Imagine you can seamlessly travel back-and-forth to a parallel Earth that is similar to our own insofar as technology, geography, and nations but is mostly populated by different individuals. For example, there’s still a U.S.A where people speak English, but almost all of their artistic works are different. Very few creations like books, movies, paintings, etc exist in both worlds. Either the creator never existed in that world, or chose to pursue a different path. It’s random. There have no Picasso. Spielberg is a Mossad agent. And their Stephen King is even more prolific. So what would you steal to pass off as your own work here?
I’d steal scripts. Music is tempting, but it’s beyond my capabilities. I’d browse through their IMDb’s top 250 and find a few dozen well-received smash hits that don’t hinge on a particular sticking point in alt-pop culture or alt-history. These would be the most universal scripts. I likely wouldn’t even download the scripts. Instead I’d smuggle the movies back here and transcribe them. That way, I could also trace some pretty sweet storyboards for my director of photography. Once I broke into the industry (hard part), I would be unstoppable. Casting would be fun, as I’d be trying to plug in our actors into these unknown alt-actors’ roles. I’d likely struggle to keep the alt-cultural references out of my daily life as I became more familiar with their world.
“No! I need you to find me a young Percival Sweetwater!”
“Who!?”
“What, uh… I mean DiCaprio! A young DiCaprio type. Now get me my cafè ubuntu!”
“Your what?”
“Oh, you don’t have those. Right. Uh, how about an espresso with taro root syrup and steamed unsweetened coconut milk? Thanks.”
And TV. Imagine coming back with six solid seasons of the greatest show we’ve never had under your arm. The hard soul-grinding work of a dozen writers that you could simply pawn off as your own, and no one gets hurt.
Novels would probably be pretty easy to swipe and adapt, considering the relatively low cost (at least compared to movies) to edit the book for our Earth audiences (e.g. instead of the hero being a veteran of the Canadian Incursion Into Maine of 1962 and the Bangor Massacre, he’s a Vietnam vet who was in the Mai Lai Massacre) Just make the edits and find a printer.
You could also just copy the stuff wholesale and sell it as an “Alternative Earth” series.
“In a world… where there was no WW2… where Hitler immigrated to the US in 1935 and became a chef in Brooklyn… where Lisbon was destroyed in the Portuguese Uprising of 1995… comes a love story… in a 2010 that never was!”
Patents. Inventions and clever technological ideas. Whatever’s really hot on their “As Seen on TV” consumer ads. Vegematic hair-brushes, or whatnot.
Also…I’d sell them as many ideas as possible from this world! (This works even better if you can select a world that has, say, the equivalent of 1950’s tech. Or perhaps 1850’s. I don’t know if it would be really profitable to go much farther back in time. Introducing gunpowder to the Roman Empire might be fun…but it would involve an awful lot of real work. But “inventing” the telegraph and selling it to Gustavus Adolphus would be a real hoot, and relatively easier.)
Meanwhile, stealing their comic books would be tempting. The advantage is that it’s a dependable, periodical commodity that’s really easy to counterfeit.
(I also want to say that I would prefer to try to set up voluntary trade of commodities, rather than stealing anything.)
Good question - would it be safe to assume that for the purposes of the exercise, their equivalent to the whole Harry Potter series would be recieved just as avidly as our JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books? Like if they had a middle aged guy that suddenly discovered that he was able to read minds because of a bash to the head, and their version of the series had 7 books and got turned into 8 movies and sold millions of copies of both book and movie, and McFelafel Yippie Meals it would be just as popluar in books, movies and Burger King kiddy meals? If so, I would snag their version of both books and movies, and a complete set of their tie in products to also give me templates for my burgeoning empire.
If it was a SF alternate universe with the equivalent to Bujolds Beta Colony, I would steal the uterine replicator technology in combination with the cloning and gene cleaning [in that universe it is sort of a package deal more or less - you can go in and have a set of replacement organs cloned to replace your on defective organs, all the way up to having yourself cloned and your brain transplanted into a brand new cloned and force grown to adulthood body, or cloned and raised for 18 years if you have the time to wait. I could get into having a few new organs cloned for myself, a new pancreas would be spiffy! and mrAru and I could have our kid with any genetic problems corrected and not have to worry about me dying from the pregnancy.]
Though I have to admit, if they had space flight, it would be spiffy to steal the tech to create real space shuttles that take off and land and are just like airplanes.
I’m grabbing World of AltCraft. 15 million Alternate Earthlings can’t be wrong. (Postmodern Warfare 3 is just too weird, on the other hand. I don’t even know what the hagfish is for.)