I've done fantasy action and action horror in a sci-fi setting, but never straight up sci-fi. Last night I tried it. I wrote 10 pages, and I think that it might interest you too.
In order to make it sci-fi, I had to come up with futuristic elements, but not star trekish. The only way to show off sci-fi is the vehicles, otherwise its just a bunch of humans and humanoids hanging out. I don't know about starship travel, cause I haven't watched enough Star Trek.
So I thought, racing. Get 20 something vehicles on tracks on a variety of fictional planets. Vehicle drama isn't good enough though, so the racing is the backdrop.
I have never seen Fast and the Furious, Speed Racer or Taladega Nights, so if this is like any of these movies; trust me, I did not copy them.
Here's the story:
On a fictional planet, an "agent" (good fella, not your mysterious agent) is sent into an alien corporation to get an information cube from a database, then release a virus.
He gets a voice transmission, the "office" is sending what cube he needs. They send it to his watch. E-9
He does so, angry security ensues. He hops into is Black Mamba (futuristic racecar) and makes his daring escape with other futuristic racecars following him. A chase scene on futuristic neon streets. On another planet, no one can survive outside of the cars, buildings or compound like cities.
In the back seat, he discovers his girlfriend's little sister in the back seat. A butch little girl that heard all of the agent's adventure traveling between planets as a race pilot and wanted to tag along.
The hero finds the next city, (a compound like a giant hotel that can house millions of people). There has to be a space station like element.
In the parking garage, the security aliens catch up to him, but in the city, the guns and weapons of the aliens are magnetized to the ceilings.
City police appear to stop the bare fisted killing. The agent is safe for a night.
In his city room he contacts his girlfriend via visual communication. He has her little sister and he has a little business to attend to, but he will have her back in two days. He has a race to compete in on another planet.
He gets off the com with her, tucks in the sister, then contacts his boss, another woman. He has the information cube. What's on it? That's not for him to know. She will send another agent to pick up the cube before the race.
The little sister wakes up and wonders who that girl is? He cuts communication to hide the other woman. Tells her go to sleep, static overcomes the communication monitor.
He cannot communicate with anyone. Goes outside the room, everyone is having the same trouble. He comes back inside, the president of the alien corporation is on the com, he wants his cube back. The owner knows where to get it too. There is a race tomorrow and the president knows how deadly it is to be a race pilot, most do not survive two seasonal circuits.
At the race the next day on yet a different fictional planet, there is no life, just baron red desert and a single track. There are antigravity plates to make the futuristic racecars jump, magnetic bars to draw them into the barriers.
The tracking device in the cube points to the agent's Black Mamba racer. The agent has it on him to keep it safe. The agent waits for the man to pickup the cube.
Meanwhile, the man making the pickup is detained by security. They throw him in a room and the alien security enters and they are seen killing him with their bare hands and claws.
Afterward, one of the alien pushes a button and is encased in a hologram that matches the look of the pickup man. The agent waits the pickup man, but he never comes.
The president of the coorporation discusses with a shady racer of his own alien race to be rough on the agent with his cube. Do it for the good of their alien race, and because there is plenty of money for the agent's racer to be destroyed. The cube can be recovered from a flaming wreckage.
The alien racer agrees. On the track, it is a big elaborate deathtrap for 22 racers and five laps. Television cameras show the event across the universe where it makes billions of dollars and billions of watchers on everywhere but Earth that could care less.
After escaping death in numerous ways. The girlfriend's little sister watches from the crowd as the alien racer fails to kill the agent, but succeeds at coming in first place.
The race ends, and the agent steps out into the garage and finds the pickup man. He gives the cube away to the pickup man, before he gets a call from the office.
The pickup man is dead, his watch that monitors vital signs has reported him as dead for the past hour. The agent runs to get the cube back from the rogue pickup man.
The aliens appear and block him off. They have his girlfriend's sister with them. They will tear her in two if he doesn't give them the cube. The cube that he just gave away to the rogue.
What the agent doesn't know is the aliens he deals with do not have any hologram technology. A new alien race has that technology, along with the cube and what is in it.
I'm a huge fan of sci-fi, but only the good sci-fi. I know you probably don't care at all, but I'll tell you the things that make a good sci-fi story to me.
- Good sci-fi is just a regular story in an irregular setting. Bad sci-fi is when people try to force it.
- Good sci-fi plots are believable in their impossibilities. Bad sci-fi just has impossibilities.
- Good sci-fi does not need to have battles, antagonists, protagonists, or even dialogue.
- Good sci-fi makes people who read it forget that it's sci-fi.
Quote from: Holk on September 26, 2008, 10:22:32 PM
- Good sci-fi does not need to have battles, antagonists, protagonists, or even dialogue.
sorry what
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edit: I think it's pretty gr8
I didn't mean all of those things together, I meant it could lack any number of those and still be good. Ray Bradbury is my favorite sci-fi author, and many of his stories lack these things, and they're still awesome.
Quote from: Holk on September 26, 2008, 10:22:32 PM
I'm a huge fan of sci-fi, but only the good sci-fi. I know you probably don't care at all, but I'll tell you the things that make a good sci-fi story to me.
- Good sci-fi is just a regular story in an irregular setting. Bad sci-fi is when people try to force it.
- Good sci-fi plots are believable in their impossibilities. Bad sci-fi just has impossibilities.
- Good sci-fi does not need to have battles, antagonists, protagonists, or even dialogue.
- Good sci-fi makes people who read it forget that it's sci-fi.
This story... according to this list.
Check
Check
Check
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This story can be totally done without being sci-fi. This sounds more like a tv series. Instead of sci-fi and aliens, just make it illegal street racing and countrymen from Iraq.
Not being sci-fi would make it far more appealing, cause this is very appealing.
So I was thinking swords and motorcycles vs guns and racecars.
There is a reason why swords are used in science-fiction and fantasy, it is because fight scenes ensue and guns are so final and so easy.
Motorcycles would mean driving fight scenese instead of chase explosion scenes.
Just have the guys roll down their windows and then you'll have a fight scene while people are in cars.
She said there was no O2 outside the cars.
Motorcycles and swords would make it sound like Final Fantasy and every sci-fi thing. It would be better, just cliche.
Don't forget about blades that can cut through motorcycles and leaps that can jump tall buildings or characters that can throw motorcycles with one hands.
Best thing about sci-fi is that if you're setting it in some weird galaxy, you can make one of the greatest creative things like "from a planet where rocketships are like bikes to a planet where bikes are like rocketships"
=D
lol good luck
I still say make it a cop drama. Not some futuristic sci-fi thing.
Let me put it this way. This sounds like a TV-show. TV shows make the money. Sci-Fi ends up on Sci-Fi Network and virtually no where else. Cop dramas end up on major networks and make major money while Sci-Fi loses major money.
I think you're getting a little bit ahead of things here. Also, there are already a million cop dramas. You can't turn on the tv without a police-oriented show being on some channel.
I am finished as of a few days ago with this project. My publisher got back to me after a month of waiting. The publisher read through the half of the story I had done, the only real comment was, "sounds like the 5th element with an agent instead of a taxi driver."