Airlock [NEW DRAFT IN OP] [Short Story 1800 Words]

Wank

Hey guys, now that the novel's done I'm getting back into short story territory. Scifi seemed like a good place to start. Tear it to shreds.

*retracted for publication*

chiasaur11

Huh.

That wasn't bad at all. Future slang is a bit of a debated point from what I've seen, but it was used as well here as it gets, fairly easy to figure out and it emphasized Ollie's whole Man-Out-Of-Time bit. The ending was a bit of a surprise while making sense in context.

I guess what I'm saying is I liked it. If you need something negative, I could probably read it until I find one, but for now I can't think of anything.

Wank

Thanks for the read, man. As always I am open to title suggestions. Hate titles.

Also I want this on my tombstone now:

Huh.

That wasn't bad at all.

CptHamilton

I'm somewhat inebriated so my critique here is pretty slipshod. I'll try to do a better one for you another time.

My irrational hatred of non-standard dialog tags forces me, in my state of degraded self-control, to tell you to get rid of things like: "blahblahblah," he accused.

"...the captain was saying..." is a tense shift.

There are a few places where you're either missing commas or have extra commas.
"But of course, it only..." should have an additional comma between 'But' and 'of' since 'of course' is the clause.
There are several places where you have a comma and don't need it. There's a sentence about the captain slapping the console where you have something like "something jumped on the console and the captain turned, slapped it back". That one's a comma splice since 'slapped it back' isn't a complete clause. Replace the 'and' with a semicolon and replace the comma with an 'and'. So: "Something jumped on the console; the captain turned and slapped it back."

Wank

Thanks for the look, CptHamilton!

Considering "Dust" as the title.

ElJeffe

I mostly liked this, but a few comments:

- The slang, especially in the beginning, took me out of the story as often as not. Later on it gets a bit better, though this could be just because I'd sort of acclimated by then. My thinking is that in a story as short as this one, you don't want to make the reader take time to get used to fancy slang, because by the time they do, the story is half over. This could be more a personal issue, though.

- I think you could do a better job describing the surroundings more. You're good with physical description and yet here you seem to just say, "Hey, there's an airlock" and force the reader to fill in details from all the sci-fi flicks he's seen. The details you do describe are interesting, though, and I like the idea of the gel.

The flow of the story is good, you give good identity to the characters, and I think you spend just enough time on this without drawing it out too much.

Wank

Thanks for the read, Jeff. I can probably pare a bit of the slang away. I tried to make it pretty comprehensible but maybe Io's first line is too much right off the bat.

Did you want to see more of the airlock / ship / quarters?

ElJeffe

Io's first line really did kind of hammer me. I read that and my brain just came full-stop.

Wank wrote:

Did you want to see more of the airlock / ship / quarters?

Yes.

Mostly the first two, I guess. Especially the airlock, since that's where you're introducing us to this world; even just a few choice adjectives would help. Is the airlock massive? Is it tight and claustrophobic? Is everything shiny-new or kind of run-down and grimy? Is the ship itself huge or tiny? I kind of assume we're talking about some kind of massive generation ship used to ferry all or most of the Earth's population, but is it something long and skinny? A disk? A sphere? Some weird shape with lots of pointy bits?

Magell

The first thing I have to say is that this feels a lot more like the beginning of a longer piece than a short story. It introduces a lot of concepts that could be further developed and aren't. The biggest concepts are the idea that Ollie needs to be cryo'd so he can help establish a new town on wherever they are traveling to.

I agree with Jeffe about the slang and needed better description for the ship that is housing them. It feels really nebulous.

The writing is good, it just doesn't feel like a short story to me. It's technically got the elements that a short story needs, but doesn't really answer enough of the questions it raises.

Wank

Thanks for reading, @Magell. I was trying to write a small, human, self-contained story on a space opera backdrop, but maybe that's beyond me. What questions did you feel need to be answered?

@ElJeffe: I'm going to flesh it out a little more description-wise and post up another version sometime today or tomorrow.

ElJeffe

Cool, I'll happily give it a re-read.

Wank

Appreciate it. If anyone wants a look at my other new story it's languishing a few doors down.

Magell

It's not so much a question that's unanswered as the big ideas that are presented of a group of refugees landing on a planet and needing to recolonize it. It's a small thing, but getting rid of the specific reference to that and just saying he might need him later gets rid of that idea, and adds more to the Dad reveal and creates a more personal need for him.

I don't understand Io's relationship to Oliver either. My only supposition is that she's a recycled Vi, but that seems a stretch without understanding how stuff in this world works.

ElJeffe

I sort of assumed Vi was less a recycled Vi and more a de facto replacement daughter. Someone Oliver took to in order to fill the void Vi left.

As to eliminating the reference to the colonization, that's actually a pretty good point and I'm inclined to agree now that I think about it.

Wank

Magell wrote:

I don't understand Io's relationship to Oliver either. My only supposition is that she's a recycled Vi, but that seems a stretch without understanding how stuff in this world works.

Didn't anticipate this interpretation. Maybe the names are too similar? Oliver's dementia is the only real reason he mistakes her for Vi.

Wank

Hey guys, new draft is up if anyone wants a look. Thanks.