The Billion Year Backup System (working title)(Workshop & Comments thread)

[Syn]

I have no idea who Larry Niven is, but I'll read this thread after I finish work today.

[Buster's Uncle]

[Buster's Uncle]

Hey, bring in the Kzin, because the Tnuctipun were nasty and aggressive, as a war expert/thinker, since a non-veteran Earth human would be bad at it, and Garvey may not have known that about Jason, and/or wanted more thought and diversity of perspective, a very Niven way of thinking. 

Small low-caste one desperate for work, OOH! a telepath (obvious where that would come in, and maybe a security precaution, too, like a Garvey Grog precaution already on company staff since Down, a mind-bodyguard for when he goes to fetch Jill and all) and avoid all the obvious Speaker-to-Animals slashing Louis when woken-type action, for minimal impact on the shape of the story.  -Also, write as few new lines for him as you can - give him Jason's thoughts on fighting telepathic overlords, again to minimize change and also a telepath would be more qualified to speculate.  He doesn't have to take over the story; he mustn't, as it's already fine as-is.

And that right there, it'll be good, and get you MONEY and Man-Kzin Wars publication.

[Geo]

Bumped for Geo.

Cheers!

[Syn]

I read it. Necessary disclaimer that I'm not familiar with Larry Nivens and thus cannot opine on whether or not it's faithful to his style.

As a reader, I didn't like it. This is, however, because of my own personal -- and very, very picky -- tastes. I'm not a fan of light-hearted/comedy-esque stories. I've never read one that I enjoyed so that automatically puts the story here at an extreme disadvantage.

So with that in mind I won't comment on the storyline. Since I have a bias against the way it's being told, my opinion about it is pretty much null and void. Nothing you can do about that and I'm not going to waste anyone's time by poo-pooing on the story.

Instead I'll comment on the writing itself. There's a balance to be found between dialogue and exposition. For storytelling, a little more dialogue than exposition is usually best. Short, to the point, and usually keeps the reader's attention. I think this was partially imbalanced in the story. The beginning and end had a great deal of exposition while the middle had close to none. Dialogue is good, it's the easiest way to develop characters, but the absence of exposition means someone with a layman's understanding of the universe won't become any more familiar with it. They might come to care about the characters but the world these characters live in will continue to be an abstract concept. My recommendation would be to include a little more exposition. Help build the universe while you're developing the characters so the reader will care about everything and not just certain parts.

My other point is that you're victim of a really common blunder in writing. I was a victim of it all the time years ago and I still slip up today quite a bit. It's a really tough habit to break. I struggle with it a lot. This blunder is inserting commas when separating thoughts and subjects in sentences. You write a sentence and you don't notice doing it. Your fingers put in the comma because your mind switched gears midway through the sentence and you instinctively portray this as a pause and change in thought.

This is mostly fine when you're addressing a completely different idea despite being a part of the same sentence or trying to insert a deliberate pause. However, you're doing it a lot when you say one thing and then go 'and'. You're also doing it when you're contradicting/changing the first part of the sentence. In most instances, you can safely remove the comma before an 'and' or 'but' and you won't hurt readability. Sometimes you may even improve readability by reducing comma use.

Examples of what I'm talking about:

They could summon their prey telepathically, and summon scavengers to groom them.

Hover chairs weren't actually chairs, but they served the same purpose.

I know they also served as spies, but Tnuctipun sized brains should've been more than adequate for a spy. So what's the purpose?

"What do you make of this?" I said, showing them the open stasis box given to me by G-Squared, and placing it on the table in the main cabin.

By themselves it isn't a big deal. But if you keep in mind that most people who read your work also use their inner-voice to 'narrate' what they're reading, you'll realize that these commas are putting pauses in a great deal of your sentences. This downplays the importance of a pause in tense moments and it'll also prevent them from falling into a rhythm while reading. Commas are powerful, but too many commas can make your story go from smooth to choppy. With 'ands' and 'buts', you need to consider if it's worth adding an accompanying pause.

If you are someone who adds a lot of commas in their work I usually recommend cutting out 10-15% of them. There's no point in changing your entire style. A lot of the time, the pauses contribute to your writing cadence. Hitting the point of 'too many' is easy to do, though, so if you really like commas you're better off going through afterwards and plucking some out where applicable just to make things read a little better.

That's it. Everything else is fine from a mechanic perspective, as far as I can tell.

[Buster's Uncle]

For a somewhat-contradiction, google the Oxford Comma; I'm another literate who decided same independently, and use it in posts often.  Sometimes the English style in taught in school is foolish, like when/where punctuation goes at the end of a quote...

However, no disputing the observation about flow...

You might consider part of the trimming narrative exposition at the beginning that I advised be done by breaking it up real fine and short and moving/dispersing stuff into the dialogue-heavy middle where Syn suggested more expo, as you need it.

The Niven-savy will not make the complaint, after all, and they're your only audience.

The snatch part at the end still goes on too long, and the brains-eating piles it too high and needs toning down and fixing to work.

---

Gentlemen, Rusty's family medical distraction is alleged to be easing, and this is an excellent present for when he has time to look.

[Syn]

The Oxford Comma is different and I'm a big proponent of its use. Anything different is barbarism.

[Geo]

As far as I remember Niven's way of writing, the light-hearted flow of the story is similar.
Some technic remarks after a quick read through:

Bunnies on Silvereyes? Not in the Thrintun era I hope...

And why couldn't Schultz-mann go for himself interviewing a Bandersnatchi? With gravity belts or a dedicated vehicle with its own gravity plates -and atmospheric/climate settings he could have gone himself in sufficient comfort.

There's probably more, but reading those parts, something cried "foul" in my mind.

[Buster's Uncle]

[ninja'd] BARBARISM, I tell you!  Barbarism, and I'm right about that.

---

Geo, you'll see later I said "something like nocturnal goats", and Rusty did some research or just knew rabbit-habbits and used them.  NOT in Slaver times, though any natural biosphere ought to have nocturnal herbivores and the Tncutipun must have had a reliable way of repelling them until they needed the sunflowers gone.

Richard was churchmouse-poor -a Nivenism- or I'm sure, despite what he said comfort and all, he'd have gone, the trip, the equipment, the treaty w/ the 'snatches about human access to the lowlands, all costing serious ducats he never had after losing his ship and grant...

[Rusty Edge]

Well, I wrote the story to help the new section of the site get going. Then I forgot about it.
I do appreciate the serious consideration and advice everyone has given this.

 I forgot about bunnies and sunflowers. You should probablly know that I raised sunflowers as a farmer. So what seems as obvious to me as gravity, may not fit science fiction.


If the story is worthy of serious effort, I'll have to re-read some Niven to get back into his voice first..

Speaking of serious, I've got RL compications today. The root of it is a good sign, but it means changing and coordinating plans, just when things seemed to be arranged and settled.
I suppose that's pretty much par for the course with brain damage, Buncle?

[Buster's Uncle]

My experience of it -my own I was six and who can say for sure?- is that my loved one is the same, same person, only one of the manifestations is exacerbated her worst previous habit of aggressive arguing/fighting daring me to beat her up -not literally, but very close- and probably more often.  She is mostly just herself, much as she seemed before, but complains more.  That is really the main thing as it looks from outside, though it drove her to early retirement from a job she had LOOOOVVED.

In mild traumatic brain injury, our therapist said subtle coordination errors in the cerebrum, the thinking brain, cause failure of varied sections to cohere/work together as smoothly as before, and one of the first things to go is basic self-control stuff riding herd on the lizard hindbrain sending out emotions, especially fight-or-flight impulses.  In the case of which I speak, there are also some seizures, headaches sensitive to low barometric pressure until the storm breaks, and sensitivity to flashing/florescent light and lastly, overstimulation/avoidance for noisy crowds, like I've always been.  Also some quick spells of pretty crazy paranoia, (tending to be accompanied by mildly slurred speech, very subtle and you wouldn't hear it if you didn't know her well). 

(I've always been more evenly paranoid, but I believe my tendencies were taught, not innate, as I only got that way after my life became a hell of abuse in adolescence.)

If someone has TBI, you can expect the manifestations to shift and change over long periods.  My brain maps, showed VERY old, diffuse, damage, 40 years old when I was quite young, and my brain had pretty much re-routed around the bad spot, right on my crown.

Is this sorta what you're asking?  Helpful?  More?  Questions?

[Buster's Uncle]

Testing something post.

[Buster's Uncle]

I hope Rusty will forgive me the presumption of moving this out into public w/o prior permission, but it's just too good to leave in a semi-private forum, mostly unseen.


Folks, this has languished for years in the Writers' Workshop subforum that you can see if you join the Writers usergroup.  It is, right there on the label, a -very successful- workshopping thread.  It is my very fond hope that Rusty will take a final pass at the text, and post the story in a locked Story thread, crosslinking this thread in the OPs for reader comments.   -I'll also be sullenly annoyed with him if he doesn't add the Kzin telepath I suggested and try to sell this to the Man-Kzin Wars book series.


It's THAT good.

[Buster's Uncle]

...The more I look at this thread, the more I think a good third of the story should be excised, maybe half - on the grounds of using up so many story ideas in one go.  Like, IF you could be talked in into writing more stories, Rusty?  Everything on the general area of Slaver era bio-artifacts and such that doesn't directly advance the Bandersnatch story ought to be, if kept in at all, at most made extremely terse and low detail so Garvey and the Papandreous can go follow up on leads from Harvey and Slick in new stories unspoiled and kept fairly short... 

Garvey is insanely rich and can do it for just the lulz -and take Jill along (honeymoon trip?) and you can develop her- though Gee-squared would/will tell him new knowledge has a way of paying off in spades.

The air plant/sunflower/stage tree asteroid habitats would be a gimme; you just have to have a plot idea for Exploring The Thing, write it up, and there's your story.  Keep the Kzin telepath I suggested in the mix, and once you've sold one story, you ought to be able to sell them the rest.


You're REALLY good, and there's money in it for you.  -Also, I want to read your new stories.

[Rusty Edge]

The original idea was to sort of tie off all of these loose ends in that aspect of Known Space, but I suppose I could break it down and do more stories once I'm re-immersed in the headspace. As you suggest, Niven didn't throw too many ideas into a single story.

For starters I want to rewrite that smoking portion into a single explanation. Then I'll see about all of the commas, but before I do that I'll probably re-read the relevant Niven to get a grip on his writing style again. Not averse to a Kzin, but maybe our pilots are. I think I can unravel some of the Thrintin faillsafe plans I proposed for use in another story.

 Oh, I'm thinking the magic elixir doesn't actually have a scent or a taste as such. Instead it is a powerful stimulant of favorite long term memories while it wipes the short term ones. So everybody smells and tastes something different. Well, that's a mystery that a telepath could sort out.

The bunnies will be replaced with another subsurface peril so that the sunflowers are still defenseless- worms or root rot.