more cold

It's still cold outside (was a round zero degrees this morning) and I'm still sopped with the virus. Hoping to be a little healed up by work tomorrow.

The gem of my ideas and unfortunately the roughest of my Fox & Film Roman proposals was the InterStellar OverDrive one. I wish that I had a more time to do better art. Like this cover with the basis color down but painfully lacking in modeling.

InterStellar OverDrive Proposal
by Doug Holverson

InterStellar OverDrive takes place in either an alternate universe or a hyper-real dream where they still make Studebakers and Studebaker makes a damn fine flying saucer. The series will give viewers a lot to empathize with an ensemble cast and many characters trying to do well, often despite themselves and nearly all of them trying to get a head in this galaxy.

While some promising (and influential) space series have space yuppies spreading political correctness, nearly everybody in the InterStellar OverDrive Universe is out to make a buck or their planetary equivalent. This opens up a lot of comedic and dramatic possibilities as various people work at self-serving or cross-purposes. Nobody gets preached to or set right and only occasionally learn lessons when things go seriously wrong.

Earth and Leiania, a similar world in the Tau Ceti system, are considered to be a bit backwards, out in the Milky Way’s boondocks, not being in either fashionable, cosmopolitan arm. The Tau Cetians are considered to be more promising and the Earthlings being a collective weaker stepsister.

The main characters have been in development for a while and they can pretty much write their own dialog.

Flexia Bast is a full-blooded unmastered warrior from Leiania. She is taking business courses in Omaha, Nebraska. She is a tall, very powerfully built, strong, silent type but can be naturally friendly when approached. Her estranged mother is the most successful entrepreneur on the home world and her father is reputed to be most formidable warrior of his generation. She is probably the break out character of this series.

Wayne Kolbe is still a very athletic ex-jock who is uncomfortable at being a planet-hopping corporate suit for Big Bill, but he works hard to excel to make up for not cracking the pros. He will impulsively do heroic acts and then realize that he’s in deep later. Note on his pompadour: this character design predates Johnny Bravo by nearly a decade and a half.

Wilfred “Big Bill” P. Feird is a billionaire based in Omaha since he got his start there as a mere Studebaker dealer. He’s still a pushy, hard sell, fly by the set of his pants businessman. Think of a George Babbit archetype on a caffeine buzz.

Winifred “Winnie” Feird is the oldest Big Bill’s two daughters, both adults. Winnie is a bit tomboyish, fairly zaftig, and a little too extraverted. She feels that the universe is but a stage, so why not chew the scenery, steal scenes, and be a wsieguy. She’s one corner of the triangle with Wayne and Didi.

Didi Feird is Wilfred’s other daughter, a pretty crew-cut sweater girl. She’s otherwise a bit quiet and shy and deferential. Sometimes, she will come up with the odd insight. Other times, she can too readily be a spear-carrier or victim for Winnie’s antics.

Ulviox “Elvis” 10G-Q5 is a little green techno-geek with a playfully obnoxious personality. He has an IQ over a 1000 but can be puerile enough that it takes a while to intuit that. He apparently knows about all the technological and pop-culture trivia in the Galaxy. He is sometimes paired with Wayne on romps.

V.U. Meter is the angry deadpan leader of the Psubatomic Byrdbath, a critical darling of a forgotten Noise Band from the ‘80s that never was commercially successful or even popular in his hometown. He is a friend with Flexia and she sings and plays bass in the latest incarnation of his band.

Montue Bast is Flexia’s loving, grand old man of a father. He is reputable to the most formidable Leian warriors of his generation, and continues to be the Emperor’s favorite and a kindly family man and naturally very friendly.

Leonina Bast is Flexia’s estranged mother and the most successful and least liked entrepreneur on the Tau Ceti home world. She is an analytical strategy wonk and has never forgiven the universe, and wants a serious chunk out of its hide, for giving her four extra toes and fingers, and over double the normal IQ than normal.

Pursia Bast is Flexia’s much younger grown sister and mommie’s little sycophant. She can do calculus in her head, parrot many facts and still know not what any of it means.

Of course, the series sprawls across the galaxy with a lot of races of aliens. Here’s a starter set.

The Leians are almost like a parallel Earth, with the main gimmick is that their “humans” evolved from Pantherus instead of Pan. Their society is a bit more orderly, cleaner, and intuitive than ours. Internal combustion never took hold there, they still hold on to a lot of legacy steam power, and are years ahead of us in communications, computers, fabrication, and fuel-cells.

The Inols are very non-human aliens that dominate the Western Arm of the Milky Way. They have business plans for Earth, almost always with us getting the short end. They came in four corporate “races”: Cyan, Yellow, Magenta, and Black. The Cyan, Yellow, and Black groups are the bumbling, CYA, Peter-principled corporate bureaucrats of the universe. The Magenta group can catch one unaware by their slick competency and effectiveness.

The Hampions are an over-bearing empire that dominates the overly industrialized Eastern Arm of the Milky Way with their “State Capitalism.” They like pollution and boat-anchor-engineered big things with a lot of gears and chips. They think they’re wonderful to deal with, but everyone else in the galaxy thinks differently.

The Claireans are the Hampions closest allies, despite being a little smarter and fastidious and a lot more orientated towards precision. They can also be maddeningly anal retentive, and a few other quirks, having been descended from a slave class that killed off a decadent and slovenly ruling cast.

The Cses a political satellite of the Hampion Empire that is closest to Earth. Two moons in the system, Cseworld and Junkworld are populated by what looks like cyclopean elfmimi.

Elgium are a race of little green geeks. They have some of the galaxy’s most advanced technology and most backwards social skills.

The 1101 are a race of non-aligned robots inhabiting their worlds 000E through 01BD in the star systems 0000 through 000A. These beings never lie nor do anything deliberately wrong or self-serving and are always cooperative. This makes them hard and awkward to figure out and deal with.

Just send the various characters and races bouncing off each other like Brownian motion and you have an endlessly entertaining series.