Story Ideas: How About Some Non-Evil Aliens?

Story Idea Smorgasbord: quick plots with no real fleshing out of the details.

An alien scout spaceship arrives in orbit in early July 1945 and observes the Trinity nuclear test. It begins to track movements of fissile materials on Earth and observes the atomic bomb's transfer to the air base on Tinian. The aliens, having lived through a nuclear war on their home world, respond by using an armed orbital re-entry vehicle to shoot down the Enola Gay on August 6.

Variation on this theme: A human deep space exploration vessel encounters a civilization on the verge of developing its first atomic weapons (in the middle of a war) and must decide whether to not interfere and allow it to be dropped on a city or to prevent it.

Same story, but told from different perspectives (1st version is told from the homeworld perspective, 2nd from the spacefarers' perspective).

Another variation: aliens arrive in orbit in late (December) 1944 by which time most of the German death camps have already been overrun by the USSR and destroyed. Thus, when they observe the world, they see Japanese internment (not to mention continued bombing of the home island cities) from the USA, Gulags in the USSR (and Red Army atrocities in Eastern Europe), and colonial oppression from Britain. They conclude that the Allies are the "bad guys" in the war, and intervene on the Axis' behalf.

That's all I got for now: pacifist aliens. I'll post more when I come up with them.

Story Plots: Judaea

The holiest site in Judaism is the Temple Mount, the place where the historic Second Temple (and probably the first one too - I'm not certain) was built. The Jewish faith says that when the Messiah comes to save the world, the Third Temple will be rebuilt.

Trouble is, the Temple Mount is now the site of one of Islam's top-five holy places, the Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock (where Muhammad ascended to Heaven and blah blah blah).

There are some modern Israelis who say that since Israel possesses the Temple Mount, they should destroy Al-Aqsa and build the Third Temple, a move likely to cause war with every muslim nation on the planet. The Israeli government has a number of excuses to not do this, one of which is that only a perfectly red heifer can be sacrificed there - and they don't have a red heifer.

The story of Judaea (is mostly planned to be a flashback, but...) picks up when a team of Israeli genetics experts create a perfectly red heifer and declare the time of the Messiah to be nigh. The upcoming Israeli elections suddenly take a radical swing following mass euphoria amongst many religious and semi-religious Israelis and the newly convened Knesset votes to rebuild the temple. A distressed secular Israeli Air Force commander, the heads of Mossad and Shin Bet, and many secular Israeli army commanders stage a putsch to prevent this (re-basing the government to the more secular area of Tel-Aviv) and deploy paratrooper regiments and air defenses around the temple mount. Much of Israel is outraged by this and the West Bank and significant parts of Eretz Israel break off and form the Republic of Judaea. Jerusalem remains in army control, but a strong Jewish insurgency against the Israeli army builds up, and mortar attacks even begin on the Temple Mount in an attempt to destroy the Dome of the Rock. Palestinians stage a mass uprising in the West Bank but are beaten down by the gloves-off Judaean Army (composed of regiments of the Israeli Army that did not back the coup) and several massacres occur. In response, Syria and Iran attack Judaea. Judaea and Israel sign an accord and beat back the Syrians and Iranians (who distrust each other enough to seriously mess up their war effort), but a continuing battle over Jerusalem ensues. In the end, Judaean rockets fired from the Old City, where even the secular Israeli Army doesn't dare bomb, destroy Al-Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock. All Muslim nations attack Israel (all of it, since none recognize Judaea as a country) and most Western nations cut off aid and relations with Israel. Israel cuts a deal with the UN to forfeit the West Bank and East Jerusalem, with international control of the sacred sites. Despite inflicting massive casualties on the attacking Arab forces, Judaea is wiped out, and a Western/Israeli/Arab standoff ensues over Jerusalem. In the end, Israel reverts to a combo of the UN 1947 partition plan and the pre-1967 "Green Line" (with a few modifications like Ma'ale Adummim). Notably, Israel loses control of East and Old Jerusalem, which is to be governed by a UN-created interfaith council. The Israeli Junta resigns and Israel elects a new, secular Knesset.

Story Plots: Immortal

Given that I'm a math major and philosophy enthusiast, and only two or three people ever have gotten me to enjoy literature (shout-out here to my former English teacher in high-school, all-around nicest person ever to walk the Earth, who randomly gave me tea on cold days and made To the Lighthouse and Shakespeare (I would mention Tolstoy's Death of Ivan Ilych and the other one (can't remember the title) about a guy on a train talking about how he stabbed his wife (my favorite stories from that class), but I suspect I would enjoy Tolstoy even on my own) entertaining for even me, the most hard-headed and determined of Science and Math people - you can tell since I triple-nested parentheses in this shout-out) I tend to look for interesting plots in a book as opposed to writing, since I can't tell the difference between 'good' and 'great' writing (I can easily identify and discard boring stuff). I also tend to make up what I consider interesting plots (by the way, my all time winner for fantastic plot is Watchmen, with the exception of the Dr. Manhattan-is-God crap that never made any sense - 1984 is also quite good, as is Yudkowsky's Three Worlds Collide and the movie Blade Runner) and story-universes.

I will begin posting these up on my site. The first of these plots/universes is the universe of Immortal:

This is a story universe that takes place sometime in the 25th century. Space exploration and commercial development has largely been a flop, as has AI research. However, a massive and drawn-out biotech revolution has been going on since the mid-21st century. At the turn of the century (21st - 22nd) it was realized that every 20 years or so, medical technology expanded the average lifespan by 25 years - meaning everyone was expected to have remaining 5 years more than they started out with. This was hailed (rightfully) as a huge event - it meant effective immortality. This revolution reached a climax around 2200 (beginning of the 23rd century) with lifespan improvement of roughly 30 years for every 20 years of research.

During this time period, a huge number of political and demographic changes swept the world. For example, all the developed and most of the developing nations saw a massive burst in population since people were being born, but nobody was dying. By 2250, much of the world had declared birth outright illegal for economic reasons, with mandatory sterilization. Universities and schools closed down, with the occasional death being made up for by meager immigration from the Third World. Meanwhile, the third world continued to have normal birth and death rates since much of it was too mired in poverty to afford the expensive 'immortality' treatments. The obvious exceptions to this rule were the powerful families that dominated the third world. Realizing exactly how much the power gap between the oligarchs and the people had widened, and seeing the potential of immortality and ignorance to convince the people that the rulers were actual flesh-and-blood gods, bloody power struggles within these families produced a series of strongmen who ruled the third world. Each strongman was considered (because they were immortal) a god in his own country, and none allowed any other person, even family relations, to possess the modern western treatments. Thus the third world remained poor and underdeveloped, with the dictators trading raw materials to the increasingly flourishing and demanding 1st world economies in exchange for the immortality treatments.

However, by 2300, the immortality trend has begun to reverse - for every 25 years of medical research, only 20 years of expanded lifespan are achieved. The world is optimistic that a new technology can bring the world back into immortality, though, and things continue as they are. The medical revolution grinds to a halt around 2350, and all attention and resources are turned to the new technology. Then, in 2430, the new technology demonstrably and violently fails, just a few decades before the scheduled expiration of most of the 1st world's lifespan. Predictably, panic ensues, and people try to make denials, etc. The story picks up in 2450, with the major headline of the first natural deaths in the 1st world in 2 centuries. Shortly after, one of the strongmen dies, and rebellions and confusion sweep the third world. The story was to feature philosophical ideas about life and death (how would someone who for much of his life was convinced he would be immortal face death?) and a stonking great scene where a first world military force (employing hastily-created young mercenaries (created when immortality failed as a fail-safe for civilization), since all the real citizens are too old and frail) launches a military intervention in a collapsed third-world regime.