The premise for my SF-story, thoughts?

[third_eye]

Hey everyone, I've been checking out this forum for the last couple of days and it seems like a great community so I decided to join.

I've been writing some shorts in the past and recently I've worked out this basic story in my head that I've started writing on, my first serious attempt at a novel-length story.
I'm writing in swedish (my native language) so I won't be posting any drafts, just the basic premise.

The story takes place some years into the future (I'll try not to set an exact year if I can) in sweden. The european union (much more united than it is today, if not quite the "USE") has basically embraced market economy as the solution to a stable society as "the free market will always reach a state of balance that a governement-controlled economy never will", as a character puts it. As the demand for higher profit escalates, some "outdated" laws we take for granted today have disappeared. Companies are in general less concerned with ethics and more with making money. The procedure of transferring minds electronically is now standard procedure. (I'm researching the technical stuff at the moment.) The problem is that no means of storing the human conciousness is available. This means that the only way to transfer one mind is to change places with another, something that has given birth to a highly capitalistic trend where the old/sick/crippled (but welthy) pay huge amounts of money to poor people in good health for a "mind switch" (essentially they trade bodies). At first this is believed to be the key to eternal life, but scientists soon discover that the "mental aging" is not in the physical neurons themselves, but a deterioration of the actual brain waves (this might be sketchy science but I'm hoping to make it credible.) Therefore, any one person can only move to a new body so many times before there is little or no evidence that the body is inhabited (basically a mental "fade out"). There is a measureable lower limit of brain activity when the body is impounded and re-sold at market price. All this is in the back-story and is worked into the narrative piece by piece. At the time the story begins, a political party called (roughly translated to english) the Free Trade Party (basically anarcho-capitalists) are slowly growing in strength all across the union, partly because they helped loosen up the laws surrounding mind transfer and thus giving birth to an extremely profitable industry.

Phew that's a lot of information, thanks for reading it all if you did, if not I don't blame you.

Moving on... I'm planning on using different POVs for different chapters.

The first POV character is a guy around 25 who's working as a door-to-door salesman at sweden's biggest "mind transfer agency" while trying to pay off his student loan.

The second POV character is a brain surgeon certified in the field of mind transfering, 40-ish, divorced and cynical, highly focused on money and working the night-shift because it pays better.

Finally, the third POV character is a young woman connected to a radical organization commited to disrupting the Free Trade Party at any cost.

The main plot focuses on the underground organization kidnapping the leader of the FTP and doing a mind transfer with one of their own, the purpose of this being to detonate a bomb at the party convention just before the upcoming elections. The actual procedure is performed by main character 2, the doctor, who is forced to cooperate at gunpoint and then killed. The thing is, he's found a way of storing a latent "backup" of his conciousness, rigged in a way so that when his life signs stop, his mind is transferred into the first available body (ie during the next transfer that takes place at the clinic.) This means that he basically kills someone else to make place for his own mind, and is from there on living in a body unfamiliar to him. He then starts looking into how and why he died and stumbles upon the political conspiracy. Meanwhile, main character 1 falls in love with main character 3 who exploits his naivety to serve her agenda and convinces him to play an important part in their plotting.

The questions I hope to be asking with the story are: Is it right to use whatever means necessary to fight what one thinks is evil? Should you accept everything that is democratically justified, however wrong it may seem?
Basically I want to explore the dangers and ethics of extreme market economy as well as a fundamentalism that seems justified through the narrators eye.

I have a rough outline for the rest as well but I'll spare you, at least for the moment


Thanks a lot for any feedback, it will be greatly appreciated.

 

[chrispenycate]

Since no-one else dares I (tentatively) stick the very point of a toe in the water.
The premise sounds good, and the "results justifying means" question, while hardly new, is eternal, ang does not allow a final answer (fuzzy logic; the response is invariably "it depends on the circumstances", and it will never be possible for a majority of humanity to agree on the threshold level, Furthermore, who can be sure that a majority carry any more moral weight than an informed individual?)
I suspect (from copy work in my speciaéity) that the loss of personality will not be from waveform damping, but steadily increasing noise, random information (or lack of information) building up until it swamps the original signal; thus, things learnt since the previous transfer remain clear, but childhood training (like the inhibition against killing or maiming your friends) would be quietly fuzzed out, until the being opposite you was sapient, rational, but no longer human - just the lead track, the underlying rhythm indistinguishable.
As to how it works out, that depends on the writing. There's enough information to make a book, but I fear I won't be able to help; I don't speak swedish, to be able to judge. The premise of the return of a straight capitalist mentality is chillingly feasable, mind transfer, while low probability (too much of "self" is memory, too much of memory is chemical) is far from being unthinkable, particularly if you're not trying to record the datastream, merely transfer it to another suitable substrate.
Hmm, the legal problems of the first patients undergoing this treatment (probably a tetreplegic or something medically equivalent into a totally mental defective body) in establishing their identity would have been considerable, but after a decade or so I imagine these will have been worked out; still, a whole set of potential new crimes is invented… still, invasive surgery, you suggest? So you couldn't do the exchange without leaving clues, if somebody thought to look for them.
DNA analysis, make way for brainprints.

 

[areader]

So people become fragmented as they transfer to different bodies and repeat the process...I'm a bit confused on this: how is the transfer not functional (the tranfer is incomplete: the bodies they transfer too are not completely functional and end up disabled or with mental incapacity/or incomplete in that they don't fully transfer in terms of a whole to a functional body in which case they are unable to function in a meaningful way: brain impairment?) What about accrued memory overload from several lifetimes? Would the brain cope. Would deletion be necessary to make room for further memories? Wouldn't it just be that person...with a superimposed set of memories...would they have flash backs and returns to the original set or an almost dual personality happening (incomplete erasure or the body taking over and reforming?). Can your memories and thought processes actually be you or is this just a 'simulated' you. I'm thinking you wouldn't fit...those incredibly complex rewirings that take place in adolescence that differ: people use their brains differently and have different connecting paths...the brain of another person is wired in such a way that I don't think you could:the way in which we associate and link thoughts,the parts of our brain in which we use to process problems may be different (left brained, right brained)...I don't think the hard drive fits the programming if you know what I mean. THose memories would have to be processed differently...not quite you. Then there is neural function...synapses...processing speed: can you imagine an aged or unwell person on neural overload? How much of you is DNA determined? I think perhaps you would have compatibility issues/transplanted memory rejections/incredible headaches....you would have to learn to be someone else in short...to fit the abilities and capacities of the body you inherit perhaps. Would this overtake money as a currency. How do others react to these people/do they become an underclass and shunned/what is the outcome for those people and society on the whole when things go wrong. Are they viewed as human and with rights. I see Right to Life movements, purists, political undercurrents and extremists within society. What are the economic implications: employment vacancies, money flow, population? How do the youth react? Just a few random thoughts.

 

[third_eye]

Thank you very much for taking the time to comment!

chrispenycate:
A lot of insightful stuff! What you say about the loss of personality from increasing noise makes a lot more sense than what I was going for, I'll look into it. In any case I don't want the mind transfer to be an eternal life kinda thing so something along those lines will be necessary. Also, I like (that's actually not the right word. I'm intrigued and freaked out by) the thought of the human body being recycled. As there is no "storage device" for the human conciousness and thus any transfer must be a two-way one (except if one of the minds are already "empty" witch would be the case with a recycled body), the act of a one-way transfer is equal to murder as it replaces the existing mind. However, it would not result in two physically different people with the same mind, as the conciousness cannot be "duplicated" into two simultaneously existing copies (which would probably drive you mad even if it could.)
Concerning potential crime: as visual ID has little or no use in a world where people swap bodies it has been replaced by a small chip in your wrist (kind of like the ones you put in dogs ears) that are used as ID, ATM-card, library card, you name it. These chips are updated when a transfer is made, and obviously this would have to be surrounded by a lot of security. The chip is also dependet on life signs, so you couldn't chop someones hand off and steal all their money; it would simply stop working.

areader:
You pose many valid questions. I'll try to answer them as best I can, if it doesn't make any sense I obviously have a problem with the story.
About the consequences of mind transfer and the motives for it: The basic idea is that both people doing the "switch" will be fully functional, at least on a mental level. It wouldn't be a quick procedure, they'd probably have to stay a while in a hospital while their conciousness "settles" in the new brain. I was thinking maybe physically brain altering medication to facilitate the adaptation process or something along those lines. An obvious problem would be how to make the actual transission; empying one brain while at the same time refilling it with another contents. Kind of like if you have to glasses of liquid, how do you make them trade places without mixing them? Still working on that part.
Concerning the motives, I'll give an example. Imagine that you are 20 something years old, in good health. Suddenly your brother gets a serious illness, one that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars over a long period of time to cure. Then a rich man in a wheelchair offers you 1 million dollars to trade bodies with you. Yes, you will be crippled for the rest of your life but you've been given a chance to save your brothers life. As both persons are still mentally functional they are treated no different than the rest of society, except for that age has become a mental definition rather than a physical one. The rich say it's a win-win situation (though a highly exploitative one) and the poor, who may be in desperate need, don't have much of a choice. People sell their bodies as were they any kind of possession. Obviously a working public health system would be better but that's not the way of the future. People with money take advantage of those who have none, and the greater the age difference or handicap, the greater the price.
A lot of people, such as religious groups, conservatives etc are highly opposed to the procedure, but the demand and profit are simply to high to make the idustry go away.

Hope this all made some sense and thanks again for your help.

In any case, you have both made me realise that there's a lot of research that'll have to be done before this story gets of the ground.

 

[timelord4]

Hello Third Eye.

I think your best bet is to use the scientific approach as your vehicle, (don't be too overawed by political correctness, after all. it's fiction/fantasy) have a lovely romance story painted over the top and chuck in some goodies and baddies to subtly underlay your personal opinions (ethics). (Global capitalism and exploitation). It'll work, just as long as your scientific explanations aren't boring, meaning you need to explain every little detail *g* I do that sometimes LOL, your love story appeals to the reader (buying public) and your personal opinions (ethics) don't SHOUT, but remain subtle and makes the reader think about what you said long after they've put the book down.

That's my 2c worth. Hope it helps you.

 

[third_eye]

Hey, thanks for your input.

Actually I wasn't planning on making my love story all warm and fuzzy, the girl basically uses the guys love for her to make him help them out and then he ends up dead. Personally, I'm kinda tired of all "thriller" kind of movies/litterature having a cute love story thrown in just for the sake of it, and that the guy and girl always end up together. That's just my opinion though, and if it works or not remains to be seen
I'm actually not going for a happy ending at all; the attack is successful, a lot of people die and the "evil party" is kinda martyrized. The doctor, who's made a fortune off of their politics, decides to fund their campaign... what happens in the election, we never find out, but meanwhile the other guy is framed and excecuted by the state (having his body recycled, of course). There will be just a hint of justice at the very end that leaves some filling in by the readers imagination. Depressing stuff, that's my kind of litterature

Probably not very commercial though...

 

[timelord4]

No, Third Eye!

You got me all wrong. Get your love story out just as you explained it. Nobody wants a cheery love story ending. Hey, make her not only *evil* but promiscuous as well" Hell, people these days love it. What I meant was, it creates a diversion from your other plots. A good book is one where the reader WANTS to reach into the pages and strangle the antagonist, LOL. I'm sure you can do that!