Alright, here are the two ideas I have right now. I’m not really at a good stopping point for The Lost Colony yet, but I think I can slow down enough to divide my attention.
The first one I got when I finished 2001: A Space Odyssey just last week. I was thinking about dating and relationships, and also thinking about the last 50 pages of 2001 (which, let me tell you, are psychedelically crazy!), and the thought came into my mind that a guy and a girl getting to the point where they start up a relationship is kind of like a first contact situation with an alien species. In both situations, both sides are trying to put their best selves forward; in both situations, communication is awkward and neither side quite knows what to expect; in both situations, each side is driven to figure out what the other side is thinking, and to predict what they will do; in both situations, the stakes are very high. So, I thought I’d write a story which is actually two stories–a first contact story that parallels an awkward dtr, where it’s unclear whether the first contact story is real or is just happening inside the guy’s head. Yes, I know it’s a really nerdy story. Yes, I embraced my geekdom long ago. And…to make it more geeky, I’m probably going to need a little bit of help with this one. So I talked with my good friend Steve, and we’re going to collaborate on this one. I think it could be really funny–just like Decision LZ150207! (speaking of which, I need to send out that story to some publishers)
The other idea I have is a bit darker. I got the idea of it from Joe Haldeman’s Forever War. I thought that the space combat in that book was very intriguing, about space battles fought across solar systems at relativistic speeds, and how the soldiers return after every combat to a very different world. For a few months, I toyed around in my head what a spaceship would look like that fought at such speeds, and I came up with this idea of a one man spaceship that was equipped to defend a planetary system from attack. And then, I thought “what would it be like if one of the pilots blacked out, was thrown out of the solar system at relativistic speeds, and by the time he came back, it was nearly a hundred years later and a peace treaty had been signed?” So now, I just need to come up with an idea for this pilot’s character, and to figure out a few more of the military details. And…I need to figure out what this guy is going to do after his life loses its meaning. He basically forsakes everything to go and become one of these pilots (since he knows that he will be flung far into the future), and the thing that compels him to do that is the urgency of this terrible war, but when something goes wrong in this battle (which he thinks is the final battle for his world) he comes back to find that the enemy that he has dedicated his life to destroy has made peace with his people, and they are now in an age of prosperity. He becomes a relic. What does he do about it? That’s the key issue–and I don’t know exactly how to solve it. I’m not exactly the person to do so, either, since I’m not a soldier and not a veteran of any war. But…maybe I can come up with something. I hope that something in my personal experience can help to suggest an answer to this soldier’s problem. Because I don’t want this to be a lame story where the whole point is to destroy the hero. I want it to be realistic, but worth reading as well.
So, those are some of the ideas I have in my head now. I hope that more will soon come! And really, the thing I need to focus on now is submitting the two stories that I’ve already finished. I’ve been lazy on that end–too lazy.
