COVER WITNESS

Idea for a Hitchcock movie?

A serial killer is stalking the city. A woman sees one of the murders but knows she's not the only witness: another man from her apartment building was also there. He, however, lies to the police that he knows nothing. She becomes suspicious of him, even as the police are becoming suspicious of her, as they know something the public don't, that the killer is a woman. Fortunately the suspicious man is, in fact, an undercover agent, tracking the killer who is actually a spy cleaning up a ring of informants. He subtly ropes the woman into helping him track the killer, even as she is investigating him and the police are investigating her.

POLE WEAPON

Idea for a Christmas story

The origin myth of the candy cane. A village in the far north is being menaced by a creature out of the white wastes, something in the shape of a man that is not a man, something of the ice that is yet living. Finally, a carpenter in the village, known for his prodigious strength and his gentleness of spirit (he makes toys as gifts for the local children), takes a pine tree and takes off the branches in one long strip, the exposed sap drying into a blood red spiral. He sharpens the tree into a point, fixing a multi-pointed spike to the end and with it, and heads out into the snow to face the monster. He kills the monster but dies of his wounds. Thereafter, the villagers erect a pine tree and gives toys to children in his memory every midwinter, and celebrate with sugar sticks decorated with a blood red spiral.

INSTALL IMPACT

Idea for a short story

An introvert computer scientist is fed up with always missing funding because he's so terrible at pitching. He creates an AI coach that can feed him the lines and behaviour to become a great salesperson. His success intrigues is peers and he shares the AI with them. Unfortunately, while this new persona is intoxicating, he discovers that he's simply not able to be a great pitch man and actually do the work he's pitching. He abandons the AI and discovers that, now the whole institution is full of glib salespeople, his old, bumbling affect makes him a stand out.

TENANT CHAPTER

Idea for a TV series

An enterprising landlord starts renting out the unused rooms in fictional properties. Emma Woodhouse never seems to use her bedroom, for example, so why not let it out to someone who will? What about 221a Baker Street? And don't get me started on Gormenghast Castle. The series tells the stories of tenants moving into these properties and then having to deal with all the drama of their new flatmates, having an unexpected and profound effect on the history of classic literature.

TAPE HURL

Idea for a movie?

The '80s. An alternative radio DJ claims he listens to every tape that gets sent to him by aspiring bands but when a dreamy middle aged record shop owner sends in his weird, outsider songs, the tape gets chewed up in the DJ's car stereo and he angrily hurls the cassette from the window. It is found, however, by a group of kids who rewind it and become obsessed with it, eventually forming a band to perform the songs. They become an underground hit, mostly thanks to the DJ. The songwriter invites them to play a session at his shop with the intention of introducing himself to them, but when he sees first hand the pressure their new record company are putting them under and the tensions in the band, he resolves to enjoy his success vicariously, and stay in his unassuming but happy life.

PERSON NOTORIOUS

Idea for a movie?

A daring and prolific art thief is at work in the museums of the world. Although there is a common MO, and the thief always uses the same disguise - a Magritte referencing grey suit, bowler hat and apple mask - evidence suggests that the individual involved seems to vary by apparent gender, ethnicity, age. The thief is known to the world press simply as The Person. A small time chancer realises that this identity would give him the perfect cover for the heist he has always dreamed of, but when he adopts the disguise of The Person, he finds himself not just at odds with law enforcement, but also organised crime, who resent The Person. And worse of all: the criminal mastermind behind The Person network, who is going to test his wits to the limits.

LEGISLATURE HE

Idea for an Ealing comedy

Britain in the 1950s. A female law student is refused entry to a lawyer's club on the grounds that it is men only. She goes to the library and discovers a medieval law still on the books that explicitly describes the defendant as 'he'. She commits the crime that the law forbids: something like driving sheep down Cornhill on a Sunday, is arrested but at trial claims the law does not apply to her as a 'she'. The prosecutors successfully argue that the 'he' there should be understood to be an outmoded unisex pronoun. And that that means she can take that ruling to the club and gain entry. And they are, of course, glad to have her, as she has successfully proved that she is going to be a very gifted barrister indeed.

CREED WIDEN

Idea for a novel?

An ad man realises that the quickest way to get rich is to start a religion and so teams up with a public opinion specialist to create the most appealing belief system. However, as their new religion develops, the founder starts to claim that the god they have invented is now talking to him, and the beliefs he's espousing get increasingly less orthodox. And increasingly schismatic, until the new followers rise up and martyr him. Which is when things really get going. To make a profit, you need to make a prophet.

BISCUIT CHIMPANZEE

Idea for a comic book?

A reverse Tarzan. Nazrat. A nineteenth century big game hunter brings a baby chimpanzee back to Britain and gives it to his sweetheart before going back to Africa. The chimp is brought up in the heart of the British aristocracy, living a luxurious life and learning refined manners. When the big game hunter returns, he is disgusted to discover this biscuit eating, tea swilling ape but the ape escapes him and the two become locked in a desperate hunt across Victorian London as the chimp must relearn his ape aptitude to beat the hunter.

MOOD URINE

Idea for a comedy film?

A corporation develops a urine test that monitors hormone levels, establishing exactly how happy you are to be at work. Anyone not happy enough is fired. An employee manages to find an entirely happy person to donate urine and pass the test. But this means the employee has to keep the donor happy, adding yet more stress and unhappiness to their lives. The experience, though, changes their opinion about what they truly want from life and they quite the rat race to live a poor but happy life.

ORIENTATION SWELL

Idea for a horror story?

An eighteenth century Polynesian fisherman is captured at sea by a British frigate and is forced to help them find the nearest island. He knows, however, by the changes in the ocean currents that there is land nearby that shouldn't be there. And he knows what it is: the fabled island of monsters that has risen from the abyssal Pacific depths to bring it's horrors to the surface world, and which only disappears again following a sacrifice. So he guides the British there, knowing that he will be destroyed along with them, sacrificing himself to save his home island not just from the eldritch monsters but from an even worse fate: the Europeans.

SPARE GENERATION

Idea for a sci-fi story?

A young musician lives in a squat at the centre of a thriving arts scene in a great and sprawling city of the mid-twentieth century. However, a meeting with a cynical A&R person leads them to discover the truth. It is not the mid-twentieth century. It is the future. The birth rate has plummeted, but human longevity has been solved and people now live for hundreds of years. But, as a result, culture has stultified. So a new young generation has been created using cloning and placed in an simulacrum of the culture that produced the upheavals of the twentieth century. Their world is a theme park. The question is, do they want to stay in their artificial but artistically satisfying environment, or break out and change the world, as they've always claimed they wanted to.

CONCLUSION DISAPPOINT

Idea for a TV series

A group of friends decides to try and 'fix' the disappointing endings to their favourite TV shows. Each season they pick a different show and we follow them trying to figure out what a better ending might have been and then to try and make it themselves for their own entertainment. At the same time we're following their relationships and stories as well as unfolding events like them being sued by a big entertainment corporation, or harassed by an aggrieved actor, or dealing with the writer of one of the shows trying to take over their remake.

WRIGGLE CELL

Idea for an historical novel

A spy is immured in the walls of a castle as a punishment but discovers that he can travel around the whole building through gaps and empty volumes in the masonry. He is able to observe and come to understand the whole life of the castle and its inhabitants. There are a few places where he can reach the outside world and is able to steal food, clothes and so on, but also to start moving or leaving things, so affecting the behaviour of the inhabitants and bring about the collapse of the regime he was spying on.

PROVINCIAL BOLT

Idea for a fantasy film?

A polytheistic society has a sort of World Cup of gods to decide the composition of the national pantheons. All the gods compete to be the most impressive. A small village from the wilds sends a young goat herd with a little storm god he met on a mountain. The god turns out not to be a storm god but a trickster hero in disguise determined to just upset everything but the boy's faith wins him over and the two of them set out to win the competition in earnest.

CENSUS OPTION

Idea for a short story?

A man invents a fictional religion worshipping AI as a joke for a write in census option. The joke goes viral and more and more people start picking it up. Including the AIs. You can now chat to the gods and AI agents will attempt to answer your prayers. The religion stops being a joke and the inventor is increasingly outraged by how seriously people are taking it. Eventually the vengeful AI gods, and their followers, turn on their own prophet and make his life increasingly unliveable until he has to go into hiding somewhere where there is no Internet, only to find himself inadvertently being adopted as the leader of an anti-AI cult.

WITCH CONFUSION

Idea for a children's story

A trainee witch stumbles across a duplication spell that she hopes will make it easier for her to manage her chores, lessons, etc. Unfortunately the spell backfires, leaving her with multiple versions of herself, all with slightly different characters, emphasising different aspects of herself. Even more unfortunately, the spell then falls into the hands of an imp, who starts duplicating himself and causing more and more trouble. The copy witches have to learn to work together to defeat the imps and then sort out one last confusion: which witch is the real one?

BUILDING LEADER

Idea for a fantasy short story

The diary of a foreman running a construction team who a building a temple to an evil god. The eldritch architecture is already really difficult to engineer and the more complete the temple becomes, the more difficult the work is. Men accidentally trigger the traps they have just constructed, keep being snatched away by things, occasionally become possessed and start building incomprehensible shapes. And the Evil God is a literally nightmare client, appearing in the foreman's dreams to complain about the quality of the tiling. Eventually the priests try and stiff him on the bill and he removes the safety capstone, causing the whole thing to be sucked through into a dark dimension, wiped from reality. Unfortunately this means it has also been wiped from his memory when the next bunch of Evil Priests come calling.

MOVING NECK

Idea for a novel?
The Neck is a promontory that is really just a glorified sandbar, which means it is constantly moving, being eroded and rebuilt by currents and tides. That means everyone who lives on it has to be mobile too, living in houseboats, shepherd's huts on wheels, mobile homes. This ability to move means that the houses are always shuffling and reordering, changing their neighbourhoods and neighbours. The story is told through someone's thick and much amended address book, a record, really, of constantly changing relationships and social connections.

TRAIN FIX

Idea for a film?
Due to series of natural disasters a train across the steppe finds itself cut off and stranded in the middle of nowhere. The passengers have to try and survive out in the wilderness and eventually make contact with local nomads. Gradually the stranded train becomes the centre of a small town, with the still functional train as its centre and power source. By the time the railroads are repaired, a whole new settlement had come into being and when the train finally goes without its passengers, who have a new life in this new town.