This topic, in case you hadn't guessed by the title, is where I'm going to lump all the questions and/or announcements.

You can find my stories (mostly Tremulous related) at:
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/stories.php

Latest announcement:
I'm planning a new story, called Fire on Tau Ceti. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to see the teaser.

I don't know that I would consider anyone that requested such a story a "friend".

You'll notice where 'furries' lie in the Geek Hierarchy. You have only two more rungs to fall before finding yourself at the bottom of the pile.



The entourage episode alone was horrifying, I do not need nor want any more fiction related to that bizarre universe.

Cool that you're writing though, welcome to the club(I write news/reviews/features over tinymixtapes.com)

I wouldn't really count furries as geeky.
Maybe if you change it to "Consider themselves better than" and call it a map of the internet underworld.

WOW - your stories are really good...

I am totally going to save that chart to show my friend! At least my fanfic/sci-fi works are only in the 3rd rung.
I wouldn't quite call this story furry, just...I dunno. Cute. I mean, there's the people like me who write anthro stories for fun, and then there's the weird people who dress up in suits that make them look like giant dogs/foxes/whatever...Now *that* is weird.

I accidentally read one of the stories in the bottom rung once. That wasn't geeky, that was just plain creepy. O.o
I shredded the file after the first chapter.

http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/stories.php
Here, scroll down to the bottom and decide for yourself. Read the description FIRST.

I'm rather enjoying your Tremulous stories. Working my way through them.

Small errors:
"Are you all right? You're face..." -- in Chap. 1
Andy thought out loud. "Well have -- in Chap. 2
Jerez (different one?) is talked about as living after he dies in Chap. 3

But yeah, thanks a lot. These are a fun read

Thanks, Garoth, the errors are corrected.


I'm already planning two new story series. My next project, Fire on Tau Ceti, takes place slightly before the events on Tremulous. Here's a teaser:

So you're not going to finish the Tremulous one? But we're left hanging after Chapter 3!

It's okay if you want to do something more interesting, doesn't matter. Maybe if you're going to not write novels, you should aim to do short stories that do have a begging middle, and end -- all self contained. Short stories used to be my favourite kind of writing, but I always had trouble sitting down and writing a lot of stories. I tended to get distracted and work on other stuff.

Also, a criticism I received in my literature writing days from my English tutor was that my characters could use more depth and personality. I think that is good advice for you as well. In general, some things to consider would be:

 - Using a stereotype is an easy and fast way to establish a large mental image of a character in the minds of the reader. Perhaps you describe the person as meek with downcast eyes but with the habit of frequently looking at people darkly as if with dislike. Just from that, similar characters would pop into the minds of readers and flesh out the personality. Perhaps the housewife with a calm and quiet demeanor and some overtones of being abused. This kind of thing just springs to life.
 - Some hardcore English people say that characters aren't worth much unless they have some element of character development as the story progresses: They learn some moral, change in some way. This is also a good way to weave in messages to the reader.
 - It is worth adding extra thoughts and actions that do nothing but expand the character depth. You could talk about how the character is addicted to smoking but has a severe dislike to smokers and carries his burden as self-punishment for some misdeed he did, which perhaps is revealed not all at once to create suspense. Or you could give the characters some kind of common phrase that they like to use, frequently describe some gesture or their tone of voice. Perhaps you could have a character see something and trigger a memory sequence that shows what kind of person they are, etc. Details count. The idea is to have the reader connect with the characters on a personal level so you really get into the story... and feel it so much more when they are hurt or die.

Anyway, that would be nice. I also recommend the works of Asimov. He's my favourite Sci-fi author and he is really really good at it. His stories tend to have a lot of threads that weave into each other delicately, and his Robot series in particular has amazing characters that you really connect to. His endings also tend to be really unpredictable, but after you read them, you see that he's laid out all the clues, you just couldn't put them together.

I have a *lot* of Asimov, Clark, etc in my room, I find that 'old school' sci-fi material to be much more interesting than some of the modern stuff I've read. I'll try implementing some of your suggestions into the future chapters I write, since I really don't want to re-write the chapters...again...

No, don't worry, I'm finishing Fusion Station. But sometimes ideas pop into my head and I just *have* to write them, you know?
Fire on Tau Ceti I actually have all outlined out, from start to finish. If I'm lucky, the first chapter will be uploaded tonight.
Posted on: May 23, 2008, 09:13:26 PM

---

Uploaded chapter 1!
http://mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/tau_ceti_ch1.php

Enjoy.

I read alot of sci-fi myself, and I also find that the old-school stuff is the best. In particular, anything from the golden age or silver age (I'm too lazy to look up on wikipedia when that is specifically). I find that I can just never really get into the "new wave" of sci-fi. Meh. Anywho, I just picked up another asimov book in a yard sale today! hooray!

I just picked up this: mercenariesguild.net/supertanker/spaceinc.jpg
I bought it for the cover art
A bit modern but VERY nice. Some of the really 'modern' books like Pushing Ice just aren't that great.

As far as sci-fi goes, I'm a huge fan of Ursula LeGuin. The Disposessed was easily my favourite novel for several years. Read it, I swear you won't regret it. It has some rather heavy cold war undertones, but I think it remains quite relevant, especially its investigation of the interplay of scientific ethics and politics. Absolutely fascinating. I think I'm going to read it again sometime soon, for the fourth time

In fact, don't read it like it's a sci-fi novel. Imho, it's more of a philosophical/ethical/political/sociological analysis, very intellectual/academic in its approach. There is hardly any action to speak of, and there really isn't much solid science in the novel anyways.  Which is exactly what makes it so brilliant. It's probably the novel that made me interested in philosophy in the first place.

</gushing fanboy>

The Left Hand of Darkness was also quite good.

Hey there,

Just read the first installment of Tau Ceti. I really liked it, and thought your characters were _way_ better this time around. I'm sure you know what you did right, so I'm not really going to go over it in detail, but suffice to say that it is the small, (mostly) plot-irrelevant things that count. I really enjoyed reading this one (more so than the previous ones) and look forward to when you have time to publish more.

In fact, I'm curious as to what will happen and am surprisingly hopeful that the humans manage to pull through. The fact that I have some emotional attachment to the story is a very good sign for you, I think.

One thing that I would also like to suggest for the future: consider talking further about alien characteristics. This is somewhat twofold. For one, non-Tremulous people have no idea what a dretch is. For two, Tremulous people have these mental images of what a dretch is and how it looks/moves. The dretches in Tremulous are probably the least realistic aliens because they have no visible method of attacking and their bodies move so little that it's almost invisible. Consider describing what they look like and how they move to really add a mental image. You should also probably consider adding features to them above what the game shows, because, obviously, the art in the game is limited by technical restrictions.

Of course, taking Tau Ceti as an example, you have to be careful about when you describe things. Taking 3 paragraphs to describe a dretch as it's jumping out of a crate surprisingly is probably the wrong place to do it . Also, we're used to all the humans looking and acting the same in Tremulous. More physical descriptions (clothing, features, etc) generally isn't a bad thing.

Anyway, seriously, great story. Keep it up, your stories are getting quickly better and more interesting. You'll have a grand following soon if you stick with it. And face it, without Internet, you have nothing better to do

Yeah, I kind of just want fusion station to die() because of all the plot errors and my non-standardized-naming conventions (I can't decide whether to use first or last names in half the chapters), but I also don't want to leave you all hanging. I'll try to finish it as best as I can.

Tau Ceti is going to be better overall. I have a clear mental image of 80% of the areas established beforehand, so it should be easier to write. Heck, it would be easy to map, too.