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I have completed one! It is a short story, 9000 words, of at least decent quality (I can guarantee proper punctuation and good grammars, and sometimes I win awards, so I do not suck completely)
IT IS ABOUT
(i must redact key terms in case a future publisher googles them to see if I put the story online for free :()
[REDACTED] [REDACTED], marine grunt in mankind's ongoing war against a mysterious and unstoppable memetic weapon called the Loom, awakens from a three-month cryosleep to find herself mysteriously two months pregnant. Frozen out of combat operations, left to rot in orbit as her comrades fight a losing battle against an invisible foe, she begins the hunt for answers in the bowels of the cavernous warship [REDACTED].
THAT IS WHAT IT IS ABOUT
If I hope to ever publish it, I cannot put the full text here, but I can email it to interested parties. PM me with your address if you are interested! (I am particularly interested in feedback from certain Messrs. of keen and proven storytelling potency.)
This offer is subject to sudden cancellation if my beautiful legal adviser tells me it is unwise and would harm my chances of publication. :(
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How can she be two months pregnant if she was in cryosleep for three months? That part is certainly mysterious.
Expect a PM since this sounds interesting.
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'tis indeed a good story. Definitely worth checking out.
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How can she be two months pregnant if she was in cryosleep for three months? That part is certainly mysterious.
Expect a PM since this sounds interesting.
IS IT NOT MYSTERIOUS?
Sent it to you.
I think this thread can safely be used for discussion w/spoiler tags.
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Hmm, Halo and System Shock 2 didn't by any chance influence your work did it Battuta? :P
No, but that's what came into my head when reading the OP.
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Nopes. But there is at least one homage to a certain fairly transparently related science fiction classic. See if you can spot it!
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So, I liked it. Substantially more than I was expecting to, actually (sorry, batman!). And now I don't want to discuss it, because, uh,
/me points at OP
I will say that the twist I was expecting was for
the colonial marines to discover that, like, they were actually the infected (I'm not using their proper name, as I'm apparently more paranoid than Battuta :p). Not that such a revelation would have made sense with all the INSANITY IS PART OF THE TIMES foreshadowing, but still
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Nopes. But there is at least one homage to a certain fairly transparently related science fiction classic. See if you can spot it!
Starship Troopers? :D
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Invisible foe = Predator?
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Memetic kill agents and [REDACTED]? Sign me up!
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forgive my ignorance, but what does memetic mean?
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forgive my ignorance, but what does memetic mean?
In general, a 'meme' is sort of an 'idea unit', a mental equivalent to a gene. A memetic weapon is a (so far purely science-fictional) thought or idea that can kill, harm, or forcibly alter people who think it.
The one in this story does not quite work like that, and in fact the story itself never uses the term memetic weapon. It's all explained in the text.
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forgive my ignorance, but what does memetic mean?
Pertaining to memes. This obviously implies that the web has become saturated with viral fads, with the resulting emergent behavior triggering sentience! The Internet will kill us all! A masterstroke of suspenseful dread by the pen of Battuta! :shaking:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=memetic
I should very much like to read this story.
EDIT: Blast! Battuta posted first. Also, apparently the spoiler tag doesn't work on links.
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New wave of stories just went out.
I got some vaguely spoilery questions that I would not mind discussing with people. I will post them LATOR.
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Whurps. Minor story logic error corrected in my local copy. I'll see if anyone is clever enough to spot it!
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I'd like a look. Might take me a bit to get around to it, though.
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Read the whole thing today (at work, don't tell anybody :nervous:)
I figured out the gist of what the problem was about two pages before the main character, which left me feeling clever. That's a mark of good writin.'
I don't really feel like actually spoiling anything yet.
EDIT: My vote for "transparently related science fiction classic" is also Starship Troopers.
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I'd love to take a look at this as well. :)
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I'm interested.
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I'd like a look. Might take me a bit to get around to it, though.
I'm interested.
You dudes, like, gotta give me your emails, and stuff, man.
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I would like to read your story, Battuta.
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I would like to read your story, Battuta.
PM me with your email.
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Guys, he's lying, he doesn't need your emails, he just doesn't like you.
I know, he's mean.
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I've been reworking the most complex, irritating scene in the story. Nobody's mentioned getting hung up on it yet, but guh, the character motivations are so...tricksy.
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Just finished reading.
Good story, and I think that
describing the general gist of it as a broad-spectrum mind**** would not be inaccurate. Very interesting thoughts on some of the issues that could be raised by transhuman existence, and the nature of memory and sanity.
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Hooray!
Thank you.
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I would like to read your story, Battuta.
PM me with your email.
Strange, I thought it was on my profile...
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I would like to read your story, Battuta.
PM me with your email.
Strange, I thought it was on my profile...
You've got it hidden.
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One issue that I've had with this sort of thing, namely the
"we had to [REDACTED], but you agreed and gave authorization for it" theme, is that it would solve a lot of problems if they would just tell the poor guys when they woke up, instead of trying to hide it. Did you give a reason for that in the story and I missed it?
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The reason is sort of implied, and I definitely had something in mind.
But it's also something I'm still playing with. I could in fact cut that whole plot point (and suggest the process was involuntary) without significantly changing the story.
One major problem I have is that I really really do not wamt the word count to grow further. It's already way too long.
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Battuta, I love you. So very, very, much. Would you like the donation to the GB Fund in cash or credit?
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The reason is sort of implied, and I definitely had something in mind.
Something along the lines of, "Yeah, well, we would tell you, but that would bring you down from peak combat efficiency and damage your sanity, while the entire point of this exercise is to maintain your sanity and effectiveness"?
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If you still can, could you e-mail it [email protected]?
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The reason is sort of implied, and I definitely had something in mind.
Something along the lines of, "Yeah, well, we would tell you, but that would bring you down from peak combat efficiency and damage your sanity, while the entire point of this exercise is to maintain your sanity and effectiveness"?
Precisely so.
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I'd like to read this please. :)
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I'll handle the backlog of story requests once I'm moved in. Sorry.
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Right, I wouldn't mind reading what you've got.
PMed you my email.
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Yup, I'd love to give it a perusal. PMing my email now.
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Sent out another batch.
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5 stars.
I'll probably come back to this thread again when spoilers are discussed more openly. I mean, there are spoiler tags, but then people will read them anyways and ruin the story.
Edit: Is it okay if I pass this on to a couple of my best buds to read? If it's okay, I could just forward my copy over, or I could have them give you their emails.
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Go ahead and discuss spoilers, it's been long enough anyway that if they haven't read it yet they're probably waiting on the Cliffs Notes. :p
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Just out of curiosity, what the heck is the rest of the ship doing when the last part of the story happens? I'm quite sure you can't just smash important ship hardware, alert security bots and have the entire rest of the crew unawares.
Also, for some extremely odd reason, I visualize the spaceship as an odd mix of the Ender's Game station, Biotics Lab from Killing Floor, and Rapture from Bioshock. Go figure.
Oh, and check out my post edit above yours. I didn't want to double post, but you ninja'd me :(
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Pass it on, but please make it very clear the story cannot be replicated or posted online in any public form, because this will sink my chances of publishing. :(
And:
I'd envisioned the ship as mostly pretty empty. In the Aliens Sulaco school of things, rather than the Star Trek hundreds-of-crew notion.
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You mentioned in the final plot exposition between the commander guy and [REDACTED] that a few members of the team had been lost and any memory of them erased. I thought they kept memory backups and clones for exactly the purpose that valuable members could not be lost. Even if they run out of bodies, the backup should still be there for whenever they're restocked, right? Or were the backups corrupted/infected/gone nuts?
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The other soldiers' memories of the lost ones was erased, but they themselves are probably still on disk somewhere. They just ran out of clones for them. So memory OF them was erased, but they weren't erased.
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How exactly do they run out of clones? You don't clone from an existing clone; you find a zygote and grow that in vitro. Unless, of course, the flash cloning somehow requires a mature copy, and people think it's a good idea to use the last backup...
And yes, I'll definitely make it clear that this is your private work. Thanks!
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There are limited resouces on-ship; they only run with three clones, and it takes months or years to ready new ones. It might have to be done at some kind of central facility, too. Cloning is haaard.
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Doesn't explain how it's possible to effectively "run out" of someone's body. It seems stupid to not keep at least one backup somewhere, especially given the shortage of effective soldiers. Unless of course, their headshotz quota wasn't being reached, and they were deemed a waste of resources.
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They all had THREE clone body backups on the ship at the start of the tour, not one. Those soldiers just had the misfortune to get killed three times. There were no more clones available until the ship went home to restock, and the whole plot is that they couldn't do that. The soldiers are still on disk but they have nothing to download into.
Did that not come across? It was a major plot point that Sunilben had already died once, and thus had only two clones remaining (which she used in her closing gambit.)
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Unless I completely missed a message somewhere, I never got my hands on this to give it a look-see. I'd really like the chance to heap praise upon you. :)
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They all had THREE clone body backups on the ship at the start of the tour, not one. Those soldiers just had the misfortune to get killed three times. There were no more clones available until the ship went home to restock, and the whole plot is that they couldn't do that. The soldiers are still on disk but they have nothing to download into.
Did that not come across? It was a major plot point that Sunilben had already died once, and thus had only two clones remaining (which she used in her closing gambit.)
I knew that each soldier had 3 backups (that part was exceedingly clear), but I still don't get why Andire couldn't get replacements when he goes back to restock/rearm/refuel... I clearly missed something :/. The way he had to wipe memories that others had of the used-up-their-respawns soldiers made it seem like they were permanently off the team.
Also, I got the (wrong) impression that clones were made on the ship, though I don't know what gave me that idea. Probably my association of the ship to Biotics Lab :P
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The ship never went home to restock/rearm/refuel - that's why it was increasingly beat up. And it's possible that clones can be grown aboard ship, but that there simply hasn't been time; it may take many months or years.
And yes, the soldiers were 'permanently' off the team because their absence wouldn't fit with the original rollback memories. If they ever returned home or got new spare bodies, Andire could have used an earlier 'save state' where they were still present.
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Just to put you at ease Battuta (and hopefully not insult Kolgena at the same time) I didn't have a problem getting that point with the supply shortage. I can't remember what made it so clear for me, it could be that you just missed one sentance Kolgena, but there it is.
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That's quite possible that I missed something. I read the story in many rather spaced out sessions, and I think I was multitasking at the same time too :/ (Sorry, I'd have given your great story more attention, but I've been busy recently)
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I think it was when Sunilben started to run about the ship and notice that stuff was broken, and they were low on ship missiles and stuff. Or was that part in the exposition too?
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So I've redrafted this one again, with slight changes. The main character's last name is no longer Sunilben and I've tweaked some stuff for clarity.
I also made the decision to play up the physical symptoms of pregnancy a little more to make the story feel less like it was written by a dude who has no idea how a female body works.
Nobody actually got the biggest SF namedrop in it - the name Costaguana should be a hint.
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Wikipedia says that's very clever, but I would never have gotten it. Looking forward to reading this again (eventually at least).
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Well I didn't want it to be too obvious. Nothing's as irritating as intentionally immersion-breaking tributes!
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Just finished reading it. Things didn't really become clear until near the end, but I liked it that way. Kept me compelled to keep reading. Well done!