novel ideas – a crank's progress

The Thing

Idea for a comic book/graphic novel for kids with anxiety, depression, OCD, whatever (when we take mental health as seriously and non-judgmentally as physical health, we’ll be better people living in a better society).

The Thing is the disorder or problem and the idea is that the kid (or adult) has to overcome the power of The Thing. It wants you to hide behind it and blame it for problems or mistakes, as a way of keeping you in it’s power: you can’t let it. It wants to tell you what you can’t do, but you have to fight it off, ignore it, tell it to shut up and stop bothering you.

It could be funny, could be creepy, or all of the above. I should get a list of common disorders or issues and see what physical representations work for them: small, simpering creatures or large imposing things, distorted versions of the sufferer, etc.

Pioneer

I read an article recently about a cosmonaut who was lost in the early 60s and was reportedly close to existing the solar system (at the publication date). What if he was found by some civilization that could reboot his consciousness. What would he tell them? Where would loyalties lie? To the old USSR? To humanity as a whole? Would he want to return? Would he permitted to and what would be his reception?

Currency

A future without currency, where workers earn work units they can spend that are supposedly impossible to steal or separate from the person who earned them. What happens when someone loses access to theirs? Stolen or just “lost” due to some error. How do they recover their wealth or find out who took it?

Living in the past

Imagine a future world, complex and technologically advanced, where children are forced to grow up ax previous generations did, with manual labor, poor sanitation, all the privations and risks that the present society was built to improve upon. The idea: that no one grow up without realizing why things are as they are, without entitlement or unearned privilege.

The conflict: this system is mothballed, decommissioned, and for awhile things are ok. But a sense of complacency creeps in, generations grow up feeling like they built their world, rather than accepting it as a legacy from thoughtful predecessors. The society is at risk of collapse when it is discovered that some people, families who were forced out of the mainstream, have been living in The Past, the old proving ground where generations came of age. They are tough, resourceful people who need nothing but may be the deliverers – if they are willing to take it on and if those who marginalized them can swallow their pride and ask.

Mechanica

An alternate future where war is waged by machines, by drones under the control of a sentient controller that monitors the borders and airspace of its host nation. Its neighbor states are similarly automated and any conflict becomes a stalemate, as no nation has an advantage. The controllers communicate amongst themselves to avoid surprises and needless loss of equipment. Even the ground crews are automated/robotic.

No contact between these nations is permitted. The drone forces control all travel and communication.

The conflict: There is resistance to this control. Some people want to visit other nations in the region but cannot. What happens when one side in a contested/patrolled area finds a human on the opposing side? The core principles of the controllers and each drone prohibit harming humans. But this human is using that rule and the fact that it can operate outside the understanding of the systems to upset the balance. It can only be detected visually.

Humans do not show up on sensors, the sounds they make are too irregular to detect, and they have jamming tools that broadcast false information. How do the other nations respond? Field their own human fighters? Remove the ban on harming humans? Can they agree to allow travel? Or are the reasons for banning it forgotten?