Guess the Plot
The Fish Preserve
1. After Olympic swimmer Bryan Lock deflowers the University President's daughter in public and the video goes viral on the Internet, his life seems ruined--until a Mexican drug lord hires Lock to operate his new ocean research center.
2. Sweden is surrounded by fish, and the population loves it. However, it rots quickly and the smell is hurting the tourism industry. Sven Dalgaard, one of the premiere scientists in the country, discovers a new way to preserve the nation's favorite food - it's a little thing he's named "salt".
3. When the body of 70s eco-warrior Jacques Champlain is found by kids fishing in MacArthur Park, homicide detective Zack Martinez knows two things. One, the old man didn't harpoon himself; and two, some camarones would be great for dinner.
4. 1969. High schoolers Rachel, a native of the ruined Owens Valley, and Gabriel, a transplant from Sherman Oaks, discover love, life, environmentalism and each other in this coming-of-age story set in California's historic fish hatchery on Highway 395.
5. Detective Jorge Calderon thought his danger days were over when he retired from the NYPD. He moved to sleepy Cortez Florida and joined the Florida Institute for Saltwater Heritage. One day he investigates a slaughtered manatee. On the way back, his jeep is forced off the road by a large pickup. Two days later he finds three teens shot execution style. Now Jorge knows he can’t retire yet.
Original Version
[It's another fake query, this one from Dave F. We do have a couple real queries in the queue now, waiting for fake plot writers to notice them.]
Dear EE
Olympic swimmer Bryan Lock dreams he is a butterfly flapping his wings in China... But wait, let's change that butterfly to a fish and China to the Yucatan. The proposition becomes: If a doctoral student and champion swimmer who dreams of becoming a world renowned oceanographer deflowers the University President's Daughter in public and the video goes viral on the internet, what sort of job can he expect after graduation? The answer, a dead end job in the fast food industry. However, the storms of chaos theory blow a fair wind his way in the form of a Drug Lord in the Yucatan. The Drug Lord hires Lock to operate his new ocean research center.
Our butterfly, being chaos personified, returns in the form of the Drug Lord's son who boozes, trips, whores, rapes, and kills in the villages where the drugs grow. Even bad dreams come true in chaos theory. A Drug Lord's son can't escape punishment for wanton murder and the punishment is death. As the storms of chaos abate, justice will be served. The murderous son, his partner and the researchers are not killed are given a strange new lease on life, the Drug Lord gains their silence, and Lock his dream job -- a successful oceanic researcher. However, he's no longer human. He's more of a half-man, half-fish creature, with gills.
My novel, THE FISH PRESERVE is bizarro Sci Fi complete at 80K. It is breaking out of its cocoon just for you.
7 comments:
I didn't have the heart to name a real swimmer in the Olympics. It felt too mean and nasty and then, they could beat the crap out of me if they really wanted toooooo.......
Where is the query queue? The place where it used to reside is occupied by a startling pic, and the link on the left to the query queue says it doesn't exist.
It should now be in QUERY QUEUE in the sidebar. Not sure why it wasn't, or what I did to get it back.
Where it used to be wasn't worth devoting an entire blog to, so it's now one of the "Pages" on the main blog.
I'm assuming your doctoral student is doctoring in oceanographic studies, but the use of chaos theory and the butterfly effect make me wonder if it's physics instead.
Then the sentance with the new lease on life seems to be missing a word or two that might make it slightly less bizarro.
Is this the true story of how Aqua-man got his gills?
This isn't an Aquaman reboot. He is an oceanographer and ichthyologist. A nerd who teamed up with his buddy and the Pres' daughter to go viral on the internet. The price of 15 minutes of fame.
Chaos theory is a thought experiment about tiny events having out of proportion effects -- unintended consequences, you might say. The premise of the experiment is that if a butterfly flapping its wings in China causes a storm front in the Atlantic ocean a half a world away. This is a conjecture.
The very real effect in Physics is illustrated by the thought experiment of Schrodinger's Cat. Where we know that there is a cat in a black box and we don't know if the cat is alive. Quantum Mechanics say the cat is both dead and alive as long as we don't look. When we do look, we determine the cat's fate. That's called indeterminacy, not chaos. Although most fiction confuses the two because the differences are profoundly subtle.
Indeterminacy makes my head hurt.
That's more than anyone wanted to know.
This is a bizarro story and it matches with New Beginning 961.
I don't think that I could sustain this story for 80,000 words.
My cover letter for the short story only had one sentence about the plot:
There are fish in Campeche Bay. Man-made fish paying for their sins and the sins of the father. What strange quirk of fate brought them to this point?
PLaF---I thought everyone knew Aquaman was King of Atlantis.
Dave F--Your original story line sounds like Deep Ones.
Chaos and Quantum are also similar in the interdeterminancy department. Again, one is unforseen consequences, while one can only determine the consequences if they have been formulated by looking at them. And then there is Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which can also derail fiction discussions merely by being read.
I didn't intend a Deep Ones connection. I see it and understand it but it is unintentional.
I do wonder if anyone would approach an agent with a query as "out there" and "in your face" as that.
Or is that inviting a rejection?
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