein cross-taxation strengthens economic bonds even from people who are otherwise entirely unemployed. As a result, several of these countries recognize that it is desirable to encourage a set of trendy yet unemployed youths -- young artists and such -- to act as trend-setters and gain citizenship from a large number of the other countries with these policies: they end up with a guaranteed income of approximately the average of that supplied by the various countries and the rest goes to income taxes, and for the most part these countries end up making a net profit. This produces a number of artistic enclaves/communes wherein young artists who are citizens of ten or fifteen countries work with other artists of other backgrounds full time, and flying between these enclaves is common -- and this results in the birth of a bunch of innovative new art movements. These movements take on a political edge, as countries with closed borders and no guaranteed universal income, paranoid that the others are conspiring against them, form a military alliance and ready themselves for what will become the third world war.

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

A love story. He's a sickly dude with a heart condition. She's the curator of a museum of medical oddities. After a transplant he literally gives her his heart.