Revised (1):

Emily lifted a hand to shield her eyes from the hot sun. A distant dust cloud raced down the dirt track between the fields of green wheat--someone was coming.
She queried the farm-house. There were no visitors expected today--not a surprise, really--there'd been no visitors for twelve years. Her bots dealt with all her business in town.
An unwelcome visitor, then.
The sun glinted off the of the vehicle's canopy. The tell-tale crackle of a pressure generator carried on the light afternoon breeze--a cushion car, but not a model she’d seen before.
She limped back to the farmhouse and, reaching inside the door, grabbed her shotgun.

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Despite some slight concern over the apparent mid-Western setting elements (farmhouse, cornfields, dirt road, MC named Emily), and the apparent anachronism of bots/cushion-cars vs shotgun, this is clean and I'd read on.

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I was aiming for the 2100 AD --I figured that somethings would be the same and somethings would have changed. Soldiers may have plasma rifles in the armed forces but farm-folk (especially the hermitically inclined) may still use hundred year-old shot-guns. It's gonna get a fair bit more sci-fi fairly quick.

It does feel a little crammed on re-reading it.

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Just one little nit. I know you're trying to create an atmosphere of anticipation about the identity of the visitor, but I think I would lose the line "Someone was coming." Your opening line has already said this.

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'Someone was coming' was the first (perhaps not the correct term) indirect thought in the prose and I wanted it to echo with 'An unwelcome visitor, then...'. I quite like it, but will bear what you say in mind as it does have a little redundancy about it.

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.

I also think you have enough clues on the timeframe, with bots and cushion cars.

My take on the whole “someone is coming” is that it’s fine…but the unwelcome visitor line is shown by the fact that she goes for the shotgun. If there’s been no visitors for twelve years, would she really need to query the farm house? I’d probably assume that the visitor wasn’t scheduled if I were her (I may be missing something in your world-building).

One hundred years from now is a lot of time for technological development (look at how much has changed in the last ten years) and I think the gap between a shotgun and AI is pretty large; it would like a reasonably modern farmer having a bow and arrow. Commercially I’d imagine that farming would go along modern trends; multinational corporations consolidated the farming sector and a lot of genetic engineering around foods. We might have enough understanding of grains, meats, etc. to have it all vat grown while still retaining taste, nutrients, etc by then. Anyway, food for thought.

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One hundred years from now is a lot of time for technological development (look at how much has changed in the last ten years) and I think the gap between a shotgun and AI is pretty large; it would like a reasonably modern farmer having a bow and arrow. Commercially I’d imagine that farming would go along modern trends; multinational corporations consolidated the farming sector and a lot of genetic engineering around foods. We might have enough understanding of grains, meats, etc. to have it all vat grown while still retaining taste, nutrients, etc by then. Anyway, food for thought.

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Your comments seemed to be related to plot and milieu rather than prose. (Except the one about the redundancy of 'the unwelcome visitor' thought--I agree with you, but I like her voice coming through more directly, so I'll keep it.).

The thing I have found is that so-called 'futurologists' often seem to get it wrong. In the 50's people thought we would all be driving hover cars by now, with robots catering to our every need as we journeyed to colonies on Mars. Some of that is in the pipeline, but there is plenty that could go wrong and the technology never sees the light of day. Also some technolgy comes along fast and stuff you expected soon seems elusive.

With regard the 'bow and arrow' comment, shotguns have been in use for hundreds of years so the bow and arrow reference (which haven't been a serious alterantive for farmers since 1600's), I think, would be stretching your point--especially as there seems to be no real replacement on the horizon yet--besides it could be a shotgun manufactured in 30 years time, made of alu-plas. I take your general point regarding the technology gap, but I do want some old stuff in there. I think it adds authenticity to a world to have mixed levels of tech.

I was watching a show on TV the other day which was set in the 70's (filmed last year or something) and EVERYTHING in the show was from the seventies--everything. When I was in the seventies there was loads of stuff still around from the sixties and the fifties and the forties etc.

I agree with your comments about the evolution of farming--but for the purposes of this story this lady has managed to keep her father's farm (which is enormous) and runs it using bots. It's not a dairy or meat farm, but grows wheat...

'Querying the farmhouse' was world-building and it establishes the communication network she uses...there is a comment after this intro where the arrivee wonders why Emily hasn't heard the news...so the reference here is a foreshadow of that tech.

Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment, Nick.

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...high-techisms...

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Nice word! Can you have high-techismology...the study of high-techisms?

I don't see it as a problem, especially within the tone I'm sensing from this fragment of the story.

Oh and also I (uncharacteristically) agree with skadder about the predictions of future technology. As he said the sci fi and even some scientists of 50 years ago expected us to already be far more advanced than we are now. Theres to many factors that play into that to really predict much with much accuracy in my opinion.

What interests me about futureologists is not what they incorrectly predict, but what they fail to predict altogether. A lot of what we’ve developed in the last ten years is a lot more interesting than what was predicted to be the future in the 1950s. In many ways we're *more* advanced than they'd ever predicted, while in others we're less advanced. Anyway, that’s off-topic.

I’m going to play at being an annoying devil’s advocate here with points that are probably irrelevant. As you’ve said, you’ve included things for the sake of the story, which is the primary consideration. As Merlion has pointed out, plenty of SF uses outmoded technology (Star Wars and Light sabers...).

I see what you mean by mixed technology, but I’m also mindful of the acceleration of technology. The concept of AI would bootstrap the rate of technological progress a tremendous amount, because we are then faced with the concept of augmented our own intelligence. Things get outmoded much more quickly nowadays and this will only get better/worse (depending on your viewpoint) once AI is involved.

Given you’d pegged it as being 100 years from now (which I realize is an arbitrary date for your story purposes) is the gun a practical tool for your type of farmer? I know nothing about farming, but if she owns a wheat farm, why would she need a gun? I imagined that killing sick livestock and vermin are the primary uses of a weapon. I would probably flag water management, patents over genetically modified foods and IT management as being the primary problems for your protagonist. With AI, I’d imagine security as being taken care of by other means. Anyway, everything you’ve included is all perfectly justifiable in both story and genre terms.

Nick

[Edited to emphasize my opening paragraph]

WouldBe, thanks for that article, it was great. My thinking is that people don't change (at least not until some really significant changes will be made), though technologies do. If a technology fits in with existing needs, then wide adoption will follow.

My thinking with the shotgun was that it filled a need, but more advanced weapons would fill the need better. Then that got me thinking about whether there would be a need at all. Anyway, it's a lot of over-analysis for something that wouldn't bother most people.

Just something I noticed but failed to comment on earlier. Where did you extrapolate the AI from? Was it from the '...she queried the farmhouse'? To be honest I had, in my mind, pegged the farmhouse's processing abilities below an AI.

My email program can spot spam (not vey well) so I figured to run a load of 'droids, filter data etc wouldn't require an AI...however that might be the minimum thing on sale in fifty years time, so perhaps I better make it an AI--complicates it for me, though...

I think it's because you didn't specify the method of querying; it implied that the technology can handle a pretty sophisticated neural-machine interface. Reading it again, I guess you could send the farmhouse a set command <visitor's today?> which wouldn't be that far beyond current technology. I'd read it as giving the farmhouse a language based command.

I really think it's something that most people wouldn't even think about. You're safe to have her query the farmhouse yet not have AI.

We're at the point now of getting monkeys playing video games using though alone, so if the control system is based on visual or kinetic commands, then it's quite plausible within quite a short time period from now (i.e. obviously not next year, but within the lifespan of some of us). It's more that I thought that being able to "send" language based commands implies a sophisticated understanding of interfacing with higher cortical functions. If you understand the brain that well, it's not a big step to reverse engineer AI from that. If I'm not critiquing, I probably don't even notice that.

You said she "queried" the farmhouse. In other words, she asked it a question, and it provided an answer. The inference that can be drawn is that there's a difference from simply checking a calendar/diary system. If she had "called up" the farmhouse diary, that would look like a sophisticated interface but a simplistic system - the system presents data, she interprets the data. When you get to "querying" you're talking expert system/AI, with the interpretation being done by the "machine".

Back to the gun thing, like Merlion-Emrys noted in Firefly they still used gunpowder guns. This isn't because technology for other weapons wasn't there (we even see a laser gun in one episode) But shotguns and the like were cheaper, easier to come by and just as useful in regards to putting holes in people (or creatures) vital organs. You don't need to change it to some high tech shotgun (unless you wan't to of course).

I suppose the effect I was looking for was if someone from the city visited some farmer in the sticks who was using some antique weapon (not a flint lock! But still obviously old).

It's funny how intro's can become focused on some very specific detail that, if you were to read the whole story, you would probably have forgotten within moments as you ploughed on.