The Big Idea

Extra lives was a standard feature in video games even earlier than Pac Man and still remains a feature of some video games even today.  Some corner of my brain recently wondered how that would work exactly and I found a new story universe unfolding in my mind. In "Revive," which I think would be more appropriate as story-based video game than a novel (though it could easily be both), a future exists where medical technology is so advanced that it's possible to bring people back from the dead on a routine basis.  This would be based on massive brain reconstruction after death and sophisticated chips implanted in the brainstem that record a person's mental status at the time of death--a sort of "black box" for the human mind. People who could afford the regeneration services could be routinely brought back to life--though a medical technology as advanced as this would probably be able to keep the very wealthy alive forever--that is, keep them from death o...

I underwent French Desert Warfare training recently.  The instructors were French Marines, but the unit undergoing the training was the French Foreign Legion (a number of different French legions cycle through the course and it just happened to be the Legion's turn).  For them, the physical aspects of what we were doing were very easy.  They march overland something like 45 miles per week on average--the longest march on this course was a "mere" 21 miles. But we didn't just go on four long (for me) marches, we went on marches in the pitch black of moonless nights.  Twice there were clouds.  I could barely see the man in front of me, yet I marched along over rough terrain, often off any trails, in a very rocky part of the country of Djibouti. As my eyes struggled to find an sign of a rock that would trip me and see the man in front of me (far too often, my sight globes failed at each task), the sensory deprivation of the dark created a strange effect. ...

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 ...