In what seems like a nightmare built from a dad joke, residents in Texas discovered their home’s thermostat was raised without their knowledge.
The family was napping when they woke up sweating. Afterward, they received an alert about the temperature change—it was part of an energy-saving event.
Along with installing the smart thermostat, the family also were part of a program that permitted the remote control of their home’s temperature during periods of high energy demand—all in exchange for an entry into sweepstakes.
Spinning this into a story, what if a connected home turns against the people who live there?
The start of the story could resemble an animated short on Love, Death, + Robots, season two called “Automated Customer Service.” In essence, a connected vacuum cleaner turns against the dog, then against the human.
In the story, a family comes home to a spotless house from a camping trip with their dog. The vacuum decides the dog creates too much of a mess and gets rid of it using a call to animal services. The family retrieves their pet, wondering who reported their rambunctious dog.
They look at their neighbors as potential enemies, not realizing the enemy is in their own home.
Eventually, they come home and find the dog running from the vacuum with multiple wounds. They destroy the vacuum, which triggers the rest of the objects in the house. When it becomes evident that there’s nothing in their home that isn’t connected and that they can’t live there any longer, they escape to their campground.
They talk to the strange people who live in RVs connected to the campground’s electricity and water but refuse any connection to the internet. They find out about the conspiracy theory they all share: that interconnected devices will take over the world one day.
Eventually, one of the family’s neighbors shows up, saying how their home also turned on them while searching for the missing family.
In essence, it becomes a zombie story where the zombies are all appliances.
With the help of their former neighbors and the people in the campground, the family fights off the first wave. When they travel to another location, they’re discovered again.
They realize the only way to end the war is to go back into the first home and burn it to the ground. They fight through the interconnected, now deserted town and succeed in getting rid of the house. Every appliance stops and returns to its original location.
The neighbor’s house realizes any house could be the next target and takes steps to get rid of its tenants without being obvious, using the act of increasing the thermostat to make the family uncomfortable and setting up the next book.
Lake Mead, the body of water created by the Hoover Dam, is at its lowest point since it was made in 1935. The lake is on the border between Nevada and Arizona and was last full in 2000.
The water currently sits 143 feet below the max fill line, leaving a ring of white minerals exposed. The difference is 5.5 trillion gallons of water. Another startling stat? 25 million people rely on Lake Mead’s water.
What’s causing the water shortage? In essence, the surrounding states use more water than the Colorado River can provide. In addition, the west is undergoing an exceptional drought because of climate change, and the entire river has less water.
Spinning this forward in time, let’s assume the water level continues dropping. Las Vegas, which relies on Lake Mead for water, literally dries up. They are forced to utilize other water sources, and the city becomes unlivable for most and transforms into an area only the wealthy can afford to visit.
The water shortages force the surrounding farms to close, and because the water level drops too far, the Hoover Dam stops producing electricity.
The area around Lake Mead becomes uninhabited and desolate. Because of the low population levels, government support and services are nonexistent. As a result, the place turns into a Mad Max-style dystopia, run by local gangs who control what little water there is available from wells.
But Las Vegas is still a haven for the wealthy—after the massive investment in the strip, large companies find a way to keep the area thriving, although everything is vastly overpriced.
Struggling gangs sitting outside an oasis, licking their lips at the treasures within. Like barbarians outside Rome. The gangs have banded together into one, unified under a charismatic leader.
The main character is a Las Vegas police officer who views the outsiders are subhuman. During a routine fight against the horde, the officer is abducted. He then spends time with those living off the land.
He learns about their humanity and comes to appreciate their way of life, even falling in love with the leader’s daughter. Then, during another skirmish, he regains access to the city.
The officers believe they can use his intel to strike a mortal blow to the cause by killing the leader. But, in truth, the protagonist deceives his former comrades and helps the horde into the city.
Once in control, the leader then renews the old order, enforcing strict limits on entry and water consumption—in effect, becoming the same tyrant ruling over Las Vegas.
In the end, the disenfranchised police officer and his beloved leave the city behind, and he becomes the next leader that unifies the horde, beginning the cycle anew.
Other books could explore his efforts at taking over the city and ruling it without becoming a tyrant. In a third, the horde and the city-dweller have to band together to protect what little water Las Vegas receives when an outside enemy threatens their tenuous situation.
A paper out of Russia’s Institute of Physicochemical and Biological Problems in Soil Science describes a microscopic animal waking up after thousands of years in Siberian permafrost eleven feet below the surface. After the tiny animal woke up, it reproduced by cloning itself.
The animal, a bdelloid rotifer, is a microscopic animal found in freshwater habitats. They’re known for their ability to go into a desiccation-induced dormant state, explaining how they survived. In essence, they dry themselves out, similar to tardigrades.
An easy way of turning this into fiction would be introducing cryopreservation. One of the main issues with cryo is ice crystals—any water left inside cells could puncture cell membranes or organelles. Both tardigrades and bdelloid rotifers could provide clues about effectively removing all moisture from cells.
Another direction—what modern scientists found a teenage human ancestor that could go into a dried-out dormant state? The discovery of a completely frozen ancestor would make waves, and scientists go to great lengths to keep it frozen for study.
But a cyber-attack by a foreign enemy shuts down the refrigeration (like how the United States shut down Iran’s nuclear program), thawing out the specimen, and he wakes up. Have you seen Encino Man?
It would be a young adult novel. The main character is an adolescent boy whose father, a scientist, is obsessed with work. The human ancestor is hiding in the dad’s trunk and comes into the house for warmth, where he’s found by the son.
The story could play out similar to Elf—they’re best friends, providing a contrast to the father’s overbearing discipline. The ancestor is looking for his family, believing they might still be alive—communication is difficult without a shared language, and he gets his point across with “cave” drawings.
The opponent could be the government agency looking for the human ancestor and inept foreign agents, thrown in for comedic relief—none of them realize the ancestor woke up.
In the end, the scientist learns what it means to be a loving father and saves the ancestor and his son from being taken away by the government. The ancestor and the scientist work together and don’t find his family but find a descendant who has the same genetic trait, opening the door for cryopreservation.
Nineteen million years ago, shark populations declined by 90%, and nobody knows why.
A scientist from Yale discovered the unknown extinction event while studying fossilized teeth and scales. The data revealed that both total population and species diversity plummeted about 19 million years ago. There was a 90% abundance reduction and a 70% diversity reduction.
The problem? There’s no evidence of any particular cause or event.
The decline in shark numbers took place over 100,000 years. A long time for us, but a blink in the geological record—it’s considered a “sudden” disappearance.
Causes of other mass extinction events aren’t so murky—for example, scientists know the asteroid obliterated the dinosaurs.
What if a scientist identified the mass extinction's cause and discovers another one is about to start within our lifetime?
A 100k year period is a long time for a story, so I’ll assume the extinction event will take ten years. And that there is something humans can do about it.
Additionally, too many people don’t care about sharks. But what about all fish? A fish pandemic—humanity’s response could mirror the response to COVID-19. It strikes coastal waters at a higher rate than the deep ocean, purely based on population density.
The main character is a United States-based scientist. She has to deal with half the scientific establishment denying the existence and severity of the pandemic in the first place.
She works closely with scientists from other countries, particularly Central and South American researchers. They come up with a cure that infringes on United States patents. If they can get a certain number of fish the vaccine, the virus won’t spread.
The majority of the story could take place on a ship. The battle could be the legal action that grants the right to produce the “vaccine,” only to find themselves stopped by a United States naval blockade.
Since the well-intentioned scientists can’t move, the fish start coming to them. They vaccinate all the fish they can and wait. Cut to years later, and it turns out the fish in Central and South America have all survived—the fish population closest to the United States is declining rapidly, and the establishment still denies the virus.
The findings from a study out of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany “suggest that the better your body is at regulating iron levels, the longer you are likely to live.”
Researchers looked at a large dataset and studied the individual’s parents’ lifespan, predicted longevity, and years spent in good health, and found ten genetic markers in common. They found the genes are related to heart health and metabolizing iron in the blood.
The dietary effect iron (think: red meat) has on overall longevity isn’t clear. It seems there’s a sweet spot of iron since low levels cause anemia and high levels cause liver problems. The genetic information just relates to how well bodies can stay within that range.
Turning this into a story, what if advances in understanding genetics allow humans to live to 150 (or more)?
Vastly extended lifespans are on the horizon, and many believe it will happen within our lifetimes (for example, they discussed this on the Tim Ferriss podcast interview with Chip Wilson).
Going meta, the story could be about an author who finds out they have the genetic predisposition for living well past 100. He investigates his relationships, his career, and investments. His logic? If he’s going to live a long time, he might as well work his ass off in the beginning so he can relax for the back half.
A contrast to this worldview can arrive via a best friend or partner. Knowing they’ll live for years to come, they prioritize enjoying themselves at all times.
There would be alternating chapters about a chunk of their lives, separated by encounters every decade or so. Bad Girl by Mario Vargas Llosa has a similar structure—the protagonist encounters his beloved at different points in their lives, each time finding his girl changed from the time before.
The conflict towards the end could be another discovery that adds another fifty years to their expected lives. The author could decide to pursue another career, and their mirror character would choose further debauchery (inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde).
The ending could see the author choosing cryogenic freezing near his expected age of death, hoping to awaken to a vastly extended lifespan. The mirror character chooses suicide, treating the death as a blessing—not unlike many vampire stories where they grow tired of existence.
It’s left to the reader to decide which life course is more appropriate.
