New story: Mosquitoes

[Aaron Dazer]

I got a new story up and was wondering if i should have squeezed more sex into. It's a si-fi story and it's call Mosquitoes for reasons you'll see in the story. I'm working on the next chapter and can flow the story either way and just wanted a few persons take on it.

Mosquitoes Ch. 01

 

[hiddenself]

Story setup/development is the main problem here

I am a sci-fi fan but your storyline left me cold. I found it flat and boring and too preposterous. Your descriptions left me bewildered as to what was supposed to be real and what artificial or imaginary. You had too much expected stuff ("pulled into" implies some kind of car, terrorists and the FBI and the President, "press talks") for a world that is supposed to be so different than the present. And on the other hand, you had too many preposterous things in there that clashed with the familiar state of affairs.

I understand that this is sci-fi and allowances have to be made, but Peter's description and the other scientific info have problems.

Peter held several Ph.D.s, his first two before the age of 19.
Yeah, right. You know such people?

They had won so many awards the last week, ...
And you don't get big "awards" within a few weeks' time of a discovery (particularly not in biology). Others will need years to verify, replicate, and evaluate the implications of your results.

Now, that doesn't mean that in this make-believe world things would not happen differently. It's just that good sci-fi should be "believable" excess. This is not. The principles of how humans and science operate does not seem to justify some of these statements no matter how far into the future we look.

What we have here is God himself (aka Peter) who can do pretty much anything single-handedly -- "organic nanomachines," and "manufactured mosquitoes," and "blank wall that gains unnatural depth" by the press of a button, and a "nymph" that materializes from holographic "near black waterfall." Right. And on top of these things, the world also has "Slesh-bots" (why is Slesh capitalized?) who, among other things, are terrific fucks. Right.

(By the way: simulated means not real. Simulated mouth might apply to a hologram but not for the Slesh-bots. Their mouths were pretty solid as far as I could tell. Artificial is the word you need.)

And yet, we still have Monday's headlines, and CNN, and the FBI that is investigating terrorists and such. How wonderfully familiar.

The writing also needs more attention.

Little typos such as unecessary capitalization:
Press talks
Many workbenches

and more serious ones like
...it was an entity all it's own.
(its!)

Sentence fragments:

Feeling contained and somewhat safe at the same time.

Few of them known to him, known to anyone except those who work within them.

Tense problems:

The first couple of paragraphs are mostly in the past tense ("Peter pulled into...") but you then switch to present. The rest of the story is mostly told in the present tense but you are not entirely consistent.

Also:
Work had been most enjoyable the last few months. He and his colleagues achieved a worldwide break through.
(Second verb should be in past perfect: had achieved)


Overall, I think that the technical issues are limited and fixable. The story idea and development, on the other hand, are more of a problem for me.

 

[kinkspeak]

ok, before writing the following comments, please understand that i think your story has great potential and that it just needs some restructuring. if i truly thought it was hopeless, i wouldn't bother to comment. but instead, i would like to read this story again, edited.

"appearance like a presence" - the word presence is not enough - a presence of what? maybe give us an idea of how you define that word, same for "entity". Entity of what?

"The morning twilight added to the color of the otherwise plain steel and white walls." - what kind of colour? for example, if you said that the steel and white walls shoned with the golden reflection of the morning twilight, that would give us a better picture.

"Peter held several Ph.D.s, his first two before the age of 19." - highly implausible. if you said that he achieved his first ph.d by the age of nineteen, then your story is more believable. you wouldn't need to say he's highly intelligent in the next sentence because that is redundant, we already know that if he has so many degrees. if you said something like "as is typical of such an accomplished scholar, he is highly introverted" then that could work.

The sentence after that should be a new paragraph.

"artificial mosquitoes. They fly out, unnaturally" - redundant.

"President Macaulay Culkin" - humourous but doesn't work.

"Over 500 people work there." - this sentence bothers me. It feels incomplete. What about "Over 500 people work in this facility."

I am guilty of the following myself - repetition. You have used the word unnaturally or unnatural far too many times through this story, time to dust off the thesaurus. In some instances, using that word is unnecessary, for the reader, they are well aware that the whole story is not real or natural but to make this story believable, don't remind the reader of that.

"main units, something not typically found in a residence" - perhaps instead say "main units, not typically found in a residence." Eliminate unnecessary words.

"From within it a bulb appears to form from the water" - I would change this sentence around to "From within the water, a bulb appears to form." By the way, repetition of the word "form" in this paragraph. Take out the word otherwise in "the hair covering the otherwise bare shoulders." In fact, those three sentences need to be switched around a bit - "Slightly wavy hair, not fully solid flows down below. The form solidifies just below the top of nicely proportional breasts ceasing at the cleavage. The hair covering the otherwise bare shoulders. " Third sentence should be the second one, perhaps even merged into the first one.

"near erotic cord" - word should be chord.

"The bathroom Slesh-bots wore very tight running shorts and extremely tight white tee shirts with no bras apparent. " - oh come on! Let's try something a little less pubescent sounding without sacrificing the fantasy aspect of it. Men would love to see a robot like that, but the description could be a little more mature.

"The tongue and lips, as real as they can be, kiss and suckle his neck and chest passing lightly over his nipples." - ok, what does that mean, as real as they can be? what does it feel like, those slesh tongue and lips? I actually want to know what that would be like. You've got me curious.

"All completed as requested my Lord." My Lord is very old-fashioned and quite out of place in this futuristic story UNLESS you elaborate this further by showing how the main character programmed those robots to address him as such because of what the word Lord means to him.

"a microscopic factory of viral based organic nanomachines. Now programmed to inhabit/infect humans to control their physical motor functions. He sits down to eat. " Wait a minute!!! Did he program this factory? Is he sitting there aware of this factory? Work with this a bit more. If you said something like, "unaware of this factory, he sits down on it to eat." Then you just created a suspense, a cliffhanger as it were.

I agree with the above commentator, your story is flat but only because it is impersonal. Some of the sentences are too short or seemingly out of place. I really believe that if you added some details, fatten up the story a bit, it could be a great story.

 

[Aaron Dazer]

Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the feedback. I didn't see the redundancy as stated till you brought that to my attention. as well as consistency in theme. I really like the term ‘pubescent’ by the way. I think one thing i picked up on from your feedback is how style changes a bit here and there. Need to pay more attention to adjectives as well. I keep thinking to say the story will come out more later on. It’s not really intended to stand on it’s own yet.

First.

Peter held several Ph.D.s, his first two before the age of 19.

Ok I went a little over board here. Should have been one before the age of 19.

>‘They had won so many awards the last week, ...
>And you don't get big "awards" within a few weeks' time of a discovery >(particularly not in biology). Others will need years to verify, >replicate, and evaluate the implications of your results.

>Now, that doesn't mean that in this make-believe world things would >not happen differently. It's just that good sci-fi should be >"believable" excess. This is not. The principles of how humans and >science operate does not seem to justify some of these statements no >matter how far into the future we look.’

I wouldn’t think this mattered too much. But You make a valid point and I’ll do well in the future to research process a bit more. However in this case I’d just remove the line entirely

>‘What we have here is God himself (aka Peter) who can do pretty much >anything single-handedly -- "organic nanomachines," and "manufactured >mosquitoes," and "blank wall that gains unnatural depth" by the press >of a button, and a "nymph" that materializes from holographic "near >black waterfall." Right. And on top of these things, the world also >has "Slesh-bots" (why is Slesh capitalized?) who, among other things, >are terrific fucks. Right.’

As far as Peter being God, I won’t get into that just yet. I’ll argue the Preposterous statement. The Blank wall is actually a Very Large 3-D computer Screen (not too far fetched is that?). I thought I made this clear guess not. The nymph in the wall is a Avatar of a AI. Guess I need to describe more. And I just realized the true difficulty of story writing. Being Clear with out being Redundant. Your really going to hate the Slesh-Bots in the next chapters. I capitalized both because its a abbreviation is that wrong? I’m not a English major Obviously.

I want to extend a great Thanks to the both of you for being descriptive and lengthily in your Feedback. Few would taken the time.