Round 4.2 [Chimerica v. The Atheist] posted by kza

Chimerica (Shockah rank: #4, Burley rank: #5)

v.

The Atheist (Shockah rank: #4, Burley rank: #1)

C30, C60, C90, GO!

Remember when I said I wasn’t going to look at Burley’s entry before I wrote my own? Well, I already fucked that up. I got wind that Burley put up a new post, and was so excited that I jumped in and read it before I realized I said I wasn’t gonna. Turns out my excitement was justified — it was a great post that really got to the heart of both ideas.

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.

Pros:
True story: I didn’t realize the pun in the name until several hours after writing the blurb. But of course, once I saw it, I realized that the idea of a chimera, an illusion, had to be a key theme of the story.

Anyway, this, or something like this, needs to be written. I can’t think of a better way of dealing with, and expressing my anger and frustration with the Faux News, jingoistic side of America that dominates the discourse. It’s also our only “alternate reality” idea, and I like those a lot.

Oh, and because Burley requested it (and this another off-the-top-o’-my-head deals): intro of Chimerica > intro of our main character, a family man who’s just lost his job > his wife has a business that deals with the Chinese (clear rip of Dick’s The Man in the High Castle — of course, the same could be said of the idea in toto) > his daughter is studying in China, and is dating the son of an important official > daughter is under pressure to keep the sordid details of her family hidden; she could marry this guy and pull the family out of the hole they’re in > his son, 17 or so, is distant to him > terrorist attack on Beijing > family man suspects oldest son of being in a terrorist cell > wife’s business suffers > daughter’s relationship suffers > man can’t find job > Chinese invasion of America > there’s a curfew > there’s violence on the streets > family man discovers that son really is in a terrorist cell > family man could turn son into the authorities > decides not to > daughter, in order to salvage relationship, turns in the son > but the son’s cell goes through with plot > Chinese respond with a nuke > The End. (oh, and > wife something something, in the middle there, somewhere.)

Cons:
My god, this would be fucking hard. The sheer amount of research just to make it even remotely plausible is intimidating, to say the least. I’m not against research — although I think research should be primarily about making the characters seem true-to-life — but in this case, the setting itself is a kind of character (in that you’d have to explain it like you would a character, unlike, say, a story that takes place in modern day, where it could be taken for granted) and I don’t even know where I’d begin. Burley at least has a smattering of knowledge about Chinese culture — I know nutzink.

I also see this as (despite my quickie plot, above) kind of a multi-character piece, not so much like Altman, but something like Traffic — we’d need to see a couple different stratas of characters, and I think it would be important to have at least one character be Chinese, so we could see this world from their eyes. I’m considering this a con because it seems more difficult to do than the traditional “one protagonist” kind of story, even though it would be super-cool to pull off.

But mostly, what my quickie plot reveals to me is that this is the ultimate Outside > In script — any conception of characters seem pointless if we don’t have a concrete idea of what the world is. Clearly, this makes me uncomfortable :-)

Inna final analysis, I don’t think I’m ready to write a script like this.

The Atheist
In a world devout to an all powerful god, one man uncovers exposes an unspeakable truth: their planet wasn’t carved by a deity, it was created to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the galaxy: their ancestors. What crime is so unspeakable that not only you will be punished for committing it, but all of your heirs will as well? And what happens when you find out that your captors are still watching your every move?

Pros:
What’s cool about this is that there’s the possibility of doing a SF story where there are no obvious SF visual markers — if you turned the sound down, it’d look like a drama. Call it Ingmar Bergman’s Contact. Or Ingmar Bergman’s Independence Day. (Did I hear the sound of heads exploding, out there in the Internet?) Except maybe at the end. I suppose there has to be an confrontation at the end between the protagonist and the aliens, just so we know what the truth of the matter is — but for the most part, it seems to me like a story that’s about one guy on a quest, and how that quest affects his relationship to his family, his society, and his sense of self. What’s funny to me is that while, on some level it is a skewering, on another level, all the old myths, legends, and creation stories are true — just not in a way that the true believers thought. We’re all the ancestors of intergalactic prisoners, and are condemned because of them? Sounds like original sin to me. I’m thinking he starts as a hardcore atheist, but comes across the truth of the situation, which puts him in a weird place, antithetical with both his fellow atheists and the followers of the various religions.

So yeah, to me, this is a “Dark Night of the Soul” kind of story, with an SF twist. (Note to self: should probably rent Bergman’s Winter Light post-haste.)

Another thought: maybe it isn’t important what the crime is. Maybe, this being aliens and all, maybe it’s something that’s simply not possible for humans to comprehend.

Another thought: it’s possible that our whole premise is actually a pull-the-rug-out-from-the-audience plot twist, not unlike, say, The Rapture.

Cons:
Still needs a character, still needs some kind of plot, some sequence of events to put the character through — but I’m not that worried. The biggest problem, I think, is how to present the evidence of the Earth’s true nature. And why is it that this one guy is privy to the truth, but no one else is? (The idea of evolution/mutation is a great one, and could possibly provide a clue.) Is the truth archaeology-based? Messages from space on a computer? Does the protag have a Melvin & Howard-esque encounter with a real alien? It’s likely that my usual refrain, “It’s The Character, Stupid!” will provide answers or leads to these questions, but it still bugs me that I don’t have a clear idea of how this is going to work.

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