Brass Tacks

Like probably a lot of people, my best ideas seem to come to me at the worst possible times: in the shower, trying to fall asleep, oral sex. (I kid on one of those.) Last night, while watching The Simpsons Season 7, Disc 4 for the umpteenth time (The Simpsons is a sleep-aid around my house), I began to think about how to contribute directly to this Prison Planet idea. I came up with some good ideas. And then I fell asleep.

So now I'm going to try and reconstruct those good thoughts and see if there's soup in 'em. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to reconstruct the witticisms they were couched in. (I'll probably recapitulate a lot of what Grymz said already in the first post about the Prison Planet, but I think it's a good idea to go over stuff continuously -- I find it's difficult to find something truly new unless the old is as familiar as your own body.)

Okay, so this is a Prison Planet. This indicates that we're dealing with some kind of galactic empire. Now, some knowledge of this galactic empire will probably be necessary at some point, but right now, I don't care. Not important. The galactic empire can go fuck themselves for the time being. Right now, all I want to know about is the Prison Planet. (And ideally, the Prison Planet, what it's about, why it's there, will give us clues as to the character and makeup of the galactic empire.)

Now, if we have a planet that's devoted solely to being a place of incarceration, that suggests two extremes: That it's basically the prison for the empire, and the prisoners are there for every possible type of crime, or that the planet is for one particular type of prisoner, one particular type of crime. (Obviously, there can be middle ground between the two extremes, but talking about the extremes is better suited for my purposes at this point.)

Which, if forced to choose, is the better choice? I'd prefer to go with the second. It's simpler. It raises more questions than it answers. If we went with the first one, and know that it's simply a prison like any other, but only on a planetary scale, then I think a lot of interesting possibilities are closed off. (Not all, just a lot.) But if it's only one type of crime that is being punished on this planet -- that's more interesting. What kind of crime needs its own planet to successfully incarcerate its prisoners? I have, what I hope, are some interesting ideas for that, but let's go to the next level of Prison Planet design.

The next big choice is: Is there an infrastructure and bureaucracy that runs the prison? Or are the prisoners left to fend for themselves? (And if they fend for themselves, have they recreated their own civilization?) Of course, there's a whole spectrum of in-between here that's possible, but, to get started, I think it best to pick one extreme and subtle it out later. If were to choose, I think I'd go for the former -- my predilection, in this case, is for a story that was more about the use and delegation of power (think Abu Ghraib) than one that was more about the sociological workings of a world, which is what the second indicates to me. (Normally, I'd be all for the second one, but I think I'm more into that when it's based on the real present or past, not made up out of whole cloth.)

(And it should be noted here that none of these opinions are writ in stone; in fact, right now, they're more like passing fancies. If someone can come up with a killer story or character that needs "the prisoners fend for themselves" world, then by all means.)

Finally, the last major choice at this time is, what kind of crime puts a person on the Prison Planet? I've already thrown out, for now, the idea that all crimes are represented on Prison Planet. So what is it that condemns someone here? Burley listed some of the possibilities: Rape, murder, sexual offenses (which I assume by which he means something like sexual orientation), political expediency. None of these quite work for me. They could if someone has the right spin on it, but right now I'm not seeing it. None of these seem extreme enough to require their own planet (which, admittedly, is a problem because of my own choice.) And this is one of the things that hit me last night:

What if the crime was a disease?

That would go a long way in explaining why they have their own planet. It's almost more like Quarantine Planet rather than Prison Planet. (It also makes me think how this could end up a SF remake of >Papillon, which I'd definitely watch, but isn't really what I want to do here.) So all these prisoners could be afflicted with Space AIDS or Space Leprosy or Space Asian Bird Flu or what have you, and, in that case, the Prison Planet would seem (seem) to be just as beneficial for the prisoners as it would be for the rest of the empire, assuming that they were treated the same way we treat people who suffer from disease.

The major problem with that idea is, of course, that having a disease, while unfortunate, isn't usually a crime, unless we're talking Super Draconian Empire. Also, disease usually = death, so all these prisoners are doomed to die. There's potential there (Prisoner doesn't want to die on this rock and tries to escape to another planet where it's said there's a cure), but it's kinda getting away from the whole Prison Planet idea and what it represents. But then I had another idea. Or rather, I decided to steal blatantly from Douglas Adams:

What if the disease was telepathy?

Mass telepathy would really fuck a nation up, in a lot of ways. It'd be almost impossible to keep political and military secrets. It'd be almost impossible to keep personal secrets, infidelities and such. And as Douglas Adams explained, being stuck around a bunch of telepaths would drive anyone insane. (IIRC, Adams suggested that one telepathic race invented incessant small-talk to maintain sanity.) And, just to make things more interesting, what if it was a disease that was really hard to contract? What if you had to more or less make a conscious choice to contract it? Well, there's your crime right there.

That's a lot of writing for what amounts to be a few small ideas. I have some more (including an alternate disease) but I'll stop now and wait for feedback. Ball has been passed to Burley.