I'm not sure if you would call this a hobby, an aspiration, an obsession, a fixation, a dream state, or all/none of the above, but I like to dabble in writing.
I've written some poetry and a couple of short stories (haven't published anything yet), but I would like to get published one day. Need to do a lot more writing first, though, I reckon.
I have some ideas for science fiction, particularly a theme of stories that could be spread out over several episodes/installments (perhaps a series of short stories?), which revolve around a humanoid-like android which is a resident of a machine planet.
The android has feelings, thoughts, desires, likes and dislikes, etc. This is an android that has lived hundreds of years and has been through machine-virus epidemics, civil wars (android-style, of course), attempted invasions from a neighboring planet of less-intelligent robot-like androids (something like an earlier version that is now obsolete), etc., etc. This is one of my ideas...
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I have another idea of a futuristic private investigator, who was once part of a planetary police force but was drummed out due to some quasi-legal dealings which could never quite be proven. The police-officer-turned-gumshoe also occasionally midnights as a Paladin-like mercenary with his own interstellar cargo ship which HAS been used for smuggling cargo, people, androids, whatever... but don't tell anyone that. He wouldn't want to lose his PI license!
He is a character who lives on the borderline between right and wrong and can go either way at the drop of a hat, if there's money in it. He is a smelly-cigar-smoking, weed-chewing fellow who is the epitome of the *have gun, will travel* type. He's always trying to get a few extra light-seconds out of his third-hand cargo ship, for which he has to make all of his own parts because *they haven't produced that model in over a hundred years!* (but at least his ship is armed to the teeth with all kinds of weapons, and he is similarly armed himself, most of the time).
He is the kind who will smile at you and shake your hand forcefully, but if you do him wrong, he might quickly turn around and bust you in the teeth (or somewhere else) just as fast. Or if he's in a particularly bad mood, he'll just blast you with his laser pistol until there is nothing left but a few drifting atoms here and there. He knows the law inside and out, he knows the gray areas, and he knows how to skate around the law without getting caught (at least most of the time) -- the quasi-legal quality I mentioned earlier.
He's also the kind who will go out of his way to rescue a damsel in distress, then turn around and just as quickly go the other way and sell her to slave traders or kidnappers, if there's money in it. Basically, this guy is a private dick with a conscience, which he can turn on and off at will, especially if something is to be gained or a big pay day lies at the end of the road.
If you've ever watched *Firefly* on SyFy (on other networks it was called *Serenity*), he is like the mercenary captain of Serenity, only maybe ten times more so, as if he was crocked up on steroids, caffeine, speed and morphine all mixed together, blended, and served with a little sugar on top! (I don't doubt he probably has a drawer full of adrenalin syringes somewhere, just in case, and he regularly has his blood cooled, cleaned and recycled at a local blood-conditioning center, where they claim that their *patented* blood recycling process will make you feel 10 years younger...)
I think the best way to describe this fellow is this -- and you'll have to be up on your science fiction to grasp what I'm trying to describe. Our gumshoe is part Captain Kirk, part Sam Cogsley (Kirk's lawyer in one original series episode), part Klingon, part Terminator cyborg, part Gort, part Sith Warrior, part Darth Vader, part E. T., part Starship Trooper, part Harry Seldon, part sleazy prison guard, part gangster, etc. I think you get the idea. He's been around the solar system several times and lived to tell about it.
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Well, now you have a bit of a grasp about a couple of story ideas I have. Now the hard part is to organize my thoughts, ideas, plots, scribblings, hen scratchings, etc., into something that might be readable in some intergalactic language!
73 de Paul N0JAA/4
