The Big Idea

Werewolves are common in fantasy or horror stories I'm familiar with, so are werecats and werebears.  The shamanistic belief that humans can become animals and change back to human, technically called "lycanthropy" (but if you know Greek roots you'll see the word "wolf" in there) has been applied to various animals in various cultures throughout the world in ancient beliefs but also in stories of more modern times.  Almost always the "were" creatures are large land mammals (though island cultures do include some sea creatures). So in Africa, where I happen to be at the moment, there exist beliefs in what we could call "were-" jackals, giraffes, lions, hippos, and elephants in traditional animistic religions.  Now, there probably exists a story about a "werelephant" somewhere, but I've never heard of it.  It certainly isn't common, so since this blog is always looking for new or uncommon story ideas, there might be so...

Playing a computer game in which you can perform upgrades on space military hardware and fight other space empires with them--Galactic Civilizations, quite an old game--inspired a new story idea for me. Imagine an old robot, designed for combat, intelligent, assigned the inglorious task of guarding the home planet--which feeling resonates with how I felt during Desert Storm, when I was an enlisted military medical technician in a hospital unit that essentially got held in reserve and did only a little to contribute to the war effort.  This imaginary robot would feel like I did, burning with a desire to contribute to the war, eager to show his worth. The robot gets his chance when his model is discontinued.  Since spare parts will no longer kept for him...er, it...this robot will no longer be maintained for guard duty and instead is sent to the front lines to make room for newer models, with the expectation that even though this robot is too obsolete to contribute much, sen...

This post will get a little gruesome.  If reading about anatomical details in the context of a vampire consuming human beings makes you sick, please stop reading. Today in my pre-deployment training, in a class called "Combat Lifesaver's Course," our medic instructor mentioned in his medical training that cerebrospinal fluid is sweet.  He wondered out loud why he had been told that in training, as he were going to taste it--something he'd never do. And at that moment launched in me an idea for story vampires that perhaps constitutes something altogether new.  Imagine a vampire that has no interest in sucking blood, but longs for cerebrospinal fluid. Cerebrospinal fluid (a.k.a. CSF) is, by the way, the clear or slightly greenish fluid that bathes the brain and spinal column, providing protection and nourishment.  When it leaks from the ears or nose, it's an indicator of a serious skull fracture, which is why we were discussing it our class. If CSF really i...

I'm at Fort Dix, New Jersey, preparing for yet another deployment with the Army Reserve.  Fort Dix has a Federal Penitentiary on its grounds and in the process of moving from one point to another on my first day here, I found I had accidentally wandered up a service road for the prison. I was surrounded by barracks buildings much like the rest of Fort Dix but encircled by tall fences topped by concertina wire.  A voice blared over a loudspeaker in a rumble of words I could barely understand, but eventually said something about "Last call for chow line."  I realized with a shock that I wasn't near  the prison as I first thought, but actually on   the grounds of the penitentiary (please note that tall fences and concertina wire is all it seemed to take to transform Army barracks into prison barracks).  With further horror, I realized the people I'd seen working out in a ball field I'd passed, who wore gray uniforms I first had thought must be some kind of ...

How about a story showing a gold rush on a near-future colony of Mars? Terri Main  publishes a paper called " Science news for Sci-Fi writers ," in which today I saw a link leading to an  article from Io9  that shows a photo I'm including below: This photo shows dry ice pits common in the southern hemisphere of Mars, a planet cold enough to fill these pits every Martian-southern-hemisphere-winter with frozen solid carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere. Every summer, some of the frozen CO2 (a.k.a. dry ice) melts away, revealing these pits with curious shiny gold rims. (For scale, the small one in the center is about 200 feet across.) It so happens that as of now, no Earthly scientist knows what the causes the gold-coloring around these pits.  What if it so happens that it's actual gold, that the process of forming and sublimating dry ice somehow brings subsoil gold up to the surface and deposits it along the rims of these pits? If it should happen in ...

The title of this post was meant to be attention-grabbing.  Bear with me, please. The book of Revelation talks about four beasts around the throne of God, one with the face of a man, one like an eagle, one like a cow, one like a lion (Rev 4:6-8).  These same creatures are also mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures, notably in Isaiah 6, where they are called "Seraphim," which is Hebrew for "burning ones."  Ezekiel 1 gives more description of these angels, stating that each one of the four creatures has four faces, each face pointing one of four directions, like the cardinal directions of the compass. Please note that I'm not maintaining these four creatures designated for special service of God are anything but angels.  They seem to constitute a special type of angel, naturally, but I hold to the Biblically orthodox view that they were directly created by God, just as all the other heavenly beings in God's service were created.  I don't hold the (nut...

This past year while I was deployed to Afghanistan, I ran into a copy of Brian Greene's The Fabric of the Cosmos, a book designed to explain issues in modern Physics in layman's terms.  It was worth reading, not just because it inspired a few story ideas in my mind. In discussing  string theory , a hypothetical attempt to combine all forces of energy and types of matter into a common theory which imagines the universe to be composed of various types of vibrating strings, Dr. Greene revealed that this theory cannot possibly work unless there are dimensions beyond length, width, height, and time.  Most versions of string theory (there are many versions) imagine at least ten dimensions, where the other dimensions are so tiny we can't perceive them. I've seen this compared to looking at a garden hose from a distance.  From a distance, a hose looks looks like it only contains one dimension, length.  Up close, of course, it has width and depth as well, and has ...