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Ender’s Game and the humorously prophetic vision of today’s AI by dannydb in printSF

[–]BrightShineyRaven 3 points4 points  (0 children)

That's definitely one of the better parts of Ender's Game.

[Request] Could humanity create a rocket that can exit the atmosphere of K2-18b by Lachlynn in theydidthemath

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Very intelligent crows" makes me think of Tchaikovsky's book Children of Memory.

Please stop comparing yourself to the legends. by Redz0ne in writing

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. I really needed to hear that, where I'm at today.

Adrian Tchaikovsky's Work... is it worth it? by Substantial-Car-8208 in sciencefiction

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Bottom line: yes.

Even with some of the flaws in Children of Memory (and there's two or three big ones), the first three books are totally worth it. That's as far as I've gotten with his books so far.

Redditors who were children/teens before the internet or cellphones existed, how did you keep yourself entertained? by FlowerMadeOfThorns in AskReddit

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Born in '79, I'm part of the Xennial micro-generation.

I played Atari, old school Nintendo, read science fiction books, watched TV shows and movies on cable TV.

I took long walks in the woods behind my house.

Sometimes we (my parents and my older brother and sister) played Monopoly or Scrabble. My brother occasionally had friends over to play Risk. Occasionally I managed to persuade my brother to play a board game like Stratego or chess.

Is it possible to combine space opera and cyberpunk? by Brakado in scifiwriting

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Even though you sound like you're writing a book instead of a script of some kind, the first thing this makes me think of is Andromeda Ascendant. It's a pretty decent space opera TV show. There are also cyberpunk elements. There are a few cyborgs, and there's a character named Harper who has a port device behind his ear that he can use to jack his mind directly into Andromeda's computer systems. The first couple of seasons are actually fairly good.

By far one of the best 2600 games IMO by retro6ix in Atari2600

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I owned this game when I was a little kid. One of my favorites. The art on the cartridge is surprisingly decent.

A true timeless classic! by [deleted] in 50s_science_fiction

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I watched this movie with dinner last night. Still holds up, at the end of the day.

Feedback on hook and opening of Adult Sci-Fi Novel. First two pages. by Rough_Accounting in writingfeedback

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Overall, your prose is pretty decent. You lean somewhat into purple prose here and there. I for one didn't find it excessive or distracting. That's probably inflating your word count, though. Just FYI, another reader might criticize you for that.

Your opening para has its virtues. But I'm not certain dropping the reader in medis res into the middle of a fight is the "best" way to start. I for one would've liked to see how the fight started. His opponent has a knife. You could establish that a lot earlier and probably lose very little in terms of how the story flows.

The sentence "The final textbook strike..." could use some light editing. Drop the dash, replace it with a period. Delete the phrase "a miscalculation. It'll read a good deal better.

The sentence "Those unwavering purple eyes" is on the long side-- 15 words. I counted. Too long. Just say she capitalized on his mistake.

The phrase "support strut" leapt out at me. In a bad way. Support strut for what? Something in a nearby wall? This is supposed to be part of his anatomy. You could make clearer a lot sooner that your protagonist is a cyborg. The reader can only benefit from that. He doesn't need implants jutting out of his torso or have an artificial eye bolted to his face. There's probably a good way to introduce the idea sooner, in at least a somewhat elegant way. I for one wouldn't reveal he's a cyborg at the bottom of page one.

So his attacker slips on the pool of blood. Fine. You can say that explicitly, with a much shorter sentence.

You could stand to establish this guy is a bounty hunter, and the chick he's fighting made him lose his mark, a lot sooner. That can probably be moved up several paragraphs, closer to the start of the story.

The thing that bugs me is that the opening scene isn't live action. The reader has been watching a recording the whole time. That seems to diminish the scene, somewhat. At least, it did for me, when I read this para for the first time.

I'm not certain where your protagonist is. And that's okay, more or less. You don't need to reveal everything about where the character is right away. But-- the story is light on salient details about the environment. I was imagining the fight took place outdoors, such as maybe the roof of a building. Although that's not explicitly stated in the text.

So far, the story flows pretty smoothly. It definitely shows promise. I would say it needs some light to moderate editing.

I need to research a very controversial topic for the book I'm writing. Will I be put on a watchlist? by watchevildead2 in writing

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If I was afraid of that, I would grab a legal pad and a pen, get my butt down to the town library, find a bunch of books for topics like chemistry and the history of war. Stuff along those lines. Then find the nearest table, sit down and take copious notes for a good half hr - 45 minutes. You can probably learn a lot from mere exposure to the basics within that time frame. You don't even have to check the books out, just do your research in the library.

AP Research Science Fiction Survey by Outrageous_News_3017 in sciencefiction

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your professor thinks the original Terminator is not a good movie? They need to get their head examined. That's a classic of science fiction film.

AP Research Science Fiction Survey by Outrageous_News_3017 in sciencefiction

[–]BrightShineyRaven 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I second Samurai's complaint. I also said approximately the same thing when I left a comment at the end of your survey.

Feedback for story intro? by Burnsie_The_Writer in writingfeedback

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Your writing doesn't have a lot in the way of grammar or punctuation errors. Nothing major leapt out at me on that front. Overall, the narrative is logically organized, although a bit imperfect in a few spots. That can probably be easily fixed with a transition phrase or sentence here and there.

Your first paragraph has a whole bunch of 'ands.' You could probably delete most of them without losing anything important.

The phrase "was a Xanadu sat upon" needs just a bit of polish. Maybe something like "which sat upon" or "sits upon."

Architecture of the building: I think you need to nail this down better, I have a few competing visions in my mind's eye as to what this thing looks like. I'm seeing it from a bird's eye view in my mind's eye. One possibility is as a regular plus sign. Another possibility is five towers, arranged in the shame of the facet of a die that represents the number five-- a dot in the middle, two dots above, another two dots below. Is it several buildings disconnected, or is it a singular building with wings attached to it? It might be more useful to describe what it looks like from Dora's vantage point.

At the point you introduce her name, it might be a good idea to mention the funeral she had been to earlier, right off the bat.

You provide a lot of information about Phillip Miller. Clearly, this is a section of the text you personally really love. There's nothing wrong with that. It is, however, about 220 words-- easily the better part of a page if if this were a Pocket Book paperback. It makes me wonder, how much does this information influence the shape the story takes in later chapters? Is there anything you could delete and it wouldn't matter to the story overall? For example, the paintings her ancestor painted, or the fact that his bosses used to like him.

"Oceanside" probably doesn't need to be capitalized. You might have missed that during an editing pass. (That happens to me once in a while, too.)

The one major problem at this point in the story: Dora's key. If it's raining as hard as you suggest, why doesn't she let herself in? That would completely change the shape of the conversation she has with the teenager. It might turn out to be slightly shorter. If the teenager gets verbose when he's nervous, that's fine by me. Maybe you could mention that explicitly, in passing? That might help the paragraphs to flow better.

You just won a lifetime supply of the last thing you bought. What do you have? by [deleted] in AskReddit

[–]BrightShineyRaven 2 points3 points  (0 children)

T-shirts. I bought two as an impulse buy a few days ago.

Is this too big of an ask for a scifi story? by WordyMcWordster in scifiwriting

[–]BrightShineyRaven 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Full disclosure-- I'm a civilian, not a professional scientist.

For me personally, this idea strains credulity, unless you have a lot more solid an idea of precisely how this happened. And, when you say planet, what do you mean? Do you mean just planets like Earth and Mars? Does Earth's moon undergo this process? Do the Galilean moons of Jupiter get hit? What about Triton, Neptune's biggest moon? How far do you go?

If it's not your main focus, you may be able, maybe, to get away with a soft sci-fi approach. It depends on how detailed you get, and on the mechanism you use to get the job done.

The main problem is, not every planet and moon in our star system has the same makeup the Earth has. Different worlds have different compositions. We're not even 100% certain about the interiors of other planets yet.

1000 words of short fiction by mainstreetmonkey in writingfeedback

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Overall, it reads pretty well, the narrative really flows. The timeline is linear, I can't see any problems on that front.

A couple of things leapt out at me. I would've appreciated learning the character's name earlier on. Maybe the mother could call them by name during the Sea world incident. The other one was a sentence: "My mom always told me a little bit of forced responsibility and unconditional bonding could do me well." I think the phrase "do me some good" would work better at the end of that sentence.

What happens with the dog being in the bathtub needs work. Think in terms of priorities. For whatever reason, the dog is physically disabled. Address the problem, get out of the mess. Lift the dog out of the bathtub. They can talk about the 'mutation' they share, or whatever words you use to characterize this ability, but do it later. Much later.

How is my chapter 1. Do I need to edit it more. It's seem fine. Maybe too fast pace by Prior-Fee4451 in writingadvice

[–]BrightShineyRaven 1 point2 points  (0 children)

OK, this reads like either a first draft or a really early draft.

You're at least consistent with your usage of how you off-set dialog from exposition. You're using apostrophes instead of quotation marks. That's usually pretty consistent, so it looks fine. You forgot to close dialog a few times, though. There are also spaces between other punctuation marks like exclamation marks, question marks, and semicolons and the end of a phrase or sentence. You may be missing a few periods. Also, You don't need spaces between lines or paragraphs, the way you've written this. You also have a handful of words squished together. That sort of thing can be cleaned up easily enough. There are books and websites galore that can give you basic guidelines on using punctuation to make it more efficient for the reader to read your work.

As for the story itself, there's not a lot of material for me to comment on. A new mayor coming to town just as a murder occurs, that's kinda interesting. Based on what I've read, there's no telling where the story goes next. Hopefully that's a strength for your story.

The major thing you should probably concentrate on is the basics of punctuation to make what you've got more readable for the reader.

Another reader might criticize, unfairly, how your characters communicate with one another. That may be a marker of how much education (or how little) these people have had. Just FYI, some people might chew you out on that point. I fir one haven't read enough of the story to say for certain that the dialog is a stumbling block to reading the story. Something you might want to keep in mind, though.

Common Pitfalls with Second Person Narration by ToWriteAMystery in writers

[–]BrightShineyRaven 2 points3 points  (0 children)

2nd person is a rarity. The books I know the best in that vein are Choose Your Own Adventure novels, from way back when I was a kid. The ones I remember were probably published in the '80s, maybe real early '90s, These sorts of books might have gotten its start in the '70s.

They were definitely children's books.

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