Back ground:
IT's somewhere in the future 2085, and the population of humans is now 19 billion. Since the population is so high, citizens no longer live in homes, but little small spaces that are about 4 feet wide, 3 feet tall, and 8 feet long (I'm considering using meters instead of feet). These are called HALAs-Human Adequate Living Spaces. For three years now, Things (yes, that's their name) have been killing people outside their HALA's when it turns dark.

The technolagy is very low since people are only concerned about getting ahold of food. Already, millions have died in starvation, and major farm companies almost have complete control of the countries.

Meanwhile, a space ship called Last Hope, has blasted off in search of another habital planet.

Characters and plot: Charlie shares his HALA with his son Joseph. They're use to the Things attacking people, but one night, in the HALA right beside them, they hear Mr. Warman screaming, and the next day he is gone.

Now Charlie, realizing that no one is safe, has to find out what the Things are since no one has seen them before, and why they have changed their original feeding ways.

This is a short story scfi/Horror/mystery.

Anywho, now I am trying to figure out how to make the setting more depressing. The sky is polluted so it is always gray, I have charlie fight his way through a hunger riot, and his wife is dead. Any ideas and I'd be more than happy to listen.

I just would have a VERY hard time buying that no one has ever seen a Thing.

Other than that it sounds fascinating.

What do the people in the HALSes do so others will give them food? It can't be clerical work, if it's a low-tech world. It can't be mechanical or agricultural -- or can it?

For that matter, if it's low-tech, how can you fit people in that closely without them choking on their own waste? Seems to me it's tougher to cram people in w/o high tech.

If starvation is that severe, how was it -- was it most of the country going fairly hungry (N Korea, a few years ago), or was it one or two provinces the government just gave up on and put up roadblocks, or were there food riots and social collapse?

I recommend Jerry Pournelle's essay on believable societies in, oh, I think it was Writing Science Fiction.

I find your world fascinating, which is why I want to see it fleshed out.

When the goverment saw how the poputation was about to boom (this boom is called the Swelling) they began building HALA towers in hope to contain the population. Then, for the food problem, they created Mush(a brown paste with all the essential vitamens)and U-Grain bars.

About the riots, I already thought of this. There are two "Forces". There is the Task Force, where the people distribute what food they have evenly, take care of sick, so on and so forth.

Then, to control the hunger riots, and rift raft, there is the Order force. Basically a home made Malitia. Before the Swelling, the goverment realized that people would go crazy, so they gathered all guns with from the citizens (or those that were not involved with a black market). Now the O.F. are the only ones who have guns.

And finally, about the Things. I don't want to ruin the story, but I'll tell you this: They ARE a social aspect. And it is just a roomer among the people that they ARE flesh eating aliens. (The same day the Last Hope disappeared, people began getting eaten by the Things.

I hope this doesn't sound too confusing. If there is still something that does not make sense before I do the start typing, please ask. I would very much appreciate it.

P.S. Thank you so far

Yes, you've got to figure out the milieu and answer some basic questions about what's going on. But I love it.

Can you imagine the wild rumors of the Things. Or maybe someone finding a dead bloated body of one. Kind of like sharks and one rolling up on the beach. Of course, I agree that while he might not have seen one personally, maybe others have. However, let me suggest that the story for me was the threat--the guy next door was eaten or taken. It seems the problem is blocking the Thing out of the cube, not trying to find out about their eating habits (that part sounds like a PBS special). At least, that's what pulled me--the threat of these things. And then the boy and father could have some conflict between them (maybe of buddy cop variety; don't need to have them at total odds, or maybe they are and this is what brings them together).

Question: what do people do all day? It sounds distopian but there are a gazillion people. Is this Soylent Green, no resources left stuff or something else?

I tell you: I'm hooked on this idea. Love it.

Now about the Things. I don't think it will hurt to tell that the Things is actully the Order Force. Charlie discovers the sick truth that their is one more force. The Keeping Force. Their job is to kill one hundred humans a night. I won't tell you how this is connected to Lost Hope, or why they start killing people in their HALAs. But this idea of a bloated monster...it intrigues me. Maybe, to keep the rumor going, they plant a fake carcass of a Thing to make the myth more real. I like it. I like it a lot JohnBrown.

You probably also need to define the problem. Because if it's to expose the vigilantes then we have to have police. But if they're a government black op, then that doesn't fix the problem. And this protagonist needs to be able to take them down some how. So he's an official in the government or the government doesn't know about these people or what?

Sorry, the plot reminded a little of the old Charleston Heston Flick. I like the fact the plot you have shared this far has such a dark moody feel. Don't loose your claustrophobic feel that in my humble opinion is a great aspect of your plot so far. Tiny rooms, suffocating crowds, these are great devises to add tension to hopefully a claustrophobic plot. My only criticism so far, is the fact that a ship is going out in search of a planet. I may be knit picking, but in my mind it is a little more feasible for probes to do the searching and ships to go to more investigative work. Or maybe the ship is going to set up a colony on a planet they have already found. Do the initial prep work.
The "things" are a good "stick" in controlling the humans, you may think of setting up a "carrot" to control the humans. The promise of a new "Eden" could be just as powerful as the fear of being killed by the "Things". OR that may be totally opposite from where you are taking the story. Love to hear more.

To get the best effect, you'd want to concentrate on killing young women. In fact, killing anyone else would seem pretty stupid, if your goal is keeping the population down. Also, it gives a bit more flavor to your horror if the target is reproductive aged women. Part of that is instinctive, part social-conditioning.

I would target the food supply, myself. If all the food is heavily processed and distributed by the government, it wouldn't be that hard to systematically poison the rations going to "non-productives" so that they sickened and died without a costly and potentially disastrous extermination campaign. Of course, there is the question of how efficient it is to heavily process food if food supplies are really low. We eat processed food in this country mainly because foodstuffs are so abundent and cheap that it is very difficult to make a profit on it unless you heavily process it and market it. If food were scarce, you wouldn't want to do that.

19 billion people packed into a close space would generate an enormous amount of waste heat. I mean, a staggering amount of heat. I would have to calculate it out, but more than tripling the world's population could potentially change the climate. Keeping them packed into tiny, close-together spaces would be like dumping chicks into a radiator; it would be lethal unless you had a fairly sophisticated way of diffusing the heat. Perhaps they convert it into mechanical energy? It would help justify my "why didn't the government just kill off a huge section of the population at once when they saw things were going to go baby-mad" questions, if the people had a Matrix-style "copper-top" use. The heat would still have to go somewhere, though.

I think Larry Niven touches on this issue in the Ringworld books -- his Puppeteers are incredibly numerous and don't get out much, so they have much of the same problems. You may want to research this topic for "the old solutions," because the practical (not to mention eco-biological) unreality of hyper-overpopulation is an issue that comes up in science fiction on a very regular basis.

I'd love to read the finished product.

Also, they would generate more heat, which would exacerbate the previous comment on the body heat of the people.