Yukarana Light

I had this idea yesterday - admittedly it's a very vague idea, for now. I'm just wondering if the premise for the story is worthwhile, or if I should go back to the drawing board. I'm always open to ideas, criticism and comments, so if you have anything to say about this, go ahead and say it.

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Evolution - a handful of people know about the accelerating evolution of their planet (and consequently everything on it), and are working towards the next stage of life on earth - even animals start to act differently, although the difference is subtle at first. Some of these people can talk to other humans telepathically, or even travel in spirit form. As time goes on, some people grow to develop telepathic links with animals - mostly cats, but with exceptions.

These cats become sentient/'free' beings - although they lack actual speech, they can talk to people mentally (telepathy) if the person on the receiving end is open to their message. They turn out to be at least as intelligent as humans, if not (in some ways) moreso, and offer to help the humans in their quest, for the benefit of both species.

Things go well for the following 150 years, and many more species develop sentience/free will, strengthening the growing base of accelerating evolution. However, this is only a small percentage of the population - and they decide to keep their new found powers as secret as possible from the rest of the world. The small group of evolved creatures grows quickly, and within a decade, roughly a quarter of the population total (in humans, and in some other species) have at least a slight telepathic connection.

Within a decade of this event, physical signs of evolution begin to show, especially in humans - the affected people develop 'third eyes', triangular holes in the forehead through which they are able to determine the thoughts and feelings of any other human, consentually or otherwise, providing that they clear their own mind of emotion. Also, the fingers of these more evolved humans are slightly longer, with a finer tip. When the evolved human is reading anothers mind, or talking telepathically, the ends of the fingers emit a soft green light, virtually invisible but noticeable to a trained eye.

As a result of this, the less-evolved members of the human race, who had been maintaining an unspoken truce with the more evolved humans, take these new developments as a threat, and confine the affected humans (and many of the animals, in which the signs are just beginning to show, although it's difficult to tell) to well-protected cells, where they run tests on them and threaten to execute them if they show any signs of rebellion.

Several of the animals remain uncaptured, and thus the only chance of escape for the humans and more evolved animals. They begin to form a plan between them, although they have to spend almost all their time completely hidden - the level of paranoia is such that the government has scouts positioned all over town, picking up any creature that shows signs of abnormality, human or otherwise.

The world government realises the threat posed by more 'evolved' creatures that remain uncaptured, and may one day overpower them - therefore, they decide to create their own form of evolved life to combat this threat. The theory is that this creature/race of creatures would not have free will, and thus would be entirely under the control of the humans. It would be engineered to look like the 'evolved' creatures, to slip into their ranks and destroy them from within. This creature, labelled 'Chimaera'* and hailed as the saviour of the human race by many people, was to have enhanced senses, the ability to understand human language, and walk on two legs or four. It would be able to shrink into a semi-feline form within four or five hours, and back into a semi-human form in the same time.

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*I'm unsure about this, but I decided to leave it until I think of something better.

I don't want to spend a lot of time refining and finishing the idea, and maybe actually writing a first draft of a story that could be based on it, only to find out the idea's bad.

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DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.

a15haddad

It sounds very convoluted.

What is the plot? All you have done is explain to us some futuristic universe. Who is the protagonist? From what perspective is it told? What sorts of literary value do you plan on putting into it? Who are some of the focal characters?

The entire world sounds interesting, but imagining up a radical universe isn't a story. You have to actually have a story present.

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"I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state of a small city." -Themistocles

"Conrad transcended all the rules. There have been, perhaps, greater novelists, but I believe that he was incomparably the greatest artist who ever wrote a novel." -H.L. Mencken

Yukarana Light

Well, it's not a very developed idea yet; this isn't even the first draft - just a few ideas about what the world of the story might be like. I was looking for criticism about the ideas presented here before I did anything else. I don't have an actual character cast or anything like that yet...

I suppose I should have organized my ideas more before I posted them.

__________________
DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.

a15haddad

Sorry for my harshness. But it is impossible to critique a world if we don't know the story that takes place within it. You may have created the most riveting universe possible, but with a poor story it is inconsequential. The point of an imagined literary universe is to provide a platform for a story, not be a story.

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"I cannot fiddle, but I can make a great state of a small city." -Themistocles

"Conrad transcended all the rules. There have been, perhaps, greater novelists, but I believe that he was incomparably the greatest artist who ever wrote a novel." -H.L. Mencken

MiloDaePesdan

Explain how that's in context with the evolution theory. In other words, how the bloody **** does that work? "Accelerated" evolution?

Evolution - all about natural selection working in the genes through interaction with the surrounding environment. It takes time to change, in that it is as gradual as a glacier and takes generations upon generations of species. How would you increase the speed of that?

(Evolution probably slows down the moment a sentient being is able to control his environment. Humans, for one.)

And why cats?

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Yukarana Light

It takes place in a slightly different universe to ours - "evolution" there is slightly different in that it happens over the course of the lifetime, as well as being decided by genes - so I suppose it should be called something different. At first, evolution in this other universe IS a bit like evolution here, but the planet starts to grow and change at a startling speed, so nature rewrites things a bit. Now that I think about it... maybe I was stretching things a bit too far... and the timeframe is fairly unrealistic. Thanks for the input, and sorry I couldn't explain myself a little better. I'm bad at explaining things.

As for why cats, well, I just like cats. That's all. It could just as easily be any animal.

This is just sort of a backing universe and some of the history behind it - there's no real story there at the moment. I was just testing the water before I started writing a story around this backdrop.

__________________
DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.

MiloDaePesdan

Explanations aren't what is important - it's having a reason to explain just it works.

Hmm. At this stage, I take it you're trying to build a world. Personally, I prefer worlds that enact the natural laws that we as humans know, despite the limits. I'm a bit of an empirical person - in that I want proof/a reason for something to work, even if it's on paper/theory. That way, you won't have any major holes in developing a world/story.

Effectively, you're playing god when world-building. Not that it's a bad thing, it's just that you have to make it believable. Physics laws. Quantum laws. The law of conservation of energy. Any sort of scientific law, as long as something doesn't conflict, will make your world more believable.

This idea of yours is a bit sci-fi-ish, which is why I've come off a bit technical.

Mm, so something in the planet is causing this acceleration?

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Yukarana Light

Yeah, it is. The creatures of the world don't know what might be causing it, though - they believe it to be either a god-type figure or the result of pollution, amongst other theories. I haven't decided yet which is the 'correct' theory - if any of them are.

Hopefully I'll refine my idea as I go along, and the end product should be more realistic... I can see where you're coming from with that.

__________________
DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.

shadowseer

You have a good basis. But you need a main character, maybe a possibility would be to tell it from two perspectives, a cat's and a human's. Or you could write the story several times, but all from different perspectives.

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The greatest irony in life is that no one lives through it. - Kurt Vonnegut

Yukarana Light

That's not a bad idea - I sometimes have trouble with characters and perspective, which makes me frustrated, and when I get frustrated with a story, it ends up in the story graveyard for a long time. Thanks for the advice, I'll definitely try writing the story in more than one way. Now for character designs...

__________________
DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.

MiloDaePesdan

Pollution? Now that's an interesting incentive. Won't work, though. *grin*

If the planet has something to do with it, a possible plot idea is to make the planet itself an entity/being.

Come up with a plot soon. This sounds a bit like fantasy now. Heck, just throw both genres in. Research a bit of general information on nano-technology for use on your chimaera. (Though "chimera" is supposed to be a many-headed dragon, like a hydra)

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journyman161

This was a link posted (I think in Writing Resources) that may help. Take your idea & run it through the first few stages of the snowflake process; It'll tell you quite quickly whether you have a story or not.

http://www.rsingermanson.com/html/the_snowflake.html

For anyone interested, this is really worth bookmarking; it has some great info. Sriously, check it out. I'm about to start my 1st try at it today. And it's free!

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*He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary - William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
*Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? - Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
*Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it - Moses Hadas
*He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know - Abraham Lincoln

Yukarana Light

That link's really useful - it should really speed up the creative process - I'm usually a really slow worker. Thanks!

__________________
DEDICATION

In the weakness of oneself is a strength, which nothing can bind, that endures even us. The incredible recovery and the urge to try again. To renew ourselves in the light of those who have been, who still are, and ask not. Who by their faith and suffering have made known to us, in our time, that the true real life starts here within us…

-Raymond Armin.