New science fiction idea that needs some feedback, please.

R

rajjaskaran

Member
In the future, for some reason, humans are no longer able to feel the expressions of love, happiness, or any positive feeling, and can only display feelings of sadness, anger, and fear. Not only that, but each human born only exhibits a certian emotion: either fear, anger, or sadness. The people who exclaim sadness are considered the "highest class" while the ones who exhibit the emotions of fear or anger are placed in mental rehabilitation camps, as they are considered insane and underdeveloped.
The "furons," as they eventually become known as, eventually begin rebelling in their institutions, and numerous rebel groups from these institutions begin escaping and bombing the cities with the "high social class."
The story deals with Jacob Leon, a resider of the "high class" who eventually begins assisting a rebel group leader named Stacy, and by doing so, begins falling in love with her, the first to feel this emotion in the last 100 years. When Stacy is captured by the government for her brain to be erased, Jacob attempts to save her, and from this, the government finds out about his emotion of love, and are perplexed by this occurrance, since no one has been able to experience in over a century.
Not only is this found out by the government, but by millions of people across the world, who are desperate to have their lives altered through positive feeling.
Jacob and Stacy's love is also found out by a local scientist, who apparently was the one responsible for the epidemic in the first place.
 
"humans are no longer able to feel the expressions of love, happiness, or any positive feeling" - ok, but then why are the furons so obviously proud of being furons and how can the rebels feel enough compassion and empathy and loyalty towards each other to work together? And I'm not clear how 'sad' people would repress 'angry' people, I'd have expected the angries to boss everyone else around - although presumably no one would have much difficulty repressing the fearful people who would just cry a lot :)

I think you'd have more success with a society which has repressed all expression of one emotion for the supposed common good, the irony being that they believe they've succeeded but in fact that same emotion just keeps popping up elsewhere in another form. This has most commonly been seen in our history where sexual feelings have been repressed.
 
Though I know little about the story it just really sounds drab and boring. Long dramatic science fiction movies without action don't seem to get made.
 
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Snazzy Flapper said:
Though I know little about the story it just really sounds drab and boring. Long dramatic science fiction movies without action don't seem to get made.
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That's a pretty child-ish view on this. Although I'm not a fan of science fiction, I do acknowledge that they don't just have to be mindless explosions and violence. And "without action"? depending on how this dude wrote it, this could be the most action packed flick of the century.


A film with the premise of "John lifts a cup" could be the biggest, most action packed movie of the century. So could "Tyrone feeds his dog" and "Terry does the dishes". The amount of action in a movie just can't be measured by the premise.



Not to be a dick, just had to point that out.
 
I liked your concept from a couple of days ago much better rajjaskaran. It seemed similar...but I could really see the story developing in my mind from your description. I would hash that one out some more and stick to the basic premise you had set up- it sounded(s) very promising!
 
I'm sorry, I forgot to revise a certain concept in the idea - the furons don't rebel, they become insane, and break out of their institutions. This adds to the chaos already happening in the world.
Remember this happens in the U.S.
The rest of world has already fallen in chaos from the "angry people"

I have decided to alter the idea a bit and say that the "high class" consists of a group of people who can't experience any of the three bad emotions, and just live life for the sake of living it. They are considered the most stable.
The people who exhibit sadness are considered the "low class" and are placed in seperate districts, where many of them commit suicide.

How is this?
 
Why not just chuck all of the bad emotions in one camp? The saddies will be persecuted by the angries, and the fearfuls will be hiding from them. That makes the jobs of the emotionless guys on the outside much easier (as they are emotionless they wouldn't give a f**k about what is going on in the camp anyway).

Why not simplify things even further though - for instance it might be an easier hook if you say that humanity has been split in two factions: 1 group have lost all emotions, and the other group has had all of their emotions amplified (such that they have massive uncontrollable mood swings). Love has been lost to both groups.
 
The thing that keeps raising red flags to me is that drama = emotion and what you're talking about seems to put a big dent in that equation.
 
I think this has some potential.

I don't know if it will help you mold your initial idea a little more, but when you said:

rajjaskaran said:
The people who exclaim sadness are considered the "highest class" while the ones who exhibit the emotions of fear or anger are placed in mental rehabilitation camps, as they are considered insane and underdeveloped.
The "furons," as they eventually become known as, eventually begin rebelling in their institutions, and numerous rebel groups from these institutions begin escaping and bombing the cities with the "high social class."
Click to expand...

I immediately thought that it might make sense that the upper class saddies might manipulate the angry furons and use them as their military and police force. That might explain a bit better why the furons were able to rebel. They have access and knowledge of weaponry and the capacity to use these weapons.

As for the ones that fear, I think it might be interesting to have them be the lowest class ones. Since their primary emotion is fear, what if they were the lower class or even slave class of this future dystopia? It seems that they could very easily be intimidated and manipulated if they are so fearful of everything.

That way you would have three classes instead of two, and a more dynamic social structure to your sci-fi world.
 
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well , where do you feel this situation is scifi ?
We already get the sad people getting the power (especially when they "sadly" explain to you that what they are doing to you is for the sake of society and of course... nothing personal...).
and we already got the angry people (those who cannot be saddly politically correct) going directly to jail or asylum because they 'interfer" with
public order....
the other ones are dead already since they just commited suicide a way or another..
 
I have decided to take a whole different route - - - - - Memories!

The title, for now, is Memory Eater.

In the future, people have established machines that allow memories to be altered, or memories to be created and put in. (the year is 2062). The people who use these machines are known as memory eaters.

The story basically is disjointed, meaning that it doesn't go from beginning to end ( it is a literary technique). In this futuristic world, a factory worker, Jim is suddenly hospitalized (starts from the end), as he feels he has committed a horrible murder of his younger son, who mysteriously disappeared one day, and the family simply suspected that he ran away.
After the son's mysterious disappearance, the family breaks apart, and Jim's wife divorces him, and moves away to a different home.
At his factory, he begins meeting an individual who calls himself Cerebrum, and introduces Jim to his drugs, as a way for him to cope with his sadness over his disappearing son. Over the next few weeks, Jim hangs out with Cerebrum on a daily basis, until one day, Jim mysteriously awakens in a forest, near a car that apparently has his son in it, but with him, a black figure, who shoots his son.. After encountering this, he buys a gun to terminate whoever this black figure was. He finds out that he remembered it happening (the whole event was a false memory, but Jim obviously doesn't realize this). From the clues of the memory, he begins searching for his killer, and every time he has a false memory, he gathers more clues as to who might have killed his son.
The rest of the story basically deals with Jim getting these false memories, and resulting in him becoming a murderer of three people, The whole story deals with doubt, suspicion, and skepticism over how his son was killed and who must have been involved. The police eventually catch site of him, and place him in a mental hospital.
Cerebrum, who is the one responsible for creating the false memories, walks away from this, and releases Jim's child (which he kidnapped in the first place) and eventually kills him as well.
the reason why Cerebrum wanted to do this because that is what his job is.
In order to live, they have to eat off of other's true memories, and to make the true memories vulnerable for their consumption, they create false memories using a device that they implant in a subject's mind, which are the drugs Jim begins taking. Once the memory eater has had enough to live on, the subject dies, so it is implied that at the end, Jim dies in his cell.
 
Allthough robots and high tech equiptment is becoming alot more popular every year, i think humans will still feel emotion in 30 odd years time. Alltogether though you'r idea sounds good. You may want to look on the idea on 2012! not that a big tidal wave will come and we'll all live on big arks, but it's actual the 'Emotional' and 'Paranormal' energy that will be changing! The paranormal world will be ALOT more open. People (as we speak!) who have a Phycic or paranormal side, are experiencing changes, like sleepless nights, or re-occuring dreams or weird phenomena happenings. i know i am... But anyway! yeah lol. Good idea on the whole!
 
Snazzy Flapper said:
Though I know little about the story it just really sounds drab and boring. Long dramatic science fiction movies without action don't seem to get made.
Click to expand...

Just wondering if you saw Moon, and if so, did you like it?

Not really any action in it, but I thought it was very well done. What's your take on it?
 
I kind of like this idea. It's really rough, but has some possibility if you put a lot of time and work into fleshing it out. A few things:


  • The local scientist who was responsible for the epidemic - how old is he if the problem started over 100 years ago?
  • Would it make more sense if the government was perplexed, or if the government actually feared the emotion of love (as a threat to their control), and so sought to stop the new alliance?
  • It seems like the alliance between the furon rebels and the sad people would be fairly secretive and subversive, so how would the masses get to learn of or see their blossoming love?
  • What do you call the sad people? The angry people are "furons". How about the "funky"? Or maybe the "dejected" or "crestfallen"?
  • What about the emotions of guilt, frustration, and grief? Or shame?

Anyway, keep mulling it over for a while. It's a kernel of an idea that's worth perusing.
 
You could also have higher up figures reacting negatively towards these newly discovered emotions. They might express anger and have to cover it up for fear of being persecuted by their own system. Or something...
 
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