You mean it’s all been written before?

The last script writer/novelist on Earth committed suicide. Every conceivable plot had already been conceived, written and published. Every story remade twice over, rebooted, adapted, re-imagined, reinterpreted, stolen, sequeled or turned into trilogies, double trilogies or franchises that kept going where they had gone before. Every cartoon and comic book hero had his/her own movie trilogy.

The chain of suicides, however, had not started until the advent of the Internet Plot Database. AJAX programmer and Star Trek fan Ziek Omeldoff in writing what appeared to him at the time as an innocuous little web application, did not know he was in fact heralding the end of literature, especially the genre of science fiction that he so loved.

The IPDB rivaled the famed Wackypidea in its community driven model and Goggle in its search capability. Every conceivable plot was indexed, cross referenced and searchable by idea, time, setting and a myriad of other simultaneous parameters. In the beginning, nobody gave much notice. Then on that fateful day, Dr. Clarke C. Archibald, reputed British science fiction writer, made the fatal mistake of checking the plot idea of his latest novel (4001: Odyssey Ad Nauseam) against the IPDB, just prior to mailing his manuscript to Victor Gonzales Books. Alas, the intricate search returned 1922 results in 0.08 seconds (it also returned 8 sponsored results for toy monoliths, lightsabers and cybersex, but that is another story, no doubt already written). Of those 309 were above the 90th percentile in similarity rank. Many were obscure novels, short stories, unpublished pieces and never produced scripts by amateurs. Sir Archibald was buried the next day.

ZNN editors later regretted including the address of IPDB in its news report about the writer’s death. But it was too late. Every science fiction writer there onwards, consulted IPDB before even setting pen to paper to write what they thought each time to be a fresh idea. But in each case, IPDB told them that it was not fresh. You could try it yourself. Just try the following: main search term: “galactic empire” and the following options: “rebel movement yes/no: yes”, “mystical powers yes/no: yes”, “plot twist: yes”, “dual-gun-wielding martial arts: no”, “rebels wear black: no” and you’ll get 128,220 hits other than Star Wars.

There was no point in writing anything anymore. The very consciousness of the possibility of the pre-existence of the idea that was about to be written, even if it existed only as a variant, was enough to discourage all but the most schizophrenic writer from even attempting  a new story. The only notable exception was a story about a race of banana-hating mutant overlords who arrived on Earth in an icy comet. But that writer was later institutionalized. Nobody tried after that.

The last script writer/novelist on Earth committed suicide.

***

I just wrote the above piece after reading this on the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website:

8. Retread of the same old same old.

There are lots of stories that have been done before, and need not be done again. In science fiction, these include the-nuclear-war-wipes-out-everything-and-it-just-happens -the-last-two-people-left-are-named-Adam-and-Eve story. In mysteries, you have the detective who turns out to be the killer. In The New Yorker, you have stories about people on Long Island who have no problems, whining to each other about their problems. With the exception of the final example, these stories are unpublishable because they have been done to death. (For some reason, The New Yorker just can’t get enough of whiny Long Islanders.) Even the surprise twists on these old chestnuts have been done. It has been said, with a great degree of justice, that there is no such thing as a new idea. I have more than once written a whole novel based on something I thought was dazzlingly new and original, only to discover I could fill whole bookshelves with books on similar themes. I at least like to think that my take on those ideas was different enough, fresh enough, that I could get away with it. There is no clear line between a fresh take on an old idea and a hack rewrite of a theme that has been beaten to death. But you should at least try to avoid writing stories about writers writing stories about writers writing stories about writers having midlife crises. At some point, even The New Yorker will say enough, already. God willing.

There goes my latest story. And they rejected the last one too…