61–70 of 77 posts
Fascinating how many religious ideas have been posted here. REAL HUMAN: A robot masquerades as a human being to avoid decommissioning. Plot spoiler: there are no humans left, only robots pretending to be human. Even robots need a class system.
I think Stanislaw Lem wrote that already. Or was his one the other way around?
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB#!original/rec.arts...
Imagine if Hell were a sort of financial market. Demons trade soul futures, essentially betting on the future price of souls, which of course they consume for food. Other demons (backed by investors) devise new schemes to tempt humans into mortal sin. Failure means the souls go to Heaven, not Hell. If the demons bringing in souls should somehow create a bubble with a grand new scheme that's guaranteed to bring many s…
This sounds absolutely hysterical! I think your main character(s) should be demons who work for the Hell SEC, who are trying to fight their way through corruption and bureaucracy to stop the bubble before it's too late and a huge quantity of souls are lost to the vile clutches of God in Heaven.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sounds absolutely hysterical! I think your main character(s) should be demons who work for the Hell SEC, who are trying to fight their way through corruption and bureaucracy to stop the bubble before it's too late and a huge quantity of souls are lost to the vile clutches of God in Heaven.
That sounds great. My problem is that I can't think of a good cause for a soul bubble in hell. It'd be good to tie it to some historical event, but what could I say was clearly a failed demonic soul investment scheme?
This also lets you make jokes at the expense of religious revivalist movements ;-).
Modern day version of The Count of Monte Cristo, set in Silicon Valley and along Sand Hill Road Entrepreneur starts company, gets funded, company goes HUGE, but company product turns out to be highly disruptive in a bad way for a large group of disadvantaged people, entrepreneur tries to change the product to exist in union with the people, but is countered and eventually thrown out of company by investors for a mist…
Dystopian society. A new, incredibly accurate set of psychometric tests (something like IQ/MBTI on steroids) is discovered, and society as we know it is restructured into a kind of pre-emptive meritocracy. Perhaps even a different angle where the people tested are prisoners of some 'free' society and are used for its advancement. Slightly odd other idea: some new AI technology is developed, massive leaps are made. Ev…
So.. basically... the backstory behind Portal?
> Dystopian society. A new, incredibly accurate set of psychometric tests (something like IQ/MBTI on steroids) is discovered, and society as we know it is restructured into a kind of pre-emptive meritocracy. Perhaps even a different angle where the people tested are prisoners of some 'free' society and are used for its advancement.
Because of course everything has to be a bloody dystopia nowadays.
Anyhow, he seemingly wakes up moments later, annoyed that the procedure didn't work. Turns out that it did, and he woke up ? years later, except that he's surrounded by children. They talk with and about a detached voice that's audible in every room of their "house" called "mother".
Turns out that "mother" is a computer system, the children are the remainder of the human race (aging was abolished years ago and they settled on the goofy, yet most enjoyable age of 8 to spend eternity). They chose to awaken the protagonist because they were bored.
There are some other antics that I could imagine some eternal but bored youths to get into, such as variable personalities (they "play" with their personalities, for 50 years child1 is funny and carefree, after time is up he decides to take on a whole different persona).
Anyhow, I think the plot would actually be slowly let out, until the protagonist finally found the whole truth out. I'm not sure what happens after that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The current iteration of God and Satan (or whatever fictional supernatural character you choose) BOTH suddenly go AWOL Reminds me a little of my favourite series of comics ever, Preacher: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preacher_(comics)
I know what I'm hunting for the next time I am at the bookstore! Not much of a graphic novel reader but this one certainly deserves a read... Thanks for the suggestions! :-)