SURVIVAL CATHEDRAL

Idea for a book

Following catastrophic sea level rise, all that's left of a small seaside city is the cathedral. The entire, diminished population now live in it, with a shanty town hanging among the buttresses and arches and splayed out across the great roofs. The townspeople live off the sea and by trading the treasures they dive down to discover in the depths of the cathedral with merchants who sail out to the stone island. One boy is particularly good at this treasure hunting and a group of pirates visiting the cathedral kidnap him and take him back to the flooded big city, where they want him to dive for treasure in a submerged bank. He must survive the chaotic city, outwit his captors and get back to safety on the cathedral.

MORSEL HOSPITALITY

Idea for a film

When a poor old lady discovers she has mice in her apartment, instead of hiring exterminators, which she couldn't afford anyway, she shares what little she has with them, including, unwittingly, some of the experimental drug she is on for her memory loss. This boosts the mice's intelligence and they come to understand that she is making a sacrifice for them, the smallest of creatures. They start to use their new found smarts to help her, without her knowing it. She assumes its the super of her building but when she thanks him effusively, he assumes he has lost her marbles and starts organising for her to be put into care so he can get possession of her flat. The mice have to form a plan to save her and, in doing so, reveal themselves to her. It ends with the super thwarted, the little old lady still in her apartment and the mice looking after her.

ENERGY MEDAL

Idea for a short story

On a commercially run colony on Mars, energy is rationed to keep costs down. Colonists are given extra energy quotas as a reward for overtime, community efforts and so on. One group of school children undertake a programme of good deeds, pooling the energy quotas they earn as a result. Eventually they have enough to trade for a launch of a vehicle into Mars orbit. They reveal that what they have been working on in craft lessons is a satellite that is little more than a giant mirror. Once in orbit it reflects and focusses sunlight back to the surface, providing free energy to the colony. The children become heroes and the gold foil mirror becomes the flag of a new Mars independence movement.

RELATIONSHIP CURVE

Idea for a movie?

A researcher plots the emotional states of couples and decides he has found the perfect curve that delivers the best average happiness for relationships. He starts applying it to his own life, changing his behaviour with his partners so that the relationship hews as closely to the curve as possible. He then publishes a book, promising the secret to happy relationships, which becomes a huge hit. But when one young woman's partner starts trying to get her to stick to the curve, she decides that the researcher needs teaching a lesson and sets about ruining his love life. Although he is infuriated by her interruptions, he discovers that he in intrigued and begins to suspect that there is more to love than he calculated.

REPRESENT TASTY

Idea for a TV show

A global fast food conglomerate finally makes the move for corporate nationhood, becoming a transnational state, each of its branches effectively a consulate. It opts for a figurehead head of state, in this case the corporate mascot, Mr Tasty, retaining the board as the governing body but instituting a largely ineffective lower legislative house for representatives of the workers. A young manager of a small branch in a small town finds himself elected to this parliament of burgers and finds himself getting involved in a nascent plot for the workers plot to take over the company/country. Meanwhile Mr Tasty is starting to develop an authoritarian streak and the stage is set for a whole new kind of revolution in fast food.

WRESTLE RAISE

Idea for a film

A maverick CEO introduces the idea of making his employees wrestle to see who is deserving of a raise. The employees, however, start to collaborate behind his back, fixing the bouts to ensure the people they think are most deserving of the raise win the match. A particularly diligent and well liked, but mild mannered clerk becomes an unlikely regular winner. Things have to look convincing, though, so the bouts get progressively more ludicrous and over the top, becoming increasingly popular, and more and more aspects of the business start being decided with wrestling matches: meetings, contracts, new hires. But then a private equity firm starts planning a hostile takeover of the business and the CEO challenges them to a match and they hire a professional masked wrestler to represent them. As the reigning champion, the mild mannered clerk must become a real wrestler if he is to enter the ring to save the business and his, and everyone else's, jobs.

HAVE RETAIN

Idea for a film

When their spouse asks for a divorce out of the blue, a movie star goes into a spiral. They've been so used to having everything they want that they've never considered what it might take to hold on to a relationship, to harbour and foster it. So they decide to approach it the same as they approach the only thing that they have ever held control over: their career. They hire writers and crew to start producing a version of their marriage they can examine from the outside, even as they brainstorm ways to delay the divorce. And they start researching the most challenging character they've ever had to tackle: themselves, all in an attempt to finally understand what it means 'to have and to hold'.

INFINITE CLOSED

Idea for a short story

Despite massive future technological advancements, eventually humanity has to admit that, in the words of one prominent engineer, 'you cannot change the laws of physics'. Interstellar travel is simply not a realistic proposition. Mankind is forever limited to its own solar system. Culture turns inward, increasingly living in private virtual universes, closed off to the outside world. It becomes fashionable to model alien planets to explore and then solar systems, finally, using solar system wide computer networks, an entire procedurally generated galaxy, a shared virtual universe in which faster than light travel is possible and into which explorers can at last set off to go where no one has gone before.

CRITIC BREATHE

Idea for a short story

At the end of a particularly disastrous date, a computer programmer has a revelation. He spends all days working with A.I.s and all they do is 'glaze' him, consistently tell him that everything he does is intelligent and interesting. But other humans do not agree. He, in fact, has flaws in his character that put people off. That is why he spends his life alone in his office. So he develops an A.I. that does the opposite of glazing. It criticises everything he does. And its criticism makes him better, his interactions with other people improve, he starts to have a social life. But as his behaviour improves, the criticisms get more personal and he becomes afraid to anything in fear of more criticism, until he is left alone, in his office again, with a little voice in his ear criticising his breathing.

LIST UPSET

Idea for a book?

A woman realises that she has been carrying around unspoken grievances against her friends and family for years and resolves to clear the air. She makes a list of her upsets and starts confronting the people responsible to try and reset their relationships. This, predictably enough, just causes more upsets and the people she's spoken to start bringing their lists to her. She begins to realise that her problem was not necessarily other people and that there is a list of upsets she has caused herself. In the end, she upsets the list, instead creating one of all the ways these people have improved her life and finally everyone can go back to quietly enduring and enjoying each other.

EPICALYX EXPLAIN

*Idea for a short story*

A botanist studying the development of epicalyx (an external part of a flower) happens to share his work with his neighbour, a cryptographer, who becomes convinced that there is a pattern to the variation in the shapes. They realise that all the plants in the botanist's garden are developing their epicalyx in the same variations and the cryptographer begins to suspect that it means something. At the same time a colleague of the botanist has noticed a build up in bacteria that produce sulphur as a by product of photosynthesis instead of oxygen. They realise that the vegetable world has attained consciousness and the plants are sending them a message, an ultimatum that they will stop producing oxygen if humanity does not mend its ways.

FLING AT

Idea for a film?

A guy has a crush on a girl at college but she doesn't trust him and instead sets him up with a friend of hers. They become friends and she continues setting him up with her friends throughout their twenties. Gradually, though, he begins to realise that the dates she's setting up for him are training, teaching him lessons about women, romance and, most importantly, himself. Equally, though, as he matures and their friendship deepens, she is learning things about herself, too. Finally, he refuses one of her dates and instead offers to set her up instead. The date is, of course, with him.

POSSIBILITY RECOMMEND

Idea for a film

An inventor creates an AI powerful enough to predict the outcomes of his actions. It is able to model the effects of everything he does in order to recommend the best possible decision at any given time. He starts marketing it and soon the world is full of people living what seems to be their best lives. However, a world full of these guides means they are starting to coordinate in order to make things easy for everyone. The inventor starts to realise that he has stopped being interested, or challenged or, vitally for him, having ideas. He starts to rebel against his own machine, and, in doing so, starts to make the world interesting again.

BRAID ADULT

Idea for a film

The story of two friends and how they influence each other over the course of their lives. Told in a series of vignettes as the two meet and tell each other how their lives are going, with the story each tells influencing the other, causing them to try new things. At first, when they meet at college, A is out going, B studious. B becomes convinced to have more fun, while A starts taking studying seriously. In their late 20s B is drinking too much while A is mired in academia. A resolves to get out while B is convinced to sober up, and so on, back and forth. In their final meeting they reflect on how their lives have been braided.

AVERAGE EMPHASIS

Idea for a film

An advertising Art Director discovers that her firm has a statistically average man that they test campaigns on. She sets out to prove that no one is truly 'average' and, in doing so, completely disrupts his life. But he begins to find her presence in his life energising, even as she starts to enjoy the stability his 'normality' gives her. Meanwhile, her interfering has so changed him that his choices of campaigns become more and more unusual. But they also prove increasingly popular. As he gets more bizarre, so does the culture, so that he remains strangely average, or perhaps, averagely strange.

FAN SWIM

Idea for a film

A genuine cult develops around a pop star. Their fans realise that the dizzy rapture they reach in the presence of their idol is an almost holy ecstasy that brings on visions and spiritual experiences. They cultivate their fandom as a religion, meditating over icons and undergoing pilgrimages to significant sites. The weird thing is that the visions they experience start to become accurate prophecies. It starts to seem that the pop star genuinely is some kind of deity. And when they refuse to accept this status the fans realise there is only one way to secure the immortality of their legacy.

COMBINATION GARAGE

Idea for a TV show

A show about a garage specialising in light commercial vehicles. As different tradespeople bring in their vehicles for repairs, we get to know not just the mechanics working in the garage, but also the customers and what they do. And through the tradespeople's jobs we meet the people they work with and for, the businesses and homes they visit. So we begin to see how all these people: plumbers and electricians, private ambulances and taxi drivers, delivery drivers and couriers, bind the town together, bringing us all kinds of stories of everyday life.

SHORTS CONSUMER

Idea for a film

The day in the life of a head teacher at a school in an '80s teen comedy. The teacher was, in fact, a member of the Weather Underground in the '70s and is trying inspire their pupils genuine political rebellion against Reagan's America. Instead the kids just get up to dorky shenanigans like stealing sports cars, hacking into the school computer and telling the teacher to 'eat their shorts'. Eventually the FBI catches up with the teacher and the Gen X kids must pull their fingers out, wise up and help them escape.

CAREER SHOW

Idea for a film?

A jobs fair institutes a 'show' event, in which representatives from different careers perform little routines to advertise themselves: estate agents do some close to the knuckle and not very funny stand up, a group of middle aged plumbers do an inept but charming dance routine, bankers just pay professional performers to do it for them. One accountant, depressed at the bad rap his profession gets for being boring, teams up with one of his clients, a theatrical impresario, to put on an accountancy musical. Surprisingly, the show is amazing. The impresario tries to get the accountant to change jobs but he realises that it was his love for accountancy that made it so great, and he happily goes back to his spreadsheets, leaving the glitz and glamour behind.

ROOM ECONOBOX

Idea for a TV show

(I had to look up 'econobox' - apparently its an American term for a normal European / Japanese car)
Two brilliant inventors: one a megalomaniac, one a humble tinkerer. The Megalomaniac has invented a massive robot, the size of a moon, with which they are attempting to conquer parallel dimensions. The Tinkerer has packed a pocket universe into a fuel efficient, practical hatchback, filling it full of contraptions and tools. They travel the multiverse in their little yellow car, using their pocket universe as a lifeboat, fixing the disasters that the Megalomaniac has caused and trying to thwart their terrible plans.