tuftears | Genies Reboot: Rocking the Cradle

Every now and then I get possessed by the odd urge to write something totally unsuitable. Around July 2014, after watching Star Trek: Enterprise, the Augment episodes specifically, I was annoyed that the writers had taken yet another short cut and turned supposedly "super-intelligent" humans into might-makes-right barbarians. "Surely, actually intelligent humans, even if slightly psychotic, would have evolved *some* kind of society that doesn't rely on caveman principles," I thought.

That fanfic (Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off) ran about 20 installments and petered out. The characters just weren't coming together for me, and with 16+ characters, I felt the readers were just getting lost in all the names as well. So I put it back on the backburner for a while.

Well, it's been three years but my unconscious is nagging at me to try it again. Even though I'm not really that keen on trying to write smart-but-evil characters, given the state of the world...

(though maybe I want to prove to myself that evil, once again, DOES NOT HAVE TO BE STUPID.)

For this rewrite, I'm making a prequel before the original fanfic attempt-- and I'm cutting the cast way down. Leave a comment here if you want to read about an idealistic mad scientist trying to raise eight super-intelligent and slightly (not drooling) evil children in a small colony on a barely habitable world well out of the Federation-analogue's borders.

There will probably not be a starship involved in this story, at least not until novella #3. There will certainly be an effort to try and master writing decent characters. I have a plot outline and notes!