newsonaut
Turning inner space into outer space
Monday, October 26, 2020
Planet of the old folks
In this story, Captain Gallivant travels to a planet where the aliens are humanoid and have a society similar to ours on Earth — but everyone is old. Some of them are hundreds of years old.
Gallivant makes friends with one of the inhabitants, and learns about how this situation came to be.
He is told that at one time they had babies, children and young people, but realized that 90 per cent of their problems were caused by them. Plus, 90 per cent of contributions to society were being made by people over 50.
Scientific advances meant everyone could become immortal, so there was no longer any need for replenishing the population. Medicine had advanced to the point where people could stay in good health for as long as they lived, so growing old was nothing to fear.
With the decision to stop having babies, the population gradually started aging to the point where there was no longer anyone who even appeared to be young. In fact, people stopped having birthdays because after untold years of living, counting the years became meaningless.
Gallivant is outraged, but there is nothing he can do. They can never go back to the way things were, even if he were able to convince them to do so.
He instead goes back to Earth and brings back a dozen babies from an orphanage, believing that if they saw children again it would remind them of how precious they are. And they might be open to boosting their population with young blood from other planets.
The inhabitants are taken with the babies, and insist they be allowed to adopt them. But they don't want to have to care for them. Instead, they hold Gallivant captive and force him to raise the children over the next 20 years.
On the youngest child's 20th birthday, Gallivant blasts off — never to return.
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Wednesday, October 14, 2020
Introducing, Captain Gullivant
Captain Gullivant, like Lemuel Gulliver of Gulliver’s Travels, journeys far and wide on voyages of discovery and adventure. But he lives far into the future — so far that it might be considered an alternative reality — and goes from planet to planet throughout the universe.
Technology has advanced to the point where you can build a spaceship capable of going anywhere within a few days. You don’t buy the spaceship, because resources are so abundant that they have become free for everyone. The knowledge required to build such a craft is also freely available.
Captain Gullivant is not actually a captain. There are no ranks in this far future. Everyone can be anything they want to be. “Captain” is his first name, which was bestowed upon him by his parents. Many people change their names in this far future, but “Captain” has a special meaning for him. He is inspired by the last two lines of Invictus by William Ernest Henley:
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
It’s not clear whether he takes true inspiration from the poem, as have famous people through history, or whether he has a more superficial relationship with the poem. His last name, after all, is a combination of gullible and gallivant.
But it definitely shines through in his actions. Wherever he travels, he is certain that he knows better than the inhabitants of the planet, that they should change to be more like him. And just as certainly, they prove him wrong, usually with irony or some twist of fate.
None of the matters to him. He learns nothing, always knows himself to be right, and moves on to the next planet in his travels.
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Friday, October 9, 2020
Planet of the human-eaters
In this story idea, an Earth astronaut travels to a planet where there is a highly evolved super-smart species that dominates. There are also humans, who are about as smart as we are, but their role is more akin to our animals, because they are nowhere near as smart as the dominant species.
As it turns out, humans are also considered to be a delicious delicacy, and much desired by the dominant species. However, because they also have a highly evolved sense of morality, they have devised a compromise that allows them to eat humans without killing them.
Humans volunteer to give up, for a handsome price, an arm or a leg, and have it replaced with a bionic prosthesis that is more powerful and versatile than a normal arm or leg.
Our human astronaut takes a dim view of this, and tries to persuade the humans that it’s terrible to allow themselves to be taken advantage of this way.
But the humans are quite happy with the arrangement. They love the extra money, and they love the high-tech replacement limbs.
The astronaut can’t leave well enough alone, so he keeps stirring up trouble — trying to convince the humans to rise up and revolt.
The dominant species gets wind of this, and sends a representative to meet the astronaut. The rep notes that while humans do get a lot of money for a limb, it is nothing compared with the riches for giving up a brain. Not only that but the brain replacement makes you super smart — almost as smart as the dominant species.
The representative, along with being super smart, is also super persuasive and convinces the astronaut to give up his brain. After waking up from his operation, the astronaut can’t believe how smart he is.
And he also can’t believe he ever thought there was anything wrong with the planet’s human-eating arrangement.
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Monday, September 28, 2020
My version of Man-Bat is a good guy
I had a story idea that turned out to be not as original as I thought, but I still think it’s worth exploring: Man-Bat.
After coming up with the idea, I heard it mentioned on The Big Bang Theory. So I looked it up, and sure enough DC Comics already has this character — a deranged scientist who takes a potion and turns into a bat with a man’s head. He causes all kinds of mayhem despite Batman’s efforts to help him. His wife eventually joins in as She-Bat.
But this is not at all what I had in mind.
In my story, hundreds of years in the future, an Earth astronaut goes to a planet inhabited by an intelligent species descended from bat-like creatures — just like humans are descended from ape-like creatures.
These bat people have built a civilization to about the same level as we had in the 1950s. They have a written language, transportation, cities — and, of course, crime.
One of them lives in a city where crime is especially bad, and decides to go on a crusade to stop it. He wants to put fear in the hearts of criminals, so he dresses up like a man — the most fearsome creature in this world.
Why so fearsome? This is the only creature that goes to war against itself, the only creature capable of planning its own destruction.
And so Man-Bat is born. He wears a cowl the covers his pointy ears with the rounded side-ears of the fearsome man. Man-Bat’s main weapon is his ability to tell lies. He turns this power around for good, so instead of using the lies to cheat people, he uses them to convince bad people to change their ways.
Our Earth astronaut is fascinated by Man-Bat. He’s actually kind of appalled that human traits are being used this way, and winds up showing himself to be every bit as untrustworthy as his kind is reputed to be.
The astronaut goes out of his way to sabotage Man-Bat, and in doing so becomes a villain. Of course, Man-Bat, being the good guy, wins in the end, and our astronaut is rehabilitated. He lives out the rest of his life on the bat world, doing everything he can to make the lives of his fellow citizens better.
A happy ending.
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