So I had a dream and after waking up I decided to just run with the idea behind it to see where it could go. It was very Sci-fi so I stayed with a futuristic theme. I’m stuck though because I don’t know what I can really do with the plot. The story centers mostly around the last living man on Earth after a devastating war. A war which was conveniently followed up by an alien invasion. Humanity isn’t dead however, we managed to keep going. The thing about him being the last man is he is the last man on a world filled with women, oh and he’s out of his time. So all I have so far is: 1) Last Man, lots of ladies, lots of cloning and genetic engineering/gene splicing, man is young(23), man got shoved in underground stasis pod 2) Super advanced AI, lots of cool technology, aliens marooned on Earth, they hate the ladies and the AI 3) Splinter group of ladies hates man, wants to kill man, ladies who like man want his genes, man doesn’t like that idea, won’t give up his genes, man doesn’t like ladies, bad history with mom and girls 4) Man was soldier, man was very good at killing, man scares ladies That’s basically all I have for a plot. Besides the aliens and the splinter group I’ve got nothing as far as conflict or bad guys. I’ve thought about putting a computer chip in his head that has a ton of Old Earth information but, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of how I can make his situation as bad as possible. I want the story to be about perseverance, overcoming anger, fear and change.
This plot has been done s lot of different ways, and I find them all equally ridiculous. If you could do this and find a bit more logical and less absurd way to play it out, that would be refreshing. I think Batman actually did this plot point best with a disease that only affected men in Gotham. Otherwise there's all kinds of other ridiculousness involving gendercide that go all the way to milking men until they die of exhaustion. It gets pretty hilarious at times.
There is also Y: The Last Man graphic novel. Stephenson's SevenEves actually counts down to no men and humanity recovers. You might also check out Herbert's The White Plague. So I would agree that it has been done, and feels a lot like wish fulfillment - so if you want to use it for something fresh it is going to have to be more than SF James Bond fantasy world.
Don’t get me wrong, I came into this knowing how hilariously crazy it can get. I’ve watched an animation about something similar years ago called Vandread. I really want it to have a more serious tone though, with a bit of comedy on top. The idea has been hounding me so I’ve decided to run with it.
Of course, I’m just not entirely sure of HOW to make it much fresher than other installments of the idea. Action fantasy is my most written type of story so it’s what I often tend to sway towards. I really just feel like a hardcore romantic thriller would be even more absurd than and action story.
I guess all of them have comical elements because they are predicated on the idea that a man, despite being the only one on earth, would still be such a powerful force that he would control any part of his destiny, rather than just be a captor and pawn. It just kind of bleeds chauvinism, intentional or not.
I guess that could be something I play on, the chauvinism part I mean. A lot of the stories I’ve watched or read always have either a very quirky sort of odd ball who later becomes a powerful force, or characters who are just an idiot for a guy where it’s a miracle he’s made it this far. Maybe I should just make my character an outright chauvinist.
You can make him that, but it requires chauvinism on your part to get him out of protective custody and give him any agency, because such a man is primarily a biological asset, not a person.
So the women have never seen a man, their information on what men were like is based only upon what they have been told or read. So, let their idea be one way and make the man a complete surprise to them. He's not a chauvinistic person, he's not racist, he can cry and show emotions. He's trying to stay in one piece and find peace.
So the hardest part at this point is how women would react in certain situations when dealing with the man.
This reminds me not of Netflix' Godless, but of a Skinemax SF exploitation film whose title I can't seem to find. A lone man crashes his spaceship on a planet populated entirely by women, kind of a Western theme. All the men died in a mining "accident" that wasn't a few years prior, and (it was Cinemax) despite the women all being enthusiastic lesbians, he gets seduced by nearly everyone in town in succession. Key line that I remember is him being asked, over and over, "How do you walk with that thing hanging between your legs?"
The first question that occurred to me was, do the aliens have men? If so, how do they get on with the surviving humans? And for another twist on that, are humans reliant on alien technology to sustain the race (since a one-gender society would probably need cloning technology to survive long-term)? If so, that suggests an interesting balance of power--maybe the aliens even caused the apocalypse so they could be the "saviours"? Another question is, how long has it been since the manpocalypse? Do any living humans remember what a man actually is, or is he something none of the female cast will have seen first-hand?
For the first question I haven’t really fleshed out the aliens that much. As far as I’ve gotten with them is that we got lucky and managed to strand most of the invanding force on Earth. The idea was to pull a thought from a tv documentary I saw about a possible invasion scenario. We put up too much of a fight and they deemed our resources were to much trouble to attain. So they left, leaving their ground forces as “too costly to extract.” I planned to make them warring nomadic types on the verge of extinction, seeking fertile planets for specific resources exclusive to such planets. Though I’ve got no idea what that could be honestly. As for their relations with humanity? Bad. They’re stranded because of humanity and humanity isn’t exactly fond of them either. Regarding the cloning and what not, I did make it so that genetic engineering, gene splicing and cloning were a thing. I thought about taking a page from Vandread’s book(a Japanese animation)and using an actual reproductive process but, thought that’d be weird. I may say screw it and throw it in for kicks or just to make things more awkward for MC. As for the timeframe since a man has even been around, about two to three hundred years. I haven’t decided what an excellent timeframe would be but, I want it to be long enough no living woman has ever seen a man. That and I want it to be a “surprise” for the people who find him, as anything relating to men has more or less been buried/lost in history.
Okay so my first thought was if there are ladies who like him and want his genes (I'm assuming that means they want to reproduce with him), that could be pretty interesting especially if you made him gay. I'm thinking this could be pretty interesting if you worked out why there was a war, and how only one man was strong enough to survive it. Why did mostly women survive? How was the advanced technology developed? Why are the aliens there, and why do they hate the ladies and AI? If the technology is super advanced, wouldn't humanity know that aliens were about to invade? If so, how do they react? Is there chaos on Earth as people try to come to terms with the fact that aliens exist? Do they try to kill the aliens? What defenses do the aliens have against humans? What is the purpose of aliens being there? Also, what's the main character's struggle/goal? What's the main conflict? What motivates him?
This sounds like the worst harem anime ever. So, I'm assuming homeboy's been in stasis for a while, so all the women in the land above have been drawing from the wreckages of sperm banks or whatever to reproduce, but have only been having daughters (I'm sorry if this is not what you are going for, but you say he's "out of his time", so I assume by that you mean this is not the generation he was born in.) So this guy is the only guy. He's a soldier, he's good at making living things not be living anymore, and I guess that scares tf out of people. He doesn't like women from his maternal relations, so he's either gay or the epitome of anti-social to the point where he passes up being the only guy in a world of women which has several who wish to be in his bed. You've got a crap ton of sci-fi stuff on here, and a million questions to answer. Why was this guy in cryo? Why are there hundreds of women but no guys? How have the women survived this long with no males? I'm not saying women are weak, but from a physical standpoint, human women aren't exactly geared from the start to be strong. If we were so advanced that we literally destroyed ourselves, then maybe the survivors could have Jurassic Park'ed themselves some males, and this problem shoots itself in the foot. If there is a group of women who are AWARE that Guy is the last guy on the planet, then why is it that they want to kill Guy? Was Guy just a jack*ss to them at some point? If so many women want to reproduce with him, why is he refusing? Is he gay? Is he incapable of fertilizing an egg? Did he take a bullet to the crotch? (You said he's a soldier) What technology remains? Androids and AI are intelligent enough to know how to repair themselves or be able to figure it out, but the big computers that can't go anywhere have the issue of breaking down. You have a million and one questions to answer and some points that don't make any sense, without even going into the aliens bit. That has a million questions of its own. Why were they in our solar system? Where did they come from? Were they dropped here in your typical pirate maroon fashion with no supplies? What do they have with them? How are they different from humans? What technology do they have? Can THEY reproduce with humans? (Weird trope, but there are Predator/Human hybrids, so...) DO THEY EVEN FACTOR INTO THE PLOT? If not, why do they even exist in this story?
Okay but imagine how interesting this would be if a couple of things were changed and all of the questions were answered
Great question, pretty much all of which I’m still dragging myself through the mud over for answers. Should I go on and write the story I want explanations on most things to be airtight. No crazy hand waving like some sci-fi. So as for the aliens, I was thinking along the lines of a warring species of nomands coming from a dead planet, scouring for easy access resources. So inhospitable planets wouldn’t be entirely viable, since it’s be hard to get the resources. We were in the way and they had no qualms about obliterating a “lower” species. We were also only just coming out of a nuclear conflict, so theoretically we’d be an easy target from orbit. A few Repurposed railguns later and their ships are not so safe so high in the sky anymore. They’re advanced but, tight on resources and can’t afford to bombard us into nothing. So in come ground troops. We’ve been a bit bombarded already so we should be a soft target by now. Sure, if you don’t count the exo-suits, large rifle sized railguns those suits use, lots of really pissed off veterans and our willingness to nuke ourselves. Aliens decide our resources are too much trouble and ground forces are too costly to extract. So they pack up and leave abruptly. The left overs form up and by this time were so decimated we don’t care. We approach diplomatically, we fail miserably, and contract a disease which kills all the men. Due to biological differences it doesn’t seem to affect women. MC was in stasis along with a ton of other people selected for professional skills. The idea was that the aliens extract resources, leave and we wake up to continue if we can. People were selected at random based on profession. The aliens blasted the arks from space. MC’s ark got semi lucky and only took a partial hit. It was still assumed lost due to a partial leak in its power core. That leak led to all of the pods failing one at a time in a sequential order until only his was left. People woke up basically just to suffocate. No power, no opening the pod. Shitty system I know but, it’s what I’ve got for now. MC was the last pod in the order in his ark so his pod lasted the longest, giving him just enough time to be found. That’s the idea so far. As for the women, cloning and splicing eggs together for reporoduction. As for why they didn’t just Jurassic park it up, I haven’t decided. I’m imagining going for to the FARTHEST end of the feminist spectrum, where the crazy ladies who want to either kill men, or drastically lower male population live. It doesn’t take much charisma in crisis situations to unify people around even the most insane ideas. You only need a few we’ll spoken advocates and leaders to appeal to a desperate crowd. We can see that even in today’s world. So they clone and splice eggs together to keep the population entirely female. Information about men is slowly eroded away into non-existence over about three or four hundred years. I can’t decide on a good timeframe. So when the pod with MC pops open, surprise, surprise it’s a guy! What’s a guy? Half of society wants to keep the status quo, and kill him. The other half wants his DNA which, for currently unexplained reasons he won’t give away and forcing it from him isn’t a good idea unless you want to get everyone in the room with him killed. Technology makes up for any biological weaknesses and the AI idea has come from a few different places. I was thinking of making it similar to SAM from Mass Effect Andromeda, yet different. It operates on a large network of quantum computers paired with the crazy power of mainframes(yes mainframes still exist and no quantum computing will not replace them, I work on them for a living and they’re not going anywhere any time soon, IBM actually recently unveiled a new Mainframe with quantum computing integration, though its more of a symbol than anything right now). As for the MC himself, I have taken time to explore the manosphere and various other places in depth. Looking for reasons to his aversion against females. I’ve read everything from Men’s Rights forums, to Men Going Their Own Way forums and more so I've got a few ideas bubbling up to the top of the pot. No he is not gay. The aliens left behind on Earth had enough to get an upstart society going, bore into the Himilayas, fortify them and use every scrap of resource they could dig up or salvage to survive. No they cannot interbreed with humanity as I intend to make them reptile like or another incompatible biology. The remains of humanity are also still throughly pissed at them and fights over territory aren’t entirely uncommon. Their lack of scholars, scientists and teachers on the ground when they were left means they went a good while without any significant advancements. It also doesn’t help when the only engineers they have can’t just put a ship together because they don’t understand how FTL worked. They were all miners, low level researchers and geological engineers that were sent to Earth with the soldiers. So that knowledge was mostly lost to them. Thats all I really have so far.
Well. I guess I'll have to buy this book when you're done writing it, this sounds like it could be interesting
