The New Hobbit Hole

[Overtaxed]

Got it anyway! Nyah!

[Corin Stormhands]

What is Cartwright disease? Did you make that up just to distract me from the precious?

[Overtaxed]

You never saw Bonanza? Any girl that had the misfortune to be interested in a Cartwright boy bought it within the hour. Old Ben himself had 3 wives die on him.

[Corin Stormhands]

Oh yeah, I know Bonanza. In fact the flashback to Adam's birth was on this afternoon...

I remember the reference now.

There was a similar situation in my college. None of the boys died. But a certain, very well to do family (if I mentioned the product you'd recognize it) always vacationed at their home in the Bahamas. We always knew if the boys met mama and papa's approval if they were still dating the girls after spring break on the island.

Neither girl married a guy from our school...

[JenB]

Ah... to prevent the Galactic Overlord from ruling the world? Just kidding. The Galactic Overlord is to make an appearance in my story if I can possibly justify it. I'm calling it a literary reference. See, in my favorite novel by Robert Heinlein, The Rolling Stones, the dad and then the grandmother write this really bad space-serial cartoon, all about heroic spacemen and the "Galactic Overlord", and it's about the same quality I expect my story to be. But the grandmother, Hazel, has a great philosophy of writing; you just keep the action too fast and furious for the readers to notice it makes no sense whatsoever.

[Overtaxed]

Would the Galactic Overlord be Bob by any chance?

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

That has a bit in common with my potential plot

I noticed that! In fact, all three plots posted featured alternate worlds as a main feature...

I'm going to change mine! I'm going to do a space opera instead... first test of an interstellar drive goes wrong, stranding the crew millions of light years away from Earth...

Yeah, I know that's been done before, but mine is going to be different!

[Corin Stormhands]

...you just keep the action too fast and furious for the readers to notice it makes no sense whatsoever.

I have a feeling that's what NaNoWriMo is all about...

[Corin Stormhands]

Yeah, I know that's been done before, but mine is going to be different!

What, yours will have substance? If you're referring to Voyager, that would be different (even though I liked Voyager...)

[HairOfTheDog]

I once had a story idea... perhaps one of you well-read types would be able to tell me if it has been done or if it is actually a new idea.

The story is the life of a one dollar bill... or rather all the people it passes to in it's lifetime. bank teller passes it to a grandpa who give it to his grandchild who draws a happy face on it and his initials, and saves it up until he has enough money to buy a bike. The store owner has it and gives it out in change to someone else who drops it. The bum who finds it and uses it to buy wine. That store owner is robbed and it passes to a crook who uses it to buy drugs. A woman has it who is trying to come up with enough money for rent. The landlord passes it to someone else, and so on and so on...

I don't have any of it worked up, I just made up all those scenarios off the top of my head, but the idea is that it passes from hand to hand, some people are ordinary, some extraordinary, some buy simple things, some unusual, years pass and it goes all over the place, and ends up back in the hands of the original little boy a long time later, tattered and worn, but he recognizes the smiley face and his initials on it and wonders where it has been.

[Corin Stormhands]

If I suddenly bail, it's because the pizza is here. We're going to have pizza and watch Monsters, Inc.

I also got A Beautiful Mind and Fiddler on the Roof (so I can practice being a singing Hebrew...)

[JenB]

So... we should work together and write about an analytical chemist who's trying to solve the murder of a political consultant while lost in space in an alternate universe and fighting Galactic Overlord Bob?

[HairOfTheDog]

A Beautiful Mind will not help you sing in Hebrew, but it is a pretty good movie ;~D

[JenB]

That sounds fairly original... we have a picture book called "Paddle to the Sea", about a little wooden indian in a canoe who is carved by a boy in Canada, set afloat in the Great Lakes, and travels down to the sea... and the boy finds him, years later, on a beach in France.

[Overtaxed]

But I thought Lando fixed the hyperdrive!

[Corin Stormhands]

I once had a story idea... perhaps one of you well-read types would be able to tell me if it has been done or if it is actually a new idea.

I don't know about a dollar bill (but you can go to that "Where's George" website that lets you register where a dollar has gone...

But, I remember a book my fifth grade teacher read to our class. I think it was called "Hitty." It was about a doll ("Hitty") that was made I think in Colonial America. It follwed the dolls travels over about 200 years. That's about all I remember, except for the fact that it had us mesmerized.

But then, that was they days of black and white television and we were pretty easily amused...

[Overtaxed]

...and Galactic Overlord Bob wrote the acquisition software before his Overlord gig so the chemist was after his butt in the first place!

[Corin Stormhands]

Hotdog Smartypants would fit nicely in the keywords...

gotta run, pizza is here...

[HairOfTheDog]

But then, that was they days of black and white television and we were pretty easily amused...

Does that mean it sounds boring to you? ;~D - I have no intention of writing it... so even I don't seem too interested in it! I have just always wondered where money has been when I get it, and wonder what tales it would tell if it could.

[Bear_in_RoseBear]

What, yours will have substance?

Well, yeah... you see, the actual story isn't about the crew being lost... it's about why they're lost (it wasn't an accident, you see) and the choice each crewmember must eventually make... whether to live free in space, or return to Earth, which is run by a fascist tyranny.

Voyager and Lost in Space never had anything like that!