» Fri Jul 06, 2012 1:05 pm And then you turn it into an IP that breaks best-seller records and makes you millions (again, though, probably not), only to have some [censored] sue you for plagiarism because your idea was coincidentally similar to a much older, far inferior work of the same genre?
Ok, I'll stop fooling around.
In This Thread, you post your creative ideas, and other forumers post existing works of fiction that use very similar concepts, likely executing them in superior ways and crushing your dreams.
I'll start:
I had a sudden idea about a post-apocalyptic survival story surrounding the inhabitants of a zeppelin. The apocalypse in question is more of the SHTF scenario that survivalists jack off to, with warfare reverted to WWI tactics as a weaponized space station malfunctions and spams the Earth with EMP, destroying all electronics. Meanwhile, rural society reverts to something like the Wild West or Middle Ages, with better guns and more bandits. This is just background stuff.
To escape all this, the characters live on a luxury airliner zeppelin. They have retrofitted the cabins and crew compartment as their home, and they crisscross the globe, finding remote spots to descend and scavenge food and supplies. They need to make a return on commerce in order to buy helium, hydrogen (if desperate) and fuel. The zeppelin itself is fitted with sails and has multiple airbag compartments. Bandits like to take potshots at it, so the crew has to climb up the side of the thing to plug holes. For this purpose the whole thing is draqed over with cargo nets for climbing, which the crew do fearlessly, even hanging upside down. They use hot air balloons for quick descent and travel and even have an ultralite and crop duster that can land on top via arresting cables. They grow crops in the sky by hanging agricultural plot platforms on ropes. They tend the soil by dropping low enough to dip the soil in freshwater lakes, sometimes floating on the surface for periods of time. They have to constantly manage the gasses that keep them aloft, the fuel that keeps them traveling any other than downwind, and food and water, of course. They can go anywhere they want, but descending is always a risk because of hostile villagers, marauders, troops, etc. They can always climb out of sight, and there are few aircraft that take to the air without electronics, but a big enough AA gun could bring them crashing down. It's a lighthearted sort of apocalypse, all in all, because of their ability to live above the turmoil of the surface world, to some extent.
So that's that. Any strikingly similar airship stories floating around? I haven't come across many.
