REUNION - II - Revelation (z)
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
When there's nowhere to go, perhaps that's your best choice.
CATEGORY: FICTION TIMES READ: 1704 RATING: 0 (G) SERIES: FIREFLY
Finally, Diana comes out of her trance, although she still has a strange look on her face. “Captain, we have an invitation. And I don’t think we can afford to turn it down.”
“It seems that there’s a planet further out in the Black called “Oasis”, and the communications device in Derrial’s room is connected to it. The residents are a very different group of people, having nothing to do with anyone in the ‘Verse except the Book family. And they are very interested in meeting us! Apparently Derrial had been there many years ago, and updated the communications link.”
“And for reasons they did not explain, Oasis is extremely curious about Inara.”
When Mal asks, “Where is Oasis?” Diana drops back into her uncommunicative state.
As Mal and Zoë begin to look for Oasis on the strange maps they found, Simon calls over from Serenity; “I don’t understand even half of what River is saying, but apparently it’s a series of formulas describing near-light drive. As best as I can interpret her physics, somehow Revelation is capable of over 99.8% of the speed of light, and Serenity can be modified to do that as well! All Fireflies using the Trace Compression Block can!
Kaylee, who has been sitting back only half listening, suddenly gets it! She jumps to her feet, “ Shi a! (Yes!) ” and races back to the Revelation’s engine room.
Mal stands up, saying, “Well, this’s all-fired interesting stuff, but if we can’t find Oasis, it don’t mean much. What have we got, Zoë?” They dive deeper into the maps and papers on the bridge…
Soon Simon arrives with a sane River, ready to go. She now knows how to make Serenity travel at near–light speed; “And it won’t take long to set it up – the links to the necessary modifications have always been a part of the Firefly design, although later manufacturers had no idea why they were in the blueprints.”
Mal says, “Well, Kaylee is already down in the engine room, trying to under -” Before Mal has finished, River is gone… “Sure saves a powerful lot of
I think this just may not be my kind of story. But good luck! I can see you're getting readers, so don't stop writing. :)
Do you mind telling me what you don't like? I'm genuinely interested.
This is my first effort at this sort of thing, and I'm treating it as a learning experience.
Is it my writing style? I don't know what I can do about it, but it would be good to know, and maybe make an efort.
I know that many of the stories here are character driven, where this is more event driven, with a very different backdrop to many others. (And about to become much more different!) Is that the problem?
It also tends to become more black than most, before new info or people open new unexpected doors.
I realize I can't hope to please everyone, but as I said, it's all about learning, a far as I'm concerned.
All comments from all readers are appreciated.
Your style is okay, a little fast paced so sometimes you lose moments that I would have liked to see elaborated on. But the reason I'm still having trouble reading is that your original elements, while good ideas on their own and theoretically, are kind of dominating everything in the story.
It's not a bad thing to introduce new concepts or characters into an existing fictional universe. The trick is to balance your new stuff with the old canon stuff in a way that the old canon stuff is improved and not "less cool" in comparison with the new stuff.
In this story you introduced both a new character and an entirely new civilization outside the knowledge of the crew and most of the universe.
Both of these concepts are intriguing, and I actually did like that you tied in Book with that. I have some questions about how "the Books" work, whether they're really individuals or a collective, all kinds of things.
But the problem, as I said, is balance. With both the new character and this new civilization, you just went a little too far.
A character who has a mysterious connection to a canon character that died, that turns out that both were part of an offshoot of the human race that serve as repositories of human knowledge and experience, who can, by access back to that database, know everything and do everything better than anyone else on the crew... No matter how likeable you write the character, it's too much.
A civilization that has near FTL engines, that are more advanced than anything the verse has known and has amazing weapons technology but no real inclination to use it against the silly Alliance that's afraid of them...
Too much.
And when you have stuff that's a bit too much already, and the next big plotline is going to the world of too much, people are going to start getting a little nervous. When you're writing a story, you don't want people to be overwhelmed by your basic plot or your setting or one of your original characters, you want them to be feeling what the characters are feeling.
I even tried to keep reading after you said the off-balance would tone done later on. There very well might come a time when all of the overwhelming stuff really DOES become less relevant later on, but at this point in the story it's hard to get past.
Then, when the crew gets there, they're wondering where the heck are they, and who are these people and what is all this technology.
Then slowly reveal things in chunks. The facts will still be what they are, Diana will still a member of a more advanced race of human from outside known space, but by not revealing everything all at once, you give your readers a chance to react to what you're writing.
I have rvealed only chunks, but quite possibly the chunks are still too big.
Well, I guess that's okay. Maybe I just outta reign in being so uptight and try to go with it.
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