Genre is for Marketers

Prison planet as a banishment planet--interesting idea. Although, it doesn't make so much sense to me that an advanced culture would use a single planet, and all of its resources, for one single crime. Or, let me restate that--I don't see an advanced society using multiple planets for one crime each (if that's what you were saying). I could imagine enclaves on that planet, or a larger population of one type than another. Or, were you saying that the only event that sparks banishment is telepathy? That's the only "crime" that is deemed extreme enough to banish people? In any case, the telepathy idea is great. I think we should play with that and see if we can get any traction.

But what if the telepathy people were having to live on the same planet with murderers and rapists? (by the way--by sexual offenses I wasn't thinking of sexual orientation, although I like that interpretation, but I meant more like molesters of children). What if the telepaths had to defend their turf, what would their society look like? Would they form alliances? What would the politics look like? Would there be rapist nations? Murderer countries? Boy, does that raise issues of intolerance and old-world cultural bigotry.

Also, given variations in nature, I would imagine that telepathy would be stronger in some people, and less strong in others. And the focus would be different--just like the locus of attention can be narrowed to filter out the external stimuli around us every day. Without that, it seems that we would have a society of severely autistic people. Imagine telepathy in today's world: we'd have the nosy neighbor woman using telepathy to spread rumors. We'd have guys on the make trying to use telepathy to score, only to be shot down by more telepathic women. We'd have religious people using open telepathy to prove that their hearts and minds are pure. We'd have liars who use telepathy to send many mixed messages about themselves, to confuse people. Or, is telepathy not about sending at all but about receiving? You can't broadcast anything, but people can just read your mind? How accurate is the read, then?

What are the courts like in telepathic society? What are the cops like? How wide is the range of telepathy? Can anybody ever escape? Do telepathic mothers tell their children that they can only play as far as the mother's telepathy reaches? How do telepathic wives cheat on telepathic husbands? How do telepathic husbands hide their homosexuality from telepathic wives? The answer to that last question would seem to be, "they can't," but then what about people who hide great truths from themselves? Do telepathic people have a greater insight to other people's plights than they do themselves, or is telepathy tempered by the same messy thinking that constitutes our minds? Do telepathic people rely on others to tell them how they should live? Do they get other people's thoughts confused with their own? How do they intermingle--at what point are they not individuals, and become the Borg? Are there telepathic "Chatty Cathy's?" What's the telepathic equivalent of the dude who sits on the couch and grunts in reply to any question?

Can telepathy be targeted? Can I read one mind around me, or do I have to read all the minds? Is it trainable, like a radio dial, or is it a flood of messages like the floor of the NY Stock Exchange? Do the thoughts compete? How does one stand out?

All these questions are just leading to my need to understand the rules of the game. If we define those, it might make our world more interesting. Although, we are raised with the specter of having to visually show people's thoughts.

But our hero: the idea about telepathy raises a few ideas. Either we have a messiah story of sorts (ala Harry Potter, or the Matrix) where a child is born who has the power to block people from reading his mind, but he can read others, and therefore solve societies biggest problem. (Note: I'm using the he pronoun for convenience, this child could also be a girl--although we will need a love interest, and the sex of the child would lead to different dynamics there).

or

We have a Chicken Little story of sorts, where a seemingly ordinary--or better still, downtrodden--kid notices something--like that the Prison Planet is no longer guarded, or that some large cultural assumption is untrue, and the trouble that this person has trying to convince the society that they are right.

I have always liked messiah stories, personally, they are resonant beyond culture--the basis of many superhero stories. But, we would need to build a world with strong enough resistance, that the appearance of the messiah is inevitable. Which is not to say I'm against the chicken little idea.

Of course, that leads us to think more about the planet itself. Is it guarded, and are the guards on the surface, or maybe in satellite space stations? Are the guards robotic? How old is the Prison Planet? What if a society picked a prison planet for their telepathic outcasts, and it was already populated by another sentient race? Not to get to Star Treky here (the rocks are communicating with us, and they challenge our concept of sentient races! Don't hurt the rocks, you goddamn miners!), but a race encountering another race is always good. What if our group is the first group of banished? What would their pioneer life be like? What if they voluntarily went to the planet? Sure, that wouldn't be a prison planet, but I don't want to be closed to a great idea, even if it twists our original spark.

Finally, I made the quip yesterday about sci-fi. It could have been my lack of thinking clearly, but it's also because I just don't care about genre. Genre is for marketers to tag the movie after we write it. I have to be careful, because as soon as I say "Oh, we're working in sci-fi," then I'll immediately start limiting myself to things that I think that genre contains. If we need to, we can constrain later, but I need to remind myself to push the boundaries early on.