Round One [Liber XII v. Rasputin the Translator] posted by kza

Liber XII (Shockah rank: #1, Burley rank: #8)

v.

Rasputin the Translator (Shockah rank: #1, Burley rank: #13)

FIGHT!

(Note: As fate would have it, for the very first battle, something that doesn’t have any set format and something I’ve never done before, I have to pit my two favorite story ideas against each other. What I’m saying is, expect this first entry, especially the “con” section, to be a little light.)

Liber XII In a world built to hold the accumulated knowledge of the universe, the monks of Liber XII tend to the databases from birth to death. But when an alien computer virus finds its way into the memory banks, the monks are imprisoned on a sentient planet that knows every way to control — every way to punish — and every way to kill ever invented. Can the monks stop Liber XII from destroying the universe?

Pros: Here’s what’s awesome about this idea:

I like the idea of a clear-cut villain. While some screenplays need a more nuanced antagonist, there are some where a straight-up, evil-as-hell bad guy works just fine, and this is one of them. And here we have an evil supercomputer that has control over a world and all its workings, and knows every method of torture and killing ever created. That’s scary as fuck, imo. (And yeah, it’s a lot like Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but I see this as more actiony, and a helluva lot more hopeful.) A story like this lives and dies by its villain, and this one has the potential to be a great one.

We also have an opportunity to create a really interesting, possibly unique world, what with the monks who are born and raised on this planet where they store all the knowledge of the universe, but presumably they never leave the planet. So they have all this info about life elsewhere, but they never get to actually experience it and live it for themselves. (Perhaps the protag has a dream of getting off the planet and seeing the universe?) And of course, it seems like the information needed for stopping the evil computer is located within the computer itself.

And that’s another thing: I see this kinda like Bester’s stories, where we set up some seemingly-impossible conflicts (hell, fighting against a friggin’ planet seems impossible enough) and then find some amazingly clever way of defeating them. I loooove stories like that.

Oh, and here’s an idea: to go with the whole Rush thing, it could be a rock opera :-)

Cons: While I think the idea as a whole is pretty interesting and kind of unique, it’s clearly built from the history of SF. There’s Harlan Ellison and Rush there, and there’s Isaac Asimov as well (I think; it reminds me of Foundation, which I’ve never read.) I don’t know if this is really a problem, but I can see how it could be. I mean, I certainly wouldn’t want to be sued by anyone. (Not over this, at least.) And part of me’s afraid of be tagged as an unimaginative hack because of the “scavenged parts” quality of the concept.

But that’s nothing to do with the story, tho. Biggest problem: do we have what it takes to create impossible conflicts (probably) and then solve them (speaking for myself, dunno). While generally I’m attracted to challenges in a script, a nagging voice in the back of my head is telling me that I’m not going to be able to deliver on this idea to the extent that I want.

But that’s not really about the story either, is it? Other than personal shite, I’m not sure I have a lot of cons for this just yet.

Rasputin the Translator In a World contacted by a sentient and potentially violent alien race, one man—bearded and wild eyed—is the only person on earth who can translate between the languages of humans and the language of the aliens. But this strange man is not only hostile to both sides of the debate, he is also untrustworthy, and possibly manipulating the negotiations to his own ends. With all of Earth being turned into a prison as the stakes, one government has a very limited time to not only unravel the mysteries of the alien language, but also the history of the interpreter.

Pros: This one’s awesome for a number of reasons.

As I mentioned earlier, it’s inspired by Roky Erickson’s “The Interpreter”, which I’ve wanted to turn into a story for years. (Reminder to Shockah’s brain: put some goddang Roky on the new computer.) Generally, that’s enough to keep me going for the long haul. (One could get lost in the near-bottomless depths of Roky’s crazy-ass imagination.)

This idea also reminds me of another great SF book that I should loan to you, Ian Watson’s The Embedding. That is also about comminicating with aliens, although it also involves the Amazon, natives to the Amazon and their rituals, kids with brain disorders, nukes, and French Symbolist poetry (!). So there’s definitely an attraction there because of that, and it would be neat to write a story that involves one man (and, as I see it so far, another person, probably a woman, who’s looking for him and then trying to deal with him) and the whole world at the same time. There’s a personal drama and then a world-wide drama that are linked. I’m not saying this is new by any means, just that that kind of structure intrigues me. And I love that the world-wide drama is linked to this Ted Kaczynski-esque, wild-eyed man.

Also, if we absolutely nailed the character of the Interpreter, wrote him to perfection… that’s exactly the kind of showy, Oscar-bait role that Super Actors drool over and try to get made. It’s the Hannibal Lecter, it’s the Marshal Sam Gerard, it’s the Aileen Wuornos kind of role. He seems hatable, but clearly has fascinating characteristics that grab me, and presumably would grab an audience. (Or maybe I find characters who are crazy and isolated but also brilliant immensely attractive — after all, this could also describe Obi-Wan.)

Another interesting thing: you said that “a government” is looking for the Interpreter (I know you changed it to “Translator”, but some things will die very hard deaths), but obviously not necessarily our government, which raises interesting questions: has the U.S. government written off Mr. I? Are they playing an angle, like Mr. I, who would ruin it for them? If so, which government is looking into Mr. I? France? Ireland? Zimbabwe? Canada? (That reminds me of another short story I read in an SF magazine a long time ago, but that’s for another time.)

Cons:

The biggest con for me is same as one of the pros: since this script will be public domain, it seems highly unlikely that anyone will actually make it. Therefore, spending a lot of time on what to me is an actor’s showcase might be silly or even quixotic. (Not to say it wouldn’t make a good calling card — I think anything we do will make a good calling card — but one that cries out for performance and uh, interpretation that it will never see makes me sad :insert tearful face here:)

But that’s all I really have for this, as well.

ONE LAST NOTE: Burley, if any of my extrapolations on characters or situations or ideas about these stories is different from yours, please be sure to talk about yours. Just cuz I went first doesn’t mean I get to set the terms of this debate.

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