Untitled sci-fi police procedural

[waldenwriter]

In my British Lit class, I signed up to do a Creative Response to a work we read in class. I chose to do my response on The Canterbury Tales. I wrote stuff for all three of the approaches I pitched in my project proposal, but I liked this one the best and workshopped it in class:

www.scribd.com/doc/44558951/LTWR-308A-Writing-Project-Draft-2

Main feedback I'm looking for:

Suggestions for a title

How can I introduce more sci-fi elements? This was something I was told in workshop that I should do. Particularly, the end of the story contains the typical Miranda rights they read to you when you get arrested, and I was told I should make this more sci-fi.

I need feedback ASAP, as the final version of this project is due next week.

***

Oh, and this is meant to be part of a larger work; my teacher told me that I could write an excerpt since writing the whole thing would be too long for the assignment. Here's how I proposed the story to the teacher:

The final approach I have developed for a Creative Response to The Canterbury Tales is somewhat more unusual. In this third approach, I would rewrite the Tales as a sci-fi mystery work, most likely in the style of a “police procedural” (a subgenre of mystery fiction that depicts the activities of the police as they solve a crime, an idea that has been explored not just in novels and stories but in recent TV series like Law and Order, Criminal Minds, NCIS, etc). In this story, the police (or sleuth, if it ends up being a more traditional detective story) would be investigating the disappearance of the passengers from a generation ship (a spaceship that travels slower than the speed of light to a far-off destination in space with passengers in tow; typically people are born, live, and die while on the very long trip, hence the term “generation ship”). The only way to discover the reason for the disappearances and who the culprit could be would be for the police to view stories the passengers have told to the others and recorded for posterity on hologram chips and deduce what they can from these holograms. Again, the basic character types from Chaucer would more or less remain in the characters portrayed, though with more modern equivalents and particularly roles reasonable for the founding of a space colony (which would most likely be the objective of the ship’s mission). I haven’t decided if this will end up as a murder mystery or not; that would be the predictable ending and I feel more inclined to go for a less traditional ending. Plus, the first (and so far, last) time I tried to write a murder mystery, it engendered harsh criticism from a writer friend of mine who read the first draft, so I am not particularly confident about writing a murder mystery anyway.

[tris]

Renee,

You can update the police accoutrements -- using datapads, comlinks, etc maybe even interface jacks that allow the police officers to download computer info to their brains. Also, re-orient your reader scenery-wise. Jumping into the middle like that, I really wasn't aware I was on a generational ship. What would the hallways be like? How would the police officers move in zero gravity and how would that affect their arrest of the doctor?

As a cryogenist, he would need more than mere chemicals -- maybe schematics? additional hardware in his compartment not found elsewhere? Are there holocams in the ship the police could pull the feed from (no film, of course) and show his furtive movements?

How are her reports files? on computer chip, does she access them through a holographic intermix?

You might want to rework the cargo hold idea, as well. On a generational ship with people coming and going all the time, it would be too easy to stumble across them. However, if he took over small sections, integrated the circuitry into the ship's walls and stashed the bodies there, it would be harder to uncover (trace the energy circuits and wonder why power is route through sections with no apparent use). He could re-label small sections as storage areas for radioactive materials (would keep out the most persistent).

As for a title, how about "Dr. Freeze, in the hold, with a hydrospanner" a sci fi take off on Clue? Seriously, I'm not great at titles. But maybe that will give you a starting place. Good luck!

[ignominius]

How about this for a title...."The Colonist's Tales'....I'd use each suspect to tell a story of something suspicious or wierd that all link to some possible crime ...murder, kidnap ...but then at the very end have it believed it was all a bad dream from someone being woken from cryosleep , but there are , in the final sentence people who have gone missing!..........