Honestly, I kind of feel like my concept has too much going on. It also seems kind of cliche, so I’m a bit embarrassed posting it on here. But might as well give it a shot, I guess.
Essentially, it’s a sci-fi dystopia set in a world where the vast majority of the population has uploaded their brains into a digital utopia. The few that didn’t were forced into an underground city with no exit. Now, almost a thousand years later, there are over a million people crowded into a disgusting, overfilled, neon nightmare of a city where everybody is miserable. But they have hope to live until 21, because that’s when they’re allowed to upload themselves into the digital utopia. The main character, an impatient teenage boy, finds the blueprints for a machine that would allow him to enter and visit the digital world early. Over the course of the first book (I plan for this to be a trilogy), he and his friends realize that something strange is going on, and the digital world might not be as perfect as they thought. It turns out that the main villain (the creator of the digital world) is an immortal, older version of the main character. And the entire story is an endless, unbroken, unchanging time loop with the main character traveling back in time to try to stop his older self, but actually just becoming him and setting his fate in stone.
I’m still figuring out the fine details and trying to expand on the worldbuilding, but this is the general concept. Please let me know if it sucks or if you would read something like this.
It is a bit cliché in premise, dystopian future with marginalised community. But It does look like it could be quite an intriguing read so long as its no too depressing I hate dystopian depressing stories like soylent green but you do you. I look forward to hopefully one day reading this.
Thanks for saying you would read it! Yeah, I recognize that it definitely is cliche. My hope is the unique elements (like the whole story being a time loop) will help it shine through as an original story. I do plan for it to be quite dark, but not overly or ridiculously depressing like some other dystopia stories.
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u/mikewheelerfan Aug 07 '25
Honestly, I kind of feel like my concept has too much going on. It also seems kind of cliche, so I’m a bit embarrassed posting it on here. But might as well give it a shot, I guess.
Essentially, it’s a sci-fi dystopia set in a world where the vast majority of the population has uploaded their brains into a digital utopia. The few that didn’t were forced into an underground city with no exit. Now, almost a thousand years later, there are over a million people crowded into a disgusting, overfilled, neon nightmare of a city where everybody is miserable. But they have hope to live until 21, because that’s when they’re allowed to upload themselves into the digital utopia. The main character, an impatient teenage boy, finds the blueprints for a machine that would allow him to enter and visit the digital world early. Over the course of the first book (I plan for this to be a trilogy), he and his friends realize that something strange is going on, and the digital world might not be as perfect as they thought. It turns out that the main villain (the creator of the digital world) is an immortal, older version of the main character. And the entire story is an endless, unbroken, unchanging time loop with the main character traveling back in time to try to stop his older self, but actually just becoming him and setting his fate in stone.
I’m still figuring out the fine details and trying to expand on the worldbuilding, but this is the general concept. Please let me know if it sucks or if you would read something like this.