Psychic Idea-Theft
They say good minds think alike, and I'm often inclined to agree, but I sure do hate it when I come up with a brilliant idea for a thing, only to find it's either been done already, or someone is in the process of already bloody doing it.
This week I had an idea which I thought would be great for a short story or a film. Scientists have found a way to control the human aging process, and as a result time has become the new currency. People spend time on commodities and services, trading years of their lives for luxuries. They work to earn these years back. It's possible for people to live entirely opulent and stress-free lives, the only catch being their lives will be very short.
This, I thought, is a pretty good premise for a sci-fi story. There would be conflict between the people who work hard and live longer, trading quality of life for quantity, and those who squander their lifespan on lives of excess.
Pretty cool, no? Trouble is, that's almost exactly the plot for upcoming sci-fi film Now. Now (ha), I swear I had never heard of this film until a few days ago, and a few days after I came up with what I thought was a great original(ish) idea. But reading the synopsis for the film, it couldn't be more similar to my idea if it tried.
Now is directed by Andrew Niccol, the man behind films such as Gattaca and The Truman Show, and will therefore hopefully be great. It'll probably be better than whatever I'd have done with the idea. But I still want to accuse Niccol of stealing my goddamn idea, likely with some sort of psychic time-travel.
This sort of psychic idea theft happens to me quite a lot. I swear I'd thought of the basic idea for Inception years ago. I was going to make it into a videogame. It wasn't exactly like inception, but it was close enough that if I released it now, I'd be accused of ripping off Inception. Chris Nolan is also guilty of psychic idea-theft.
This train of thought leads me to believe that perhaps I am solely responsible for all good ideas in the world, and other people just steal them from me with powers beyond my comprehension. Hey, the idea of psychic idea-theft is a pretty good concept for a story itself. I bet someone somewhere is already making a bloody film about at this very moment.
