Hatrack River Writers Workshop: The Far Ends of Space

This is topic The Far Ends of Space in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/writers/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=11;t=001011

Posted by scm288 on :

Nothing going here. This post had too many mistakes in it. Sorry.

[This message has been edited by scm288 (edited May 19, 2005).]

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

quote:
Physicists tried to guess, from the small crater of its impact, where it might have come from. There were only three possibilities, each less likely than the next.

Are you sure about this line? Because unless anyone actually witnessed and recorded the time of impact, we would never know where it came from. And even then, we'd still probably not know... We would never be able to tell from the impact crater alone...

My suggestion is to skip the science lessons and put a character in right away.

Also, be advised that FC (first contact) stories are not always well received in the SF market. But there's no harm in writing one.

Posted by Void (Member # 2567) on :

(I haven't read a lot of sci-fi, so keep that in mind. Regular sci-fi readers might have a different reaction.)

It took me a bit to realize this object was found on the moon. Then you get into some technical stuff that disinterested me. Is this tech text important to the story?

Sometimes I think being able to post the first 13 lines is bit restrictive, in that perhaps things really get going in the 14th and 15th lines or shortly thereafter. But you have to draw the line somewhere, I guess.

I'm always interested to know what a writer thinks first contact might be like, so I would keep reading. True to my lazy nature, though, I'd skip through the tech stuff and look for a character and see what it does from there.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

There aren't any characters. That will make it a hard sell. OK, it may be legit to do it, but I suspect it'll be a better piece if you give us characters.

(William Tenn, I think it was, wrote an interesting storyXXXXXessay about a "masculinist" party (this was before "women's liberation"), which was essentially a news article with too much personal opinion in it -- and I read it, because the idea was so funny -- but I still think it's a hard sell.)

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Ditto HSO's science nit.

What system are you using when you say CCX-93-a2 Minor? It looks vaguely like it's based on extension of the older constellation based system, but I don't recognize it. Also, I didn't quite buy that humans would be able to detect the type of planets you describe by the year 2021.

And what's this malarky about "light patterns that would designate the Earth as the sender if translated correctly"? It's not like we could hide who was sending the message even if we tried.

On the other hand, it's not like anyone would get it anytime soon. Even granting that your star designation would be possible under some future system, most of the stars within fifty light years already have more conventional names. That's a hundred years waiting for an answer at light speed. Since you suggest that we traced the trajectory of the probe (and it didn't destroy the moon outright) it must have been traveling for thousands of years. Even if we did trace the trajectory to another star system, there would be no reason to believe it hadn't just floated through on a flyby, and we'd have no clue as to the real origin.

Okay, I'm probably getting carried away here, so I'll get back to literary concerns. Ditto everyone, start with a character.

Posted by scm288 on :

Sorry, I suck at science, so I was just making a ton of cr*p up. SF Readers are not idiots, though, so I'll stop there.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

We all make crap up. That's what it means to be a writer. But sucking at science does tend to be a contra-indication for writing "hard" SF (particularly of the old "open with five pages of detailed technical exposition" school), if the old saw about writing what you know has any meaning.

That's why we say to start with the characters. You don't need a Ph.D. in the humanities to understand people (I rather think it helps if you don't have a degree in the subject, actually). Even if you can't understand humans (and heck, I may be flattering myself, but I think I've learned a thing or two about them), you can write a great book about rabbits roaming the English countryside in search of the good life. Well, that's been done already, but your story could be about cats or aliens or something, and it doesn't really have to be set in England.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

quote:
Sorry, I suck at science, so I was just making a ton of cr*p up.

Heck, I suck at magic, but I make a ton of cr*p up about that, too. You don't need a lot of science in science fiction. If you suck at the science details, leave the detail writing to folk like Arthur C. Clarke. Science fiction can be more about living in a speculative, futuristic world. Even people who own robots have problems, and the gripping part of any book is the emotional journey made by the POV character.

And think about it this way... you could probably write a book about someone who owns a car without going into details about what makes a car run. You can write a book about spaceships or robots or any other futuristic device without having to provide a technical manual for how the science works. Stay focused on the human drama; that's where your compelling story will be.