# Totally genuine request: does anyone want to team up with me to write a scifi novel? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 1, 2008, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465 "2008-08-01T05:46:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Paladud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Paladud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paladud)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465/21 "2008-08-02T17:03:59Z")
I’m in for the discussion at least. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465/22 "2008-08-02T17:55:07Z")
One of my ideas for the brain implant/software update things (I’ve posted it a couple of times in a couple of places over the last 5 years or so) is the idea of Ideological or Psychological Hijacking via software updates. If brain implants were common, and controllable, then it wouldn’t be far fetched for it to be mandatory in Authoritarian Societies, and used as a form of Ideological control. The implant could control, suggest and even monitor thoughts contrary to the established Ideology. The ultimate Big Brother, right in your own head. Literal **Thought Crime**. Even in the “Free World”, look at the Patriot Act and other government spying and intrusion, and extend it directly into people’s brains. Now imagine a hacker organization, or even an enemy intelligence agency, hacking into the implants in a foreign society and implanting mass Ideological changes. Sixty million Chinese (or Americans) wake up and suddenly have a very different, perhaps even hostile, Ideology than their society, than they had the day before. Or an entire nation, or even just parts of that nation, temporarily disabled by destructive implant virii. Imagine wars fought this way, in the heads of your citizens and theirs. Implants becoming required for soldiers in the beginning, but potentially by the end, becoming forbidden as they are too easily defeated, destroyed or messed with on the battlefield. Thinking about this sort of thing makes me very happy that I live in this era, with all the benefits of better medicine and computers and everything, but not so far into the future that I have to worry about the above. ---
**Author:** ![Rubystreak](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Rubystreak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rubystreak)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465/23 "2008-08-02T18:04:53Z")
[QUOTE=Chimera] Or an entire nation, or even just parts of that nation, temporarily disabled by destructive implant virii. [/QUOTE] Read Neal Stephenson’s _Snow Crash_, if you haven’t already. It’s about this very idea, and it’s excellent. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465/24 "2008-08-02T19:50:37Z")
I’ll second that recommendation on _Snow Crash_. When the main character is named Hiro Protagonist, how can you go wrong? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [August 2, 2008, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465/25 "2008-08-02T21:33:09Z")
Here was my suggestion that I e-mailed: > [@](#): > > It’s about two or three hundred years in the future. In the late 21st century, quantum computers were perfected, as were cybernetic interfaces between the human brain and computers. To everyone’s surprise, linking a concious human mind to a quantum computer allowed users to manipulate reality at the quantum level. It isn’t pure wish fullfillment- energy/mass has to come from somewhere, and you have to be able to specify in a very precise way exactly what you’re asking the computer to do. Sort of programming as spell-casting (and woe to anyone whose program has bugs in it!). > > The result is a world that culturally is medieval. The top master programmers are like wizards, respected and feared for what they can potentially do. There’s a “Church” of sorts that tries to enforce limits on what’s allowed, as well as black sorcerers who seek forbidden power. The populace at large is superstitious in an urban-legend sense because much of the mage tech is beyond most people’s understanding, and the mage tech equivalent of things like evil ghosts, vampires and monsters are a real danger. People buy “charms” against these things like people today buy antivirus software, and hope for the best. Spirits are real in the sense of now-dead people who were copied into the computers, as well as non-human AIs and random bits of semi-sentient programs floating around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/totally-genuine-request-does-anyone-want-to-team-up-with-me-to-write-a-scifi-novel/458465.md?page=1)