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Raptor

17 Oct 2015 14:03 #44616 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor

brantley wrote: A few minor things. Like, how does Peter know it's November? Is it ship time or local time? Or is there a form of instantaneous communication like the ansible so that people can tell what time it is back on Earth?

--Brantley


No instant communication ala ansible. The fastest way to get information from one place to another is on ships (which dive through wormholes to get around the galaxy) or hole-probes which are high-speed droids that dive through those same holes. Droids are faster only because they can accelerate faster to a wormhole (and slow down faster). Wormhole dives are nearly instant, but it can take weeks to get up to speed or slow down, and months to travel ordinary space from one hole to the next. Hole jumps are done at approximately 0.4c to avoid being captured by the black hole that drives them, so that takes a lot of power (and/or time) to achieve 40% of the speed of light. Ships are designed to be accelerating or decelerating nearly all the time.

As far as November goes... ships maintain local calendars for ease of reference. No two ships will have the same calendar due to relativistic time effects. Each planet also has its own calendar. Yet from the perspective of someone on a ship, time passes normally. My future Terrans are used to the idea of a calendar with days, weeks, months and years.

What's hard is to schedule future events, such as visits by trade ships, given the variable calendars and mutable effects of relativistic time.

In that regard, it's not unlike 17th century sailing ships. Nobody quite knew when they would get somewhere, and there was no way to call ahead because information traveled by the same ships.. News was passed from ship to shore and then on to the next ship which was going whereever. Eventually news would spread, but it took time, and wasn't predictable. The locals wouldn't know when ships were coming until their sails came over the horizon.

My SF world is not much different.

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22 Oct 2015 04:15 #44665 by shadar
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I just submitted Chapter 7 to the library. Look for it to appear after its been reviewed and posted.

By the way, I got a Gateway error when I hit Add. Hope it actually went through.

Shader

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22 Oct 2015 08:42 #44668 by Woodclaw
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shadar wrote: I just submitted Chapter 7 to the library. Look for it to appear after its been reviewed and posted.

By the way, I got a Gateway error when I hit Add. Hope it actually went through.

Shader


The story arrived safely and should now be up and running.

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22 Oct 2015 16:17 #44673 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor
Tks... I apologize for this one being a bit rough. Just a draft. Trying to share as I go if anyone is interested, but lots of rewrites between here and the finished novel. As with most novels, and unlike short stories, scenes and characters take a while to develop. This is our first real look inside the ship, and now the rest of the crew. No surprise, but most of them are cut from different cloth.

Woodclaw wrote:

shadar wrote: I just submitted Chapter 7 to the library. Look for it to appear after its been reviewed and posted.

By the way, I got a Gateway error when I hit Add. Hope it actually went through.

Shader


The story arrived safely and should now be up and running.

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11 Nov 2015 04:10 #45099 by Sarge395
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Finally read the first two chapters. I am hooked. Only issue that nagged at me was naming the beasts 'Raptors'. Seems to close to Earth dinosaur legend. Why not some different name to make it be more alien? Like 'Triplici'?. Triple death. Fangs, claws, cunning.

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11 Nov 2015 04:41 #45100 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor

Sarge395 wrote: Finally read the first two chapters. I am hooked. Only issue that nagged at me was naming the beasts 'Raptors'. Seems to close to Earth dinosaur legend. Why not some different name to make it be more alien? Like 'Triplici'?. Triple death. Fangs, claws, cunning.


Good points... but here's another thought. Humans have spread through the galaxy, but they also have kept alive a culture that reaches back to Earth. I would think it might be like when explorers were first exploring the Earth, they named many locations and points of land after places in England or Spain, etc. that they reminded them of. If that failed, then after names of the crew or royalty. They rarely invented new words.

I kind of figured that would work for animals too.

But I can see that it takes away some of alieness of the story.

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18 Nov 2015 17:38 - 18 Nov 2015 17:41 #45234 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor
The action resumes in Chapter 8 as we get to know some of the other crewmembers as they try to come to grips with having Danya on board their vessel. And not just as a passenger, but as their main engine.

Thanks to Woodclaw's help, I've included a picture (in the story) of Danya standing in hard vacuum wearing her flight suit. (You can click through to a larger, high-Q version of the pict.)

The story will shift in the following chapter (9) as new kind of action begins when a Privateer, manned by some other castoffs from the former Supremis Empire on board, hears rumors of their wealth in X-ore and decide to liberate it.

Chapter 8 brings Act 1 mostly to a close, now that we've got a pretty good idea how things are going on work on Janeway's old ship. Peter has his hands full in more than one way as he witnesses what happens when Supremis pheromones get loose on a ship.

I'm drawing on the bitter-sweet experiences of my youth when I dated a girl for some time who was, in the eyes of most of my friends (and her's): "way too hot for me", given the kind of nerdy bookworm that I was.
Last edit: 18 Nov 2015 17:41 by shadar.
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18 Nov 2015 19:39 #45235 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor

shadar wrote: The action resumes in Chapter 8 as we get to know some of the other crewmembers as they try to come to grips with having Danya on board their vessel. And not just as a passenger, but as their main engine.

Thanks to Woodclaw's help, I've included a picture (in the story) of Danya standing in hard vacuum wearing her flight suit. (You can click through to a larger, high-Q version of the pict.)

The story will shift in the following chapter (9) as new kind of action begins when a Privateer, manned by some other castoffs from the former Supremis Empire on board, hears rumors of their wealth in X-ore and decide to liberate it.

Chapter 8 brings Act 1 mostly to a close, now that we've got a pretty good idea how things are going on work on Janeway's old ship. Peter has his hands full in more than one way as he witnesses what happens when Supremis pheromones get loose on a ship.

I'm drawing on the bitter-sweet experiences of my youth when I dated a girl for some time who was, in the eyes of most of my friends (and her's): "way too hot for me", given the kind of nerdy bookworm that I was.



This isn't the pict in the story, but I thought I'd share my author's image of Jayla wearing the 'borrowed' leather jacket that Peter keeps trying to get her to wear. The one they stole from old man Frank back on Monk's.

Unfortunately for Peter (and his failing struggle to maintain some influence over Danya), she feels overdressed wearing anything more than her flight suit. (Which is shown in the picture that's in the story.) Between her flight suit and her pheromones, she's starting to drive the crew nuts.

She might be an innocent, but everyone has heard rumors about the Supremis and their infamous promiscuity.

She's going to prove during the next chapters why most Captains won't allow a Supremis on board their ships.


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19 Nov 2015 03:07 #45237 by Sarge395
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Man oh man I hope I have a slow work day tomorrow so I can sneak in some more of this story. I am way too far behind.

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19 Nov 2015 16:25 #45244 by brantley
Replied by brantley on topic Raptor
Jayla? In the text it's Danya. Looked up the model, based on the back view pict in Chapter 8, and she's even more impressive from the front and without a jacket.

--Brantley

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19 Nov 2015 17:44 - 19 Nov 2015 17:46 #45245 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor

brantley wrote: Jayla? In the text it's Danya. Looked up the model, based on the back view pict in Chapter 8, and she's even more impressive from the front and without a jacket.

--Brantley


I have no idea who the model actually is. I came across that pict and tweaked it just a touch, but I don't recall seeing any others. If you've got some links, please post them.

And yeah, the name on the picture title is wrong. Pict was originally intended to illustrate another story, but it fit better in Raptor.

Same goes for the model in the leather jacket. I had to use that given that the old leather jacket they stole from the founder of the Monk's colony, Frank, is almost becoming a character of its own. It's a metaphor for Peter's attempts to corral Danya into his orbit and manage her.



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Last edit: 19 Nov 2015 17:46 by shadar.

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21 Nov 2015 01:08 #45269 by alternate_histories
Replied by alternate_histories on topic Raptor
Hi, Shadar,

Since I've got back into writing mode, I've found myself reading these stories again.
Raptor is shaping up to be good; I've only read chapter 1 so far, but will be reading through the rest. I like James (is his first name James or Sainter?) for his ingenuity and resourcefulness... even if he does get robbed within a few hours of landing. He's also arrogant, presumably because he's used to handling billion credit deals, which I don't like, but I like not liking it and gives him the opportunity to be knocked down some pegs.
I also really like that he at least admits that using synthetic pheromones are wrong, even if he still uses them... or rather, did.

However Danya is, of course the star of the show; although she technically gets introduced earlier, the scene where she emerges from the singleton is one of the best introductions I've read in quite a while; it's beautiful, elegant, and shows off the kind of power she has. The way that she nonchalantly admits having done the impossible, not realising that they WERE impossible, is extremely appealing, and I'm interested to see where she goes.

A couple of points:
I was going to mark you down for saying that two story tall animal can jump and get away with anything less than broken legs (there's a reason elephants never take more than two feet off the ground), but then I realised it was just a bar story and so likely exaggerated and thus gains some points.
However Danya's reason for coming after James is um... a little bit of a stretch; not her goals. I'm guessing that the voracious raptors are going to turn out to be sapient, but the method that the evil corporation uses is a little unbelievable. For one thing, planets are big; if you want enough enough virus to kill a species that spans a globe you're probably going to be talking about growing hundreds of thousands, of tonnes, just to get a light dusting (put in perspective, if you sprinkled 100,000 tonnes of sand on the dry parts of Earth (excluding oceans), you'd be dropping just 1.3 pounds per square kilometer).
Considering this, I have to wonder why the corporation didn't just buy some really big guns; it'd have to be more cost effective, and if the raptors were that smart, they'd quickly learn to leave the humans alone. However that wouldn't make a very interesting story, so what if the corporation just slammed an asteroid into the planet? It'd be very cheap to do and have the added bonus of explaining how a woman in the middle of no where found out about a distant corporation's bio-project; the asteroid has already hit and it's causing a nuclear winter.
That's the only major criticism I have however; the rest are more observations.
James says that the bugs on Monk's World home in on him; if they're small enough to fit in blood vessels then they'd have the motive power of smoke. The wind might blow them towards him, but they couldn't get there on their own... unless they're some kind of left over Galen experiment... which I have to admit would neatly explain the incredible coincidence that inflict immortality on their 'victims'.
He also mentions that someone would be sucked out into space; they'd actually be blown out.

Aside from that, I'm looking forward to moving onto Chapter 2.

Thanks

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21 Nov 2015 04:21 #45272 by shadar
Replied by shadar on topic Raptor

alternate_histories wrote: Hi, Shadar,

Since I've got back into writing mode, I've found myself reading these stories again.
Raptor is shaping up to be good; I've only read chapter 1 so far, but will be reading through the rest. I like James (is his first name James or Sainter?) for his ingenuity and resourcefulness... even if he does get robbed within a few hours of landing. He's also arrogant, presumably because he's used to handling billion credit deals, which I don't like, but I like not liking it and gives him the opportunity to be knocked down some pegs.
I also really like that he at least admits that using synthetic pheromones are wrong, even if he still uses them... or rather, did.

However Danya is, of course the star of the show; although she technically gets introduced earlier, the scene where she emerges from the singleton is one of the best introductions I've read in quite a while; it's beautiful, elegant, and shows off the kind of power she has. The way that she nonchalantly admits having done the impossible, not realising that they WERE impossible, is extremely appealing, and I'm interested to see where she goes.

A couple of points:
I was going to mark you down for saying that two story tall animal can jump and get away with anything less than broken legs (there's a reason elephants never take more than two feet off the ground), but then I realised it was just a bar story and so likely exaggerated and thus gains some points.
However Danya's reason for coming after James is um... a little bit of a stretch; not her goals. I'm guessing that the voracious raptors are going to turn out to be sapient, but the method that the evil corporation uses is a little unbelievable. For one thing, planets are big; if you want enough enough virus to kill a species that spans a globe you're probably going to be talking about growing hundreds of thousands, of tonnes, just to get a light dusting (put in perspective, if you sprinkled 100,000 tonnes of sand on the dry parts of Earth (excluding oceans), you'd be dropping just 1.3 pounds per square kilometer).
Considering this, I have to wonder why the corporation didn't just buy some really big guns; it'd have to be more cost effective, and if the raptors were that smart, they'd quickly learn to leave the humans alone. However that wouldn't make a very interesting story, so what if the corporation just slammed an asteroid into the planet? It'd be very cheap to do and have the added bonus of explaining how a woman in the middle of no where found out about a distant corporation's bio-project; the asteroid has already hit and it's causing a nuclear winter.
That's the only major criticism I have however; the rest are more observations.
James says that the bugs on Monk's World home in on him; if they're small enough to fit in blood vessels then they'd have the motive power of smoke. The wind might blow them towards him, but they couldn't get there on their own... unless they're some kind of left over Galen experiment... which I have to admit would neatly explain the incredible coincidence that inflict immortality on their 'victims'.
He also mentions that someone would be sucked out into space; they'd actually be blown out.

Aside from that, I'm looking forward to moving onto Chapter 2.

Thanks


I appreciate the in-depth comments, Tarot. I kicked around how a corporation would be able to wipe out a dinosaur like species on a planet, especially in this somewhat civilized future time, and decided that a highly infectious virus would do it. The raptors are very intelligent but they have no experience in highly contagious diseases. So they would not take precautions of any kind and it would get enough of them that the last few naturally immune ones could be shot.

My premise was that the virus approach was also the most cost effective method, and profit is what its all about.

After all, the raptors are just lizards who love eating humans more than anything else. Hard to be sympathetic.

Also, unless I screwed up (I have tweaked some things in the story since i started), my protagonist is named Peter Scanton. But he used to go by the alias of Sainter James.

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21 Nov 2015 23:41 #45298 by alternate_histories
Replied by alternate_histories on topic Raptor
Hi, Shadar; sorry, my mixup. I thought that Peter was his current alias and Sainter his real name.
I hear what you're saying about the virus but I still think an asteroid would be much cheaper; they presumably have a ship already in system to do survey work, it wouldn't take much for that ship to nudge a planet crossing asteroid (there would be dozens, if not hundreds) into a planet impacting asteroid. A virus might seem more cost effective, but they couldn't just infect one raptor and hope they will sneeze on the rest; what about ones so far away the infected die before they can pass it on, or live on other continents? That's what i meant about needing to grown tens of thousands of tonnes to dose the entire planet. However, even if they did create a disease that could pass from raptor to raptor, there's the issue of time; planets, as I said are big places. It took about 5 YEARS for the black death to cross a couple thousand kilometres and enter Europe once it started killing people in Asia, and that was with a major trade route helping it along; are the miners prepared to wait decades for their plan to work?

Sorry; as I said I like the story; that just bugged me.

Tarot

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26 Nov 2015 16:10 #45411 by Sarge395
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Read the 2nd set you posted. The decontamination scene was the best part.

The suit properties also made it easy for her to fly at high speeds without damage to the lucky passenger.

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01 Dec 2015 23:55 #45454 by alternate_histories
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Hi, Shadar,

The site breakdown stopped me from reading much into chapter 6, but I thought I'd drop my thoughts on 3-5.
The first thing I should emphasize is that I do still like this story and want to continue reading, but... chapter 3 was a little off for me; for one, it had a number of spelling errors, but mostly it was the idea that Danya can speak to animals.
I know you justify it as body language and dominance but that's not what happens; she actually changes their attitude, in a matter of seconds, from bloodlust (one so fierce pack members turn on each other) so fawning adoration. That... just doesn't scan, if only because emotions don't change that quickly. It would have made more sense to say used her pheromones to cool their heads and then used her experience with animals to determine they weren't going to attack her any more; I can believe in a flying woman, but not a flying Dr Doolittle, since that hasn't been established as Velorian ability.

Chapter 4 is pretty short so not much to say there, except I wonder why he wasn't given some kind of Friend or Foe device, so the laser would know not to shoot him?

Chapter 5 has, of course, an awesome scene in which Danya gets to prove how awesome she is... but, sadly, a part of me wonders why she needs to? How tough are these bugs that they need a military grade laser to burn them off, and if so, why was the Sulpter field able to destroy them earlier?
It also seems a little odd, given how awestruck Peter was with Danya earlier, and how familiar he was with Velorians, that he's suddenly afraid for her now? I can understand that he might warn her it won't be pleasant, but he acts like he expects her to be butchered?

Sorry; as i said, I did like this and there are nice touches, such as the gorgeous scene setting, and of course Danya's... enthusiastic approval of the decontamination beam; there were just some issues I had with it, but I still want too proceed to chapter 6 and beyond.

Sorry

Tarot

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02 Dec 2015 02:35 #45457 by shadar
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alternate_histories wrote: Hi, Shadar,

The site breakdown stopped me from reading much into chapter 6, but I thought I'd drop my thoughts on 3-5.
The first thing I should emphasize is that I do still like this story and want to continue reading, but... chapter 3 was a little off for me; for one, it had a number of spelling errors, but mostly it was the idea that Danya can speak to animals.
I know you justify it as body language and dominance but that's not what happens; she actually changes their attitude, in a matter of seconds, from bloodlust (one so fierce pack members turn on each other) so fawning adoration. That... just doesn't scan, if only because emotions don't change that quickly. It would have made more sense to say used her pheromones to cool their heads and then used her experience with animals to determine they weren't going to attack her any more; I can believe in a flying woman, but not a flying Dr Doolittle, since that hasn't been established as Velorian ability.

Tarot


You make a good point about Danya's ability to talk to animals being unrealistic for a Velorian. That's because there is a gap between how I was thinking of the scene and how I wrote it. As written, your observation is correct. What I intended to show is that the Liz-Wolfs, like the Raptors, have an intelligence that is somewhere between their comparable species on Earth and a human-like intelligence. But none of that made it onto the page.

My conceptualization of this SF universe is that animal intelligences on Earth and on most other planets differ fundamentally based on the following premise:

On Earth, animal intelligences didn't proceed much further than addressing where their food is coming from and mating behavior because of the appearance of humans (or at least, proto-humans). We were so good at abstract thinking that they never had a chance to develop it. There was no niche they could inhabit by virtue of bigger brains since we were filling that niche.

But on other worlds, at least the majority which have no human equivalent minds. the apex intelligence might be somewhere between Earthly animals and us. So in that regard, I was thinking of the Liz-Wolfs as being in the process of inventing religion (which seemed to be one of the earliest applications of our development of abstract thinking). In other words, the first "bigger thoughts" a semi-sentient animal would have is related to the concept of divinity.

So to them, Danya is a god. She can fly and she can't be eaten, two things that would impress a wolf. I intended to have their innocent reaction echo Peter's perception of her being an angel or goddess (despite not believing in either).

I'll rework that section to actually make it say what I had in my head. Tks for making me rethink it.

Shadar
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