42 KiB
Zero - A Genkit Story
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Author: u/None *
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7trikm/zero_a_genkit_story/
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Score: 18
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Created: 2018-01-29T10:49:07
Post:
I've been playing with the idea of writing a long-term story for awhile now, and I'm a fan of rationalist fiction. Self-consistant worlds, decently realistic science, characters who are actually intelligent. I've banged out the first three chapters of it, but I'm looking for some feedback.
A Genkit is an uplifted animal-person, a melding of human and animal DNA. I can hear the furry community getting excited already, but that isn't why I've begun writing it. This world is based on a setting built up in roleplay over the last four or five years, and consequently a lot of the world-building for it is already completed, since I'm the guy who did most of the setting. With all that rolling around in my head, it seemed like a waste not to do something with the material.
I intend to publish this story chapter by chapter on FictionPress, but I'm gonna throw the first chapter up here to see if there's any interest in it. Feedback would be appreciated, just so long as it's civil. I don't mind being critisized, I just won't pay any attention to anything that isn't constructive.
"You made a mistake here, and this is why" is good. "You're a fucking idiot, this doesn't make sense" is not.
Thanks!
Sorin
The first thing I became aware of was a light in my eyes.
It hurt. I wanted to sleep, and I couldn't with that damnable light shining down on me. Even with my eyes closed it bothered me, the reddish glare passing through my eyelids and making my head pound. I groaned and tried to lift my arm to cover my eyes with my hand and found I couldn't. It wasn't that I was restained or anything like that, my body just felt unnaturally heavy, like I'd been working all day and was so exhausted that doing anything felt like a huge effort.
"It's okay, relax." The light moved away and I sighed with relief, tilting my head a little as a warm hand covered my eyes for me. "You're going to be a little photosensative for an hour or two. You've been through a lot, and we had a hell of a job trying to patch you up. Do you know where you are?"
"Water." I meant to say it clearly, but it came out as a hoarse whisper. "Please." When the bottle touched my lips, it felt like pure joy flowing down my throat. I hadn't realized how dry my mouth and throat were until I was swallowing, but all too soon the bottle moved away, leaving me smacking my lips. "Not too much now, or it'll make you sick." The voice said. Female, gentle. I wanted to open my eyes and look, but her hand was still covering them. "What's the last thing you remember?"
"Fighting." I said. "Hunter-killers. I was pinned down in a tunnel, my squad was setting up an escape route behind me while I held them off behind cover. They couldn't advance because of the mines we'd dropped and because of me. If I'd stopped shooting, they would have been able to step around them, but because of me they couldn't advance slowly and they couldn't rush me because of the mines."
"Good, that about matches up the reports on your file. Do you know what happened then?" Her hand moved away and a cool, damp cloth began wiping at my eyes and face. Some kind of gunk there, like when you're rubbing your eyes after a deep sleep. "Yeah." It was getting easier to speak. "There was a flash, and then it felt like I'd been punched by an angry god. I remember my squadmates screaming for me, but that's it. What happened to me?"
The water was back, and I sipped eagerly as the unnamed woman spoke. "You got hit with a concussion weapon. The only reason you're not dead is Barrelema. She strained herself to keep you from being buried alive in the rubble while Nessa and Maxmillion pulled you out." The bottle moved away, and I could hear her putting the cap back on it. Now that I was paying attention, I could hear other sounds too. People talking faintly in the background, somebody walking down a hallway, soft beeps from monitering equipment. Some kind of hospital, then. "I'm sorry, they got Max as they were pulling you out. Shot through the chest. He didn't suffer."
"Fuck." I flexed my hand, trying to lift my arm again. That weariness. "Why do I feel so weak?"
"You've been in stasis. Your injuries were pretty serious. You mind answering some questions for me?" I could hear her getting up, moving around. The sound of cloth rubbing as she walked, the squeak of the chair when she sat down again.
"Only if you tell me who you are, where I am." I said. I tried to open my eyes a little, only to find the room dimmed to the point of nearly total darkness. At least the light wasn't blinding me anymore. I could faintly make out her outline, a lab coat and a darker blouse and skirt. Her outline suggested a mammal of some kind. Maybe a bear, or the kind of cat that has rounded ears.
"My name is Ashara. I'm a doctor here at the City Zero medical center. Not a medical doctor." I could hear the smile in her voice. "It's worse than that. I'm a counsiler, charged with integrating veterans like yourself. I'm afraid you've been asleep for quite some time."
"Ah hell." A fucking psychiatrist. Wonderful. "Alright, fine. Let's get on with it, then."
"Brilliant. Could you tell me your name and age?" I could see her moving, then a faint white glow lit her up as she activated a tablet. Oh, a bear. Pretty, too. "Yeah." I said, blinking a little. Even that light was making my eyes water. "Names Sorin. Squad 5, detached unit. We were operating in the eastern part of the A.E., under New York. I'm 26. I think."
"Good, good. Sometimes people come out of stasis, they're a little addled. The fact you're so lucid is actually really encouraging. It's okay to be a little uncertain about your age, you've been on ice for... well, almost six decades, I'm afraid. We didn't have access to the technology needed to fix you up back then. I know it's a bit of a shock."
"Holy fuck." Sixty years. "What happened? Who won the w- no, that's a stupid question. We had to have won the war, or we wouldn't be talking right now, would we? How much did we win?"
"Well, we didn't get exterminated. That's a pretty good start. Eventually, India openly began to support us, and then France and Britain followed suit. Eventually the American Empire was forced to sit down and negotiate, we were doing too much damage to their infrastructure. In the end we got full rights, same as the humans. Our own land. You're in the only Genkit city on the planet, Zero."
"The fuck kind of name is Zero? Ugh, help me sit up. Damnit." I was struggling to sit up, it felt like I was underwater with weights on me. Ashara put the tablet down in a hurry, moving to help me into a sitting position. "The thinking was that Zero is the beginning, the first number." She said to me. "You can't have anything without a starting point, and zero is the starting point of all numbers. Right now you're two miles underneath Mt. Erebus, in Antarctica."
"Seriously? That's what they gave us?" I put my hand to my head. It felt like it was full of stones and water, and the water wouldn't stop sloshing. "A desert in the most uninhabitable part of the planet?"
"Mmm, I'm afraid you've got quite a lot of catching up to do, Sorin. We're a full-blown underground city with a population of two million, and another three million spread around the planet in various settlements, both Genkit and mixed. This is probably one of the most secure locations on the planet. Theres no door for ground forces to roll up to. A mile-thick shield of rock between us and the surface. You're safe here, okay?"
"Yeah. Okay." I took a deep breath. "I'm in a hospital of some kind. You asked me if I knew where I was. I'm pretty sure that's where I am."
"You got it. It's good that you're so sharp, you're one of the longest-frozen cases we've ever pulled out of stasis. Nobody was really sure what your condition would be. It's a bit of a medical miracle that you've come through it so well, to be completely honest with you. We expected a certain degree of brain damage, but you seem to be fairly on point."
"That's because the voices are helping me." That got a sudden, unexpected silence from her. "I'm fucking with you, relax." That got a laugh from her, shaking her head. "Okay. Sixty years, we won the war, we're established. Didn't go extinct. How many of my squad survived?"
"Unfortunately, I just don't know right now. A lot of the first-generations have melted away into the world. Some are still around, working in and for the city. Far too many killed themselves struggling with the mental scars the war left on them." I could hear the sadness in her voice.
"You lost somebody then. Like that."
"Yes. My father."
"I'm sorry to hear it."
"It was many years ago... but thank you. While you're re-integrating, it's going to be my job to help you. Questions, concerns, things like finding your friends. I'm going to leave this tablet here with you, it's linked directly to my personal device. Within an hour the photosensativity will have faded and you'll be able to handle looking at the screen without feeling like your eyes are melting. Until then, try to rest here, okay? I'm going to go prepare some things for you, we weren't sure what kind of accomodations you might need, so we didn't set any up for you beforehand."
"Ahh. You weren't sure if I'd be holding a conversation or shitting myself."
"Something like that." I could hear the smile in her voice. "It's encouraging that you've got a sense of humor about all this. I know it must be very, very jarring. I'll be back in an hour to check on you, once everythings set up for you, okay?"
I moved to slowly lay myself back down again, grunting softly. "Yeah. I'll try to hold off on the wild parties and strippers in the meantime." She patted my shoulder, getting up to leave the room, leave me to my thoughts.
Sixty years. Most of a human lifetime. The last thing I could remember, our kind were running underground, avoiding Purists, hunter-killers and their drones. Launching insurgant strikes against their forces. Come out of nowhere, hit them like a sack of bricks swung to the face, fade away into the shadows. There were too few of us to fight any other way, the guerilla tactics were the only thing keeping us alive. To go from that to a full-blown city...
And five million! How the hell had they done that? There was barely five thousand of us during the war! So many questions, but I had no way to get the answers I wanted right away. I couldn't even pick the tablet up and begin reading because I couldn't handle looking at the screen. Frustrating, but hurry up and wait was always the name of the game when it came to fighting Purists.
Maxmillion dead. Killed trying to save me. He'd been a good man, for a doberman. The canids tended to be either be really playful and light, or showy and aggressive. Max had been the second type, the kind of guy who loved to polish his gun and talk about how much Purist ass he'd managed to kick over the years. The guy who'd tried to push me around when I ended up joining the squad, who'd pushed and needled me until I swung on him one day. By the end of the fight we were both bloody and bruised, but the taunts and snide remarks stopped, and he started going out of his way to back me.
I wasn't sure how to feel about the fact he'd died to save me. It didn't feel like I deserved it. I always figured if anybody was going to survive the war, it'd be Maxmillion, if only because he was the type to laugh at Death and then smack Him on the back so hard he dropped his scythe and got too intimidated to pick it up again.
I wondered if Pammy had survived. She was our logistics officer, the girl responsible for getting our supplies. I'd never met anybody so completely magical at finding things and making use of what we had. She'd done so much with so little for so long I was fully convinced she was qualified to do anything with nothing. I never saw the little bat fly, but she could climb like she was born for it, find handholds where the rest of us saw only smooth wall or sheer drops.
Barrelema, my backup singer. Well, a little unfair. She was my partner, my equal, and I was always glad to have her at my back. It'd been her job to bring me into the squad in the first place, to integrate me into the team. It was a daunting task, but she did it so well that even Maxmillion was impressed with her, and Maxmillion wouldn't have been impressed if the gods themselves had flown down and anointed him patron saint of whoopass. He would've just shrugged and gone looking for a beer.
Nessa, the most beautiful otter I'd ever seen in my life. Quiet, a little mysterious and aloof. She was always there when you needed someone to be there, unobtrusive but supportive. She was the best swimmer on our team, and doubled both as the squad medic and cook. When you needed patching up, it was Nessa who got you going again. The only time she was ever pushy was when you were her patient, she didn't take any shit from anybody she was trying to treat. Whether you liked it or not she was going to doctor the shit out of you until you were better.
I wasn't sure what to think. This place was alien, it was born of my world, but I didn't belong to it. I felt alone, out of sorts. More than a little lost.
No wonder they assigned a shrink to make sure I didn't lose my shit.
Lacking anything else to do, I sat in the dark and waited for the stasis sickness to pass so I could rejoin the world that had moved on without me.
Comments:
u/artifex0 [+8] (6 hours later)
It's a good start, though it's a lot of exposition for an introduction. "Show; don't tell" is a common bit of writing advice, and I think it makes sense- you want to want to get the reader identifying with the protagonist and putting themselves in their world as soon as possible, and that's more likely to happen with visceral events than with distant explanations.
I'd recommend trying to convey as much of the background and setting as possible through the character's decisions, and secondarily through their perceptions. So, for example, instead of having a character just describe the size and features of the city, you could have the protagonist insist on visiting some specific location (a choice that could give some insight into their character), and then imply the size and nature of the city through the character's reaction to specific details.
You might also think about setting up some of the backstory as mysteries to keep the reader hooked. For example, instead of just describing a former squad-mate, you might give the character an extreme emotional reaction to something that reminds them of that person, imply that there's an intriguing story behind it, but save the details for later.
On the worldbuilding, I think that the sort of future that would plausibly produce these genkits is going to have to be something a bit out-of-the-box. I wouldn't quite buy a setting where animal-people were created as slaves or super-soldiers- even if genetic engineering did turn out to be a better solution for industry and warfare than more advanced automation and drones, I think the features you'd want would be things like bomb-proof carapaces and the ability to secrete valuable materials, not fur and fangs. I also think that a majority of people in any culture similar to our own would recognize these genkits as people worthy of rights.
If they were created purely as an experiment, I think they'd fit best into a world where extreme experimentation in genetic engineering was pretty common- the sort of world where transgenic animals have replaced a lot of modern technologies, and where there are already a large number of human variants.
Even then, for the genkit population to become large enough to spark a war, I think you'd need something else. Maybe a strange new animistic religion that would see animal people as closer to some spiritual ideal. Maybe a counter-culture of genetic body-modification attracting those suffering from species dysphoria. Or maybe some utopian project envisioning animal-people as better integrating with nature.
u/None [+3] (6 hours later)
The backstory actually answers a fair number of those concerns, but I can't really explain without spoiling things. The bit about 'show don't tell' is good advice though. I've already written out three chapters of the story, but I'll definitely keep that in mind for future chapters!
u/wren42 [+3] (11 hours later)
yeah, /u/xinago, I share these concerns. any society that could create genkits, did so in large enough quantities to be a threat, and then fought a fairly conventional war against them would need a very strange set of parameters that need to be explained.
Why give animals intelligence if machines are more effective at most tasks?
Why pick specific and diverse mammalian breeds rather than engineer hybrids for specific tasks?
How did society come to have that much understanding of genetics, medicine, and the mind and not simply transcend into a higher state civilization? Why hasn't there been a singularity? (all good sci fi needs to answer this last question, IMO)
Why not grant them rights in the first place, once this odd state of affairs is reached?
If you are so callous and imperialistic as to deny rights, why then capitulate when faced with primitive terrorist tactics? if your genetics is so good why not engineer a disease that targets just these modified beings? they should have clear markers.
you can ignore all this in cartoons and video games but if you want a hard sci-fi rational fic you need to address the holes in the world pretty tightly.
edit:
my answers to these questions would likely be that they were created by private entities as exotic pets. The "war" fought was not against the American Empire but private security forces for the corporations that owned and were profiting off them. these organizations would have more limited arsenals and ability to operate freely within US soil. Political pressure both internal and external would be weighed against interests of lobbyists until eventually it was a geopolitical PR problem and the government intervened to grant rights and enforce regulations.
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/7trikm/zero_a_genkit_story/dtg3jor/
u/inscrutablescooter [+2] (3 hours later)
I found it intriguing. I'm not a writer myself, so I'm afraid I can't offer any meaningful feedback from a writing perspective, but I would read more.
Do the Genkits have animal bodies and human intelligence, or animal bodies and intelligence on par with that of a human? If the latter, I would find it really interesting if there was some sort of exploration of whether being embodied differently, having a different set of senses would make cognition different without making it lesser, per se.
u/None [+3] (4 hours later)
Humanoid bodies with mostly animal traits. The setting rose out of a roleplay thing, and the entirety of the world was created to give my players a legitimate reason to play furries, basically. Only what started out as an excuse to allow players to RP quickly grew into its own, organically created world.
Some of them do have sensory changes from your standard human. Canids tend to have amazing senses of smell, felinids have good night vision, that kind of thing. Bats tend to have bad eyesight but great hearing and a few of them have echolocation. The ones who don't tend to end up needing corrective eye surgery later on as they grow up.
The really neat thing is that Genkits don't age. Or rather, they age, but they don't degrade from their aging. The original experiments which spawned their creation were a test to see how far the human genome could be manipulated and edited while still producing a viable, living creature.
u/wren42 [+3] (11 hours later)
The original experiments which spawned their creation were a test to see how far the human genome could be manipulated and edited while still producing a viable, living creature.
this isn't sufficient IMO. This is not the approach any serious scientist would take to determine those limits, and they certainly wouldn't create thousands of different but similar types.
The only reasonable explanation for their existence in my mind is cosmetic/entertainment/luxury. Why else would they be made to look like specific animals, except that people demand it be so for aesthetic reasons?
It would make sense if they were basically exotic pets that were made smarter and smarter over subsequent generations, until they were basically companion/pet/slaves with human level intelligence. I could see this happening in a consumer centered future society with low regulation, and there being reason for certain elements or organizations to resist granting them rights (profit, desire for control of their pets.)
one outcome of this line of thinking is that there are likely still societies where they are enslaved (say, if China is anything like it is today)
u/None [+2] (16 hours later)
this isn't sufficient IMO. This is not the approach any serious scientist would take to determine those limits, and they certainly wouldn't create thousands of different but similar types.
Animal rights.
Whole thing started out with genetic research being done by private groups trying to perfect human genome editing. The work was stolen by a second group of animal rights extremists who wanted to demonstrate that animals and people aren't any different. Militant vegans, basically, backed by at least one very rich and eccentric 1%'er.
The issue was that they never actually got permission from any major government for that kind of human experimentation, but by that point there was a few thousand Genkits and they'd been smuggled out and spread around the planet to different places to prevent anybody from simply leveling the main research facility and wiping them all out at once. When the UN moved in to shut the whole thing down, the Genkits were deemed to be illegal experiments and the more conservative factions decided they were an affront to the natural order, or against God, or whatever excuse they wanted to come up with to hate on this new species of people. They were never meant to be fluff, or a slave race. They were meant to guilt people into cutting down on widespread animal farming.
By the time that happened most of the first-generation Genkits were old enough to understand what was going on and be pretty pissed off about being denied human rights. They were being rounded up for destruction because they represented a potential threat to anybody who wanted to avoid human genome editing. If they let the whole thing go, it would send the message that any experiments that came out of that kind of illegal research would be allowed to exist even if you broke the law.
if your genetics is so good why not engineer a disease that targets just these modified beings? they should have clear markers.
Geneva convention specifically prohibits that kind of biological weapons research IIRC
(I keep editing this comment to add on to things, heh. Sorry about that)
The population issue of Zero going from less than 5,000 Genkits to 5 million Genkits is actually a result of continued genetic research by the Genkits themselves after the war. It wasn't just the A.E. they were fighting, but pretty much the entire UAE, Russia, the American Empire, China and a few smaller African countries. All places where religious conservatism is high or where human experimentation is severely taboo. It got to the point where the neutral countries got sick of the whole goddamned mess and started political pressure to set up an armistice and simply grant them their own place, which turned out to be Antarctica mostly because no major country has a serious foothold there. The UN funded the first stages of construction of the city, and they were then able to fund the rest themselves through a combination of hiring themselves out (since Genkits learn very quickly), mining underneath Mt. Erebus and reparations from the war.
u/wren42 [+2] (a day later)
Ok, I can buy the private militant vegan motivation. I'm still skeptical of all these governments fighting them, and I feel like having it be private security/mercenary forces is much more believable. First it is very unlikely so many governments would even engage in such an operation, and secondly it's unlikely they'd lose. You can hand wave this if it's essential to the plot to have an Evil Empire, but a late stage capitalist future with corporations running rampant gives a lot of flavor as well while being more plausible as an amoral agent acting to destroy the Genkits for any number of reasons - religious, economic, avoiding a scandal, wanting to capture for their own research, etc. Some combination of a profit motivated corporation that is fanning the flames of religious conservative groups for their own ends seems to make the most sense - you'd have corporate mercs + weird fundie militias all hunting down the Gerkin until the scandal goes public enough to force the government to intervene. You could even have members of the government involved or complicit until it all goes more public; it just seem really unlikely to have a government military led extermination campaign against a few thousand illegal experiment subjects. it takes a really weird mindset to make this happen.
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Hmm, I can see your point. Though the idea of corporations being in control of government through
briberylobbying does make a lot of sense. I don't really want to just hand-wave things away, that's why I posted about it in this sub. This is basically the first attempt I've made at committing myself to writing a long-term story, I want to get it right.In my mind, it's mostly about religious nuts and people obsessed with human purity who wanted to wipe them out. There's also some motivation there due to them spreading out across several countries, both immigrating illegally and threatening the status-quo there. Imagine, for instance, if they'd spread to a place like Iran. What might the governments response be? The idea that they'd try to scourge the Genkits from their soil isn't all that wild to me, and if that was taking place in several areas at once I could easily see the Genkits themselves becoming biased against humans in general and developing an Us VS Them mentality. I don't want the Genkits to be the poor, abused victims in this. They're just as capable of being monstrous as human beings. They did fucked up things too, and not all of the hate for them is unfounded.
u/wren42 [+2] (a day later)
Oh yeah I could totally see a government like Iran or Saudi Arabia doing it. I guess if other countries have gone full authoritarian religious fundamentalism it could work; I guess the thing is if the us is as ruthless as Iran, they have the firepower to just win. They have to be holding back for some reason
u/None [+1] (a day later)
Genkits during the war were spread out hidden among populations. While it's possible that the A.E. could have simply carpet bombed the area, they would have had to destroy their own cities to do so. That was the main reason for the guerilla tactics, using their enemies populations as literal human shields to keep from being wiped out by overwhelming firepower.
u/wren42 [+2] (a day later)
no i mean they should have extremely advanced technology, surveillance/intelligence, high quality weapons and military units, extremely organized, etc. There's no way a couple thousand otters would have a chance to deal any kind of damage and survive for long. this is why I think it should be paramilitary/corporate mercs/militia. These could have a range of varying capabilities giving gnkits a chance in early skirmishes and opportunities to steal gear etc, and would face a host of issues with operating openly on US soil. they are also more likely to be aggressive/use illegal force compared to government military.
u/Izeinwinter [+1] (a day later)
Honestly, the main problem is the war. If the conflict over genmods goes that hot, they should all be dead or humanity should be.
Bio-war, vulnerabilities to dead-man switches built into their biology, just straight up conventional violence. They cant reproduce without a lab, and there just should not be enough of them to win.
... Not to mention that I am not sure things like the drug trade even make any sense in a high-biotech setting.
That tech base means addictions are either curable, down to the underlying pathologies, or the drugs are in any case produced locally in peoples greenhouses and kitchens, because cheap manufacture of biologically active substances is the all dominating application of biotech.
So.. The gen mods are run up as workaround for rules against human testing of gene mods. This is obviously complete bullshit, but the corps responsible manage to bribe some nations/regulators into buying their specious argument. So far, that is credible enough.
Then they get more popular, as essentially, well, sex or personal companion slaves.
Early examples do what slaves have always done and run away a lot, which establishes them globally, while nations that did not buy the "They are totally animals, just like my dog" argument have legal fits.
Massive civil disobedience campaigns, international pressure and eventually the very pointed parking of armored divisions on borders result in them eventually being declared human globally... Except that the nations which built them by the millions have absolutely no intention of granting them citizenship, so they get a bunch of heavy duty construction equipment and a deep line of credit due to reparations and ownership of the patents developed during their testing.
u/None [+0] (a day later)
Bio-war,
Prohibited by the Geneva conventions.
vulnerabilities to dead-man switches built into their biology,
Why would the militant Green Groups that made them do that? That makes no sense.
just straight up conventional violence.
Already explained that in other comments.
They cant reproduce without a lab, and there just should not be enough of them to win.
That's entirely assumption on your part, Genkits are fertile and capable of sexual reproduction.
... Not to mention that I am not sure things like the drug trade even make any sense in a high-biotech setting.
Right now we have the technology to map genomes and clone animals, but there are still heroin addicts. Just because you're advanced in one area of biotechnology doesn't give you a free pass in other areas of the same field.
u/Izeinwinter [+2] (a day later)
Human genetic experimentation on the scale of the genkits is also illegal as hell. But okay, the biogens grew up in labs, perhaps deterrence of the MAD kind is enough to stop the clearly completely unethical researchers from just running up a virus to "Solve" the problem.
But conventional violence is a big problem. Asymmetric war depends on the ability to hide. If the world wants to wage a genocidal war against people who cannot just blend into the general population, that pogrom would be horrifically effective.
Insurgency war does not work. Certainly not without great power backing- Note that however romantic the tale of the american revolutionary war, it would not have worked without the French being onside, and the american colonies were in a far better strategic position against an enemy far less inclined towards just murdering them.
u/wren42 [+2] (11 hours later)
A Genkit is an uplifted animal-person, a melding of human and animal DNA.
This world is based on a setting built up in roleplay
red flags for me TBH, but I'll give it a read anyway. Writing about roleplays tends to be somewhat tropey and melodramatic, with an overinflated sense of importance of the "main"characters that had been the PCs or major NPCs. this bias can distort the narrative and leads to less realism. I'm already getting that feeling from the rundown of the "party" that takes up half the text here.
The writing is tight enough, though, and you got some decent worldbuilding into this small space, so it may develop well depending where you go with the plot. If you can avoid cyclic arcs that feel like quests with minibosses and focus on the sociological/political hard sci fi elements it could be interesting.
In terms of specifics of the writing here - I think there should be a connection or transition from the list of his group members to "I wasn't sure what to think." It's kind of a weak jump. Instead he should think something about them, wondering where they are or how they are integrating into this new world. Then he can speculate at how alien it is, etc.
Typo thread:
restained
u/None [+1] (16 hours later)
None of those characters were PC's, that was entirely just him thinking about people he used to know.
EDIT: Sorry, I lied a little there. Barrelema was a PC but I don't intend for him to be able to find her easily. She isn't a primary story element in this, she's a background element to Sorin.
u/CCC_037 [+2] (21 hours later)
You've got mammal-human hybrids, and by and large they're well written - the doctor's bearishness is introduced at pretty much exactly the right moment.
However, I've read the whole thing and I still don't know what Barrelema or Sorin were hybridised with. (For about half the chapter, I assumed Sorin was baseline human). Barrelema doesn't matter that much, but Sorin's been on-screen the whole time. Of course, the advise of 'show, don't tell' applies here - but at some point you do need to show.
Aside from that, it's an intriguing introduction. Given how much space you've given to the descriptions of Sorin's old squadmates, I'm going to guess that the first part of the novel will involve him tracking them down and trying to figure out what happened in the past sixty years?
Also, I see from your notes further down that the some countries had been neutral in the war. Why not set up the first genkit-only city in such a neutral country? (The country with said city would get an immediate boost to potential tourism income - I'm sure that plenty of countries would love that).
u/None [+3] (a day later)
Nope, the exposition was Sorin just reflecting on the people he knew back then.
The very next chapter is from Ashara's point of view, where she describes him a little to somebody. I hear you though, I just couldn't think of a way to describe him that didn't come across as me stopping to describe him for the sake of it.
The neutral countries were a little concerned about an all-Genkit settlement being attacked by somebody who said fuck it to the armistice. A state leader like Kim Jong Un, for instance. The simple fact of the matter is, the Genkits aren't liked by a few really powerful players, and it would've added political pressure on whatever country was hosting them by the countries that didn't like them, and a few of those were too powerful to be worth the hassle. Instead those countries pushed for them to be granted their own rights someplace, and while Antarctica might seem like a really shitty choice for a city, it actually worked out for them because it's a bitch to reach overland. Zero is shielded underneath Mt. Erebus itself, and uses geothermal power for the most part, but not even a direct nuclear strike could wipe out the entire thing in one go and the Genkits are quite fine with that kind of defensiveness.
u/CCC_037 [+2] (a day later)
I hear you though, I just couldn't think of a way to describe him that didn't come across as me stopping to describe him for the sake of it.
"Tell me, nurse. Do I still have all my scars?"
"Yes, I could hardly tell you were a Platypus."
Something like that?
It might not even need fixing, if you describe him early in the next section; but 'how to describe the protagonist of a first-person novel' is a question that's been asked a lot of times.
The simple fact of the matter is, the Genkits aren't liked by a few really powerful players, and it would've added political pressure on whatever country was hosting them by the countries that didn't like them, and a few of those were too powerful to be worth the hassle.
Madagascar. South Africa.
Hey, nobody much liked Apartheid either, and South Africa's response to pretty comprehensive international sanctions during those years was more or less 'meh, who needs international trade anyway?'
I mean, sure, I can see them being unable to set up in just about anyplace in North America or Europe. But (say) Australia is almost as hard to reach overland from Europe/America, and it'd cost substantially less to set up a city there. Especially if you have the budget to go carving up the insides of mountains.
I mean, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with a city in Antarctica; but I just don't see why there wouldn't be a city in one of the southern-hemisphere countries.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
Partially because the Genkits wanted their own city-state, and partly because nobody was willing to put up with crap from at least two permanent members of the UN security council. The A.E. and China both view the Genkits as a threat to their reputation and to human purity, and things happened during the war to make Genkits just plain unpopular there.
Imagine it from the Genkits point of view. You're alone, you're being hunted simply for existing. You have no government backing. All of your weapons and resources are either stolen or bought off the black market through middlemen with things like drug money. Your people are scattered around the globe, so being able to move product to fund your little war is feasible, because you have allies in places such as Mexico and the cartels mostly don't care who's paying them as long as the money flows.
So you're involved in the black market, and in some rather nasty sorts of crime just so that you can scrape together the resources to survive and be able to fight back. You have no ethical qualms whatsoever about hitting military targets and you're spread out underneath and through human cities, using their populations as shields to prevent heavy military from grinding you into dust. Anybody fighting you had to do it Stalingrad-style or risk either alerting you due to evacuations, or massacring their own people to get to you as well. Then the armistice happens and suddenly you have a chance to get away from all that and found your own country somewhere. After everything that's happened and the bad reputation you've accumulated by doing these things just to survive, would you feel comfortable building your first major city in a country where the very species that just spent years trying to wipe you out controls everything? I wouldn't.
They pushed for their own place outside of any human country because paranoia became a way of life for them. They couldn't imagine doing anything else. It just doesn't compute. Just look at what happened to Israel during the 70s, that actually happened in this world and it was a lesson the Genkits took to heart when they had the opportunity to make a place for themselves. Sure, it's more resource intensive to build a settlement so far away from everything, but when you're done you have a highly defensible position on a continent that humans have no major settlements on, on a part of the planet that's so difficult to reach almost nobody goes there.
u/CCC_037 [+1] (a day later)
Anybody fighting you had to do it Stalingrad-style or risk either alerting you due to evacuations, or massacring their own people to get to you as well.
So, as soon as the war is over, they went and put themselves in the one place where they could no longer use this as a defense? After everything that's happened in the war, would you feel comfortable leaving any form of defense behind?
And if you have a whole globe to work with, it's not going to be hard to find people who don't much like either the A.E. or China - even if they're not strong enough militarily to do much more than send out strongly worded letters.
u/None [+2] (a day later)
So, as soon as the war is over, they went and put themselves in the one place where they could no longer use this as a defense?
Nobody said every Genkit on the planet packed up and decided to go live in Zero.
And if you have a whole globe to work with, it's not going to be hard to find people who don't much like either the A.E. or China - even if they're not strong enough militarily to do much more than send out strongly worded letters.
That doesn't mean the Genkits have to be cool with them. Takes two to tango.
u/CCC_037 [+1] (a day later)
Nobody said every Genkit on the planet packed up and decided to go live in Zero.
True. In fact, you explicitly said that there was a large population of Genkits outside Zero, living alongside unmodified humans, which makes a lot of sense to me.
That doesn't mean the Genkits have to be cool with them. Takes two to tango.
Hmmmmmmmm. True.