In A World -- Google Image Challenge! posted by kza

For my last seven ideas for Ze Prison Planét, Burley challenged me to use, instead of randomly chosen songs, random images from the Google Image search for inspiration. To generate the images, I entered my birthday as a six digit number, and made my choices from the first page of results.

This is freakin’ hard. I thought Stevie Nicks was bad. I’m feeling like an all-day sucker :-)

(Actually, one of them is so incredibly perfect for the Prison Planet concept as to be ridiculous. Don’t know if I can do justice to it, tho.)

But anyway, here we go yo, here we go yo, so what so what so what’s the scenario?:

A. The Scabs: In a world designed by engineers to be a self-sufficient, endlessly exploitable resource for the rest of the known galaxy, robots toil tirelessly in the fields, the forests and the mountains, providing food and raw materials for a rapidly expanding market. But when a series of accidents destroys some of the mining robots, the rest of the metal workforce decide to strike and power off, leaving the humans that depend on the planet in the lurch. A taskforce is assembled to get the planet up and running again while a negotiator tries to get the robots back online. While the taskforce tries to relearn the long-forgotten principles of farming and manufacturing, the negotiator accidentally reveals the existence of the taskforce… and the robots, realizing that their existence could be usurped by the humans, decide to go on the offensive.

B. Cannibal Honeymoon: The Larsen Ski Lodge in the Colorado mountains is the most expensive and most technically-advanced ski lodge in the country, named “Best Place To Blow All Your Money In One Fell Swoop” by Ski Lodge Magazine in 2005. Mickey and Tammy are newlyweds on their honeymoon — but when the storm everyone said wouldn’t hit actually hits, the resulting snowfall traps everyone inside the Larsen Ski Lodge and isolates it from the rest of civilization. They have food, they have heat — it’s only a matter of time before they’re rescued, right? But days pass, food disappears, and the heat turns off — can Mickey and Tammy survive the other guests? Can they survive each other?

C. Chimerica: In a world almost exactly like our own, America has lost its place as the prime superpower, and China has taken over. Chinese language and customs have been absorbed into American culture, and have irrevocably changed the face of the country. The cold war between China and India is heating up, and when a terrorist act is committed on Chinese soil, the culprits are traced back to America. China puts a lockdown on America, sending in troops to root out the terrorist cells and throwing the country into a state of emergency. One family will witness everything, from the beginning of the invasion to the terrifying aftermath, and will try to hold onto one another as everything they hold dear is crumbles around them.

D. The Museum: In Iowa in the 1940s, in a world of small-town friendliness, small-town pieties, and small-town diminished expectations, Charlie and his longtime gal Thena (short for Athena) yearn to escape from their lives and find a place for themselves in the big wide world. But when Thena’s dad, Professor Lombardi, has a stroke, it threatens to undo his work on the proposed expansion to the town’s antiquities museum. Thena must take over lest the expansion be scratched, and Charlie sells his bus tickets to be with her. But there’s something mysterious about the museum that Professor Lombardi never told anyone — something both fantastic and dangerous, and during one long night in the museum, Charlie and Thena will come face-to-face with it.

E. Reminiscence: In a world where genetic and social engineering have eliminated violent crime and other offenses, there is only one punishable infraction: Nostalgia. In order to keep the populace in line, the past must be eliminated, keeping everyone in a blissful present-tense existence. But some insist on remembering, collecting and hoarding pieces of the past to keep it alive. Tom was the greatest of all them, blessed and cursed with an eidetic memory. But when he’s betrayed to the authorities, Tom finds himself on the prison planet, forced to find a way to survive, all alone on a harsh — yet beautiful — landscape. Can his knowlege of the past help him, or even save him? Or will he be prey to the predators on the planet, both alien and human?

F. The Angry Youth: In a world where America has closed its borders to everyone, and inside, the populace is forced to hew to the government’s every thought and deed, a catastrophe occurs: a meteor crashes and unleashes an alien monster that threatens to destroy the country — and the unprepared government is helpless in its wake. But there’s hope in the form of one cool cat: Stevie W., an outlaw teenager with a magic skateboard and underground cred. Unfortunately for Stevie, there’s more to this alien monster than just wanton destruction — and the government knows more than they’re telling.

[Okay, anyone of a certain age who had MTV back in the day should be able to recognize this ripoff. Sorry ‘bout that.]

G. The Exodus: In a world where the Earth is nothing more than a black cinder, the last surviving humans live on orbiting space stations, trying to make the best out of an impossible situation. Some are resigned to being the end of the human race, some think the Earth can be rebuilt and repopulated… and one scientist thinks he’s found a signal from an alien race. Are they really out there? Can they save the human race? But presenting the evidence will start a civil war in space, and threaten to end humanity prematurely.