Three ideas looking for help

Hello, I recently came up with three ideas for worlds and want to develop them, but I'm pretty sure I should only be working on one at a time, or develop some kind of strategy that lets me work on all three and still get things done. Of course, I also could use feedback and thoughts on some of the ideas. My usual circle has been rather unhelpful in helping me figure this out. I'd roll them all up into one somehow, but haven't figured that out either. So yeah, any feedback on any of them or thoughts on which to start with would be appreciated.

Idea 1: The reason for the Fermi Paradox leads to humanity getting mecha and transhumanism, a multi-generational story

This one came about from reading up on the Fermi Paradox while having the Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventures anime playing on the TV. An alien civilization has created a gladiatorial arena for any civilizations that develops to the point that they start sending probes beyond their own solar system. The games are supposedly there to help that planet determine who is the top dog of the world that all other people shall conform to as to simply survive in space you need the unity that can only come from being a "planet of a given hat." The reality is that the games are just meant to wipe the technology producing species of that planet out altogether (Why? No idea.).

However, humanity is the first to beat the aliens at their own game by reverse engineering the mecha (which use exotic matter that produces negative mass to keep them from collapsing under their own weight) and then launching a campaign that renders the alien civilization extinct, while the true heroes of the story stop the "behind the scenes" technology that is a large part of what's keeping this going.

And so each generation after that inherits the gifts and problems of the previous generation. Typically with the next generation having to deal with the problems that the previous generation could not or did not solve.

Idea 2: A disease has made fertility of tremendous importance.

This one came to me in a dream, so expect... weirdness. At some point in the past a disease hit humanity that effected almost exclusively those who had not yet hit puberty. The disease has a stupidly high mortality rate, and even amongst those that survive most are rendered incapable of having kids. Cures do exist but every last one of them is worse than the disease either by having 100% sterility rates, leaving the cured individual vulnerable to every other disease on the planet, or inducing deformities to vital organs, ensuring that person doesn't live much longer anyway.

This has led to a society that highly values fertility in both men and women, to the point that a caste system exists where the fertile are very privileged and the infertile majority are treated like peasants. To add to the horror that should come with that: There was a recent equivalent to the civil rights movement that granted the infertile basic human rights, and the caste system is the improvement. Technology is actually pretty high, but schizophrenic: For example, holographic store signage exists, but flight technology does not. The world also seems to be matriarchal in nature as there was a queen that ruled the nation and not a single foreign visitor thought that was strange. Also, combat seems to be more deuling in nature than open warfare (most likely because of how endangered humanity is by default). There is a lot about this world/dream that has me interested, but a lot I've yet to figure out in such a way that makes sense.

Idea 3: My own reconstruction of the ideal hero while deconstructing the anti-hero.

I have a general plot for a story in my head, but only some very basic foundations on the world. The basic plot is that ideal heroes existed in the past, but don't anymore because the next generation thought they were not cool. This lead to a few successive generations of anti-heroes, each one trying to be more edgy than the last. This hasn't led to a "Villain wins" type scenario, but your average person could not tell you the difference. This leads to the core characters of the story going about trying to figure out how to fix the world, and decide that to do that they need to get the ideal heroes back by becoming those heroes themselves.

This could be a superhero type thing, but could also be a fantasy adventurer type thing to, or even something sci-fi. But the short version on the deconstruction of the anti-hero side: Either all of the anti-heros of reasonable moral codes but lack of general ability die off quickly, and those with the ability are selfish pricks more concerned with their own safety than with the safety of people they don't know, so if they get into a fight expect only their loved ones to survive the fight and anyone else in the general vicinity to be dead.

I can't advise you on which one you should develop, but I have a few ideas that could help you along the way.

"Fertility" idea:

• If you're going for a matriarchy that revolves around fertility, look a little into ants and other bug species where there's a "queen" who gives birth to all the young.
• If we're talking humans, each woman would only be able to pop out a new baby every 9 months or so. With a limited number of women who can give birth, that means a massive population bust. We're talking a drop from 7 Billion (current figure) to maybe less than a million.
• The lack of fertility will also hit genetic diversity pretty hard. Assuming men get hit with the same fertility-ruining disease, that means that only a few men will be able to give offspring as well, which means less variety of traits in the gene pool. Even if it's random whether someone will get the disease, it still means that, in the course of 70-100 years, most of the infertile humans will die out, killing off whatever helpful genes they had.
  • And during that time, a sort of "middle caste" could appear — the infertile children of the fertile matriarchs.
• How would human cloning and genetic modification be viewed in this world? If you're trying to keep a population up and natural births are rare, I imagine there would be a lot more babies who are grown in a lab.

"Hero/Anti-Hero" idea:

• This sounds a bit like a meta-commentary about heroism and idealism, specifically in the progression from The '50s to The '80s and today. And you can do that, but know that people are coming around to similar conclusions as we speak.
  • I think the current mentality there is "Yes, the world sucks, but we can still make it better."
  • Be sure to look into other stories (from the Turn of the Millennium onward), because they're going to have most of your material about modern heroism.
  • Also, look into philosophies like Nihilism and Existentialism, because that dialogue will be important in any story that talks about whether it's worth it to be heroic.
  • And if you think about origin/deconstruction/reconstruction as a cycle, it's also worth looking into the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. Especially the progression of "Prophet" (Baby Boomers) and "Nomad" (Gen X) and "Civic" (Millennial) generations, and how each one views the world.
• On the story side of things: it would be interesting to see "our" heroes (the protagonists) meet with the heroes from "the good old days."
  • Maybe the young upstarts want those idealistic heroes to get back in the game and help get rid of the anti-heroes.
  • But after all the atrocities they've seen from the Anti-Heroes, this "old guard" has become jaded and won't bother to help. Like: "The world gone to hell and there's nothing we can do about it."
  • Of course, that's where the Reconstruction element comes in: Again, the idea that "The world may suck, but that just means we should do what we can to make it better."
  • Then again, not everyone in a group has to feel the same way. Maybe there's that one old superhero who isn't jaded and decides to help our heroes, sort of like The Obi-Wan of the group.

I really don't have much to say about your "Fermi Paradox" idea. Sorry.

edited 21st Apr '15 9:18:51 AM by AwSamWeston

Regarding idea #2, have you read Implosion by Dennis Jones?

@Aw Sam Weston

I'll have to give some thoughts. I think that cloning would either have to be a thing, or possibly the disease affects the genders differently (like potentially males would be more affected than females).

Also sounds like the idea for the Anti Hero thing is time sensitive. I either get on that now and get it done quick (using many of the the things you suggested as research) or simply focus on the cycle aspect of it all. Yeah, I did plan on having at least one of the old guard popping up either too injured and infirm to be more than a mentor. But again stuff to look into and ponder over when I'm not at work, or work has slowed to a complete crawl.

@Meklar

Can't say that I've heard of it.

The fertility idea also reminds me of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The heroic deconstruction sounds like it could be fun but not much to it yet. The generational mecha idea sounds the best developed. Maybe too much tech development is bad for the intergalactic environment, or warfare ought to be contained turned into any upstart contender ought to be stamped out.

I'm amused that Fermi Paradox + Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventures = Bokurano by way of G Gundam.

I'd suggest a Cyberpunk workaround to the need for exotic matter, where the arena is scaled to mecha no bigger than 5m tall, and the representatives for the various races simply jack into them. That's big enough to carry a .50 Browning as a handgun, but small enough that the Square-Cube Law doesn't complain.

Childless Dystopia has been done, and I don't see how the Ferts would be treated as anything other than Romania-style baby factories by the Barrs without either everyone being exceptionally long-lived, or some sort of easy-ish cloning existing. (A sudden lack of a vitally necessary resource generally means that the resource still gets used, not put in a museum.) The idea's not very well fleshed out yet, so can't imagine a story based on it.

The Deconstruction's been done to death, and I can only see the Reconstruction working through pointing out how general cynicism (perpetuated through media) with heroism was what killed it. But the cynicism would be nigh-insurmountable now - cutting through it would require massive efforts, to the point of deconstructing a genre reconstruction. (Try to to go cross-eyed as I just have.)