Alright, here is the second part of my oldest story notebook, the one that I just found a couple days ago. These ideas date from 2007 when I started pursuing writing as more than a hobby, up to the summer of 2008 when I went to Jordan on the BYU study abroad program.
The Singularity: it will lead more to a social change and conflict than a transformation of humanity–increasing disparity between techies and non-techies, and a tech/class conflict. What will the perspective be of those who look at us and our advances after the new dark ages? Or are we in the dark ages?
Interesting–if you believe in the technological singularity, that is. I’m not quite so sure I do anymore; that’s kind of what Genesis Earth
was all about.
An alien race of beings that have no sensory organs, but instead perceive the thoughts of beings with sensory organs, and thus do all their perceiving through others.
There is so much cool stuff you can do with aliens–stuff that nobody seems to be doing, because they always stick with the tropes. Or maybe I’m just not well-read enough.
The more advanced our society becomes, the more our education specializes so that it becomes harder to know the minimum necessary to understand everything. This leads to class/tech divisions, and to the potential for society to fall apart.
Have you ever wondered about this? I mean, it’s kind of crazy how complicated we’ve made life and living. And all this we call “civilization.”
When relativistic space travel becomes more widespread, society will develop new rituals and ways to mourn and deal with the separation that comes with people going forward out into space.
I think I had this thought while reading Speaker for the Dead or another of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game books. That series totally blew my mind.
If we lived in a telepathic society, we would learn to separate our deep thoughts from our shallow thoughts to put up a facade in public–but how would the relationship between deep and shallow change the way society works? If we had to hide even our thoughts?
Heck, what would a telepathic society even look like?
Aliens who shed their skin each year (or something else) and have derived a culture that treats each person as having a different identity each year.
Kind of like in Tahiti, where people change their names at different stages of their lives (childhood, adulthood, etc). I hear it makes family history work insanely frustrating.
We make contact with aliens who need a human companion with whom they merge telepathically, and the story is from the human translator’s point of view.
This would make a really cool anime.
First contact was made in the 12th century with the Abassids, and the explorer ship returned with Arab emissaries to the alien homeworld. Now those emissaries are returning to establish regular connections via ansible, and they are shocked to find the world in its current state.
Okay, I think this idea has some really cool potential. I’m not sure I’d be the one to write it, but it sounds like it could be really awesome, if it were done right.
An alien species incapable of lying.
It would probably turn first contact into an unmitigated disaster. After all, lying is the essence of diplomacy.
When we first go into space, colonies will be governed by multi-national corporations, not stats. Profit will come before the welfare of the colonists themselves, and the wars will be over trade routes and tariffs.
Sounds like something straight out of C. J. Cherryh.
An alien species* that considers it okay to show uncovered reproductive organs but obscene to show the eating organs. *Or, a human society
It sure would be weird, especially if it were a human society that did that.
An alien spaceship comes to Earth and it’s full of colonists.
Definitely been done already. Probably multiple times.
Dolphins are a post-alien species that came to Earth millions of years ago.
Has this been done before? I seriously doubt it. I’d write it, but any story set on Earth tends to bore me.
EDIT: Alright, yeah, it’s been done–quite a bit, actually. Looks like I need to get out from under my rock and read some more.
Aliens have colonies under the ocean.
Hey, if they have them anywhere, they’re probably down there.
Is a necessary element of our free agency our ignorance of ourselves, on the deepest level?
Perhaps.
A 19th century Mormon gets stuck in a time warp and ends up in 21st century Utah.
Oh, the horror!
I’d better stop here, since general conference is about to start. I’ll finish this list in the next couple of days, probably. Blogging keeps me sane. In the meantime, have a wonderful Easter!
Some of those ideas are really cool. I especially like the one about the 12th century Arabs going with the aliens and coming back 900 years later.
Alien colonies underwater? There was a really cool PC game called XCOM: UFO Defense. The sequel, which stunk, was about underwater aliens reawakened by a signal from Mars.
As for your alien dolphins, though–see Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”
“Dolphins are a post-alien species that came to Earth millions of years ago.”
See also: The Simpsons. They had an episode very similar to this idea lol.