posted
I had two stories land in my head a couple weekends ago.
One is very interesting to the point that I will discuss it here. (I was reminded of it by the Genetics thread)
Anton Chegoyan is a member of a very elite noble family. On their world of 8.5 billion, the nobles make up about 15,000. The serfs in the population wear masks and frumpy clothes at all times to keep them in their place as interchangeable beings, like cattle or robots.
They are neither.
Anton, on reaching 21, must decide on his life's career. It could be anything from astrophysist to wood carver. He decides on planetary historian.
As he researches the history of the planet, he discovers the big secret: Everyone on the planet except for the Nobles is genetically engineered. This engineering is not done for looks or style, but simply is the production of the healthiest genes that produce the healthiest, longest living people.
Anything that is dangerous to the health of the person, that can be genetically removed, is. This includes sexual organs, which are replaced by a neuter system that is more infection resistant, and a pleasure system that is less messy.
There are no genetic differences between any of the individuals on the planet (except between new "generations" of people, where slight genetic changes are made to improve the result).
THere are many good things about this system. Things like sports are more fair, racial prejudices are removed, and diseases in general are smaller.
Individuality, however, is greatly admired. Sure, you all may look alike, but makeup, clothing, accesories do make a difference.
There are a lot of other details I could put in.
The biggest down fall is that the society is that the society itself relies on technology to reproduce itself. If that technology fails, what would be the result? If all the genetic tampering left them vulnerable to a new virus, the disease could kill the entire world.
The solution--the Nobles. Keep a bunch of naturals (decendants of the original colonists who set up this system) alive and happy. Make sure its large enough and diverse enough to repopulate the world in case of disaster, and you have some protection.
These nobles, while thinking themselves of higher breeding than the rest, are in reality, of the lowest genetic character on the planet. They are the amusements of the rude and the pityable class of the caring.
The characters I have a slight grip on, and the setting is set in my head. Now all I need is a plot a bit more interesting than Spoiled noble slowly unravels the mystery of his low status.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Boon
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posted
All it needs is a Hollywood love story.
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posted
Really great! (you can tell because this post is rather long...)
...I had a similar plot a while back, although it never amounted to anything. It was same thing, really: a girl growing up suddenly puts lots of strange things about her life together and realises that she is one of a dwindling amount of un-genetically-modified humans, who are still suceptable to disease, who are not amazingly smart or fast etc. Her older sister, fed up with always being worst, leaves the family to be 'improved', her younger brother dies of cancer. She is miserable until she meets another still-human human who, unlike her parents, is idealistic and wants to unite unmodified people so they won't feel the pressures of a super-society... I'm actually even sure that 'naturals' was the word I used.
The quality of being a natural in my idea was the imagination of faliure was in the end, better than anything the super-sucessful GM people could come up with, even if they were worse in every other respect.
Are you saying that your nobles are actually pitied and looked down upon by the GM people? If your character discovers this, wouldn't it have a large effect on his estimation of himself and his family?
I can only think of slightly-cliched plots, but I'm sure you'll come up with something better!
Classic plot would be to say all the GM people decide to rid themselves of the Nobles, because they're no longer necessary
Is there a section of life the GM people can miss out on, for instance art or music or something seemingly mundane, like gambling or an interest in danger? For some reason this lack is a repercussion of the modification. Slowly the people have lost this one ability which was considered useless.Think of the huge repercussions if gambling and taking bad chances were removed.
(sounds a bit Vulcan, though )
If this was a movie I'd suggest a catastrophic event, but it's not. (Disaster movies are so easy to think up: everyone gets sick, everyone goes crazy, mass single-minded revolts etc... )
posted
Maybe he falls for one of the GMs, only to find that these "servants" are really GM superiors filling an assignment like a peace corps dude or a missionary. Each GM devotes a year or so to serving the "nobles" as part of the illusion. Then they convince their "masters" to either fire them, or they get drafted or something. I think the points of attachment between the two species is of interest.
Maybe he gets in contact with a noble who has the same knowledge and wants to engineer an epidemic to wipe out a lot of the GMs.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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