Wayne Ligon

Neo Ranga had some excellent translation notes. It mentioned one scene where the two sisters are talking. The raw translation would just come out something like 'Yes, sister,' 'Of course, sister', but because Japanese addresses change depending on your social station, what the younger sister was actually doing was very sarcastic. because she was addressing her older sister with the highly formal form she'd use to address an empress, so it was really more like 'Yes, your eternal worshipfullness'. Another research source I loved was a magazine called Mangajin. which used manga to point up aspects of Japanese language and how it's used.

Hmmm I see what you mean. Pressure at that depth is another big problem for our heroes. If there are suits they will almost have to be hard-suits - effectively mini-submarines. That also means it's too heavy to ascend without some kind of powered thrust or very large buoyant device.

How far is it to the surface?

Oh. The landmass above them wouldn't happen to be ice, would it? Like on a gas giant moon with a thick ice shell covering a water/liquid layer?

Oooh given the layout there, this might be a dead zone with little o2 dissolved in the water. If the suits use artificial gill fabric then it would work poorly at best, or not extract enough for a human. So, supplemental O2. Maybe taken from the medical lab.

1. Since we're talking future tech, the suits can be very lightweight - something to keep people warm, and then an active membrane to separate o2 from water like an artificial gill. So there's no time limit for them to stay under, Same tech balances the gas in their blood to keep them from getting the bends. Now, they could simply swim upwards to the hole or if the suits need to be heavy for some reason (maybe they were heavy bulky construction work units that are not stored where the normal suits are), then they could improvise flotation devices. This could be as simple as a drink jug filled with air. Then they rise to the underside of the landmass and have to walk across the underside to get to the hole. 2. The installation entrance is an airlock. Blow the supports and frame, and the airlock chamber floats to the underside, then the suits will work to get them to the hole. Problem - the bends, probably, from the airlock chamber rising too fast. 3. Added tension - the government starts to flood the facility. Journey through flooding tunnel to previously established outlying power facility - blow the supports anchoring it's maintenance 'shed' to the ocean floor. Shed floats to underside. Then same as #2

Situation is something like this? (Attached graphic)

Another idea I had was DAO, for Deep Augmented Overlay. This resonates well with 'tao', and the 'like he was seeing another world' out-of-focus look people will get when they concentrate on a large overlay.

Yeah, that's where I got 'jack' - which now that I think of it is going to make some people think of a phone jack or something similar to 'jacking in' in older cyberpunk books.

I've been trying to think of a good terminology for augmented reality, and it occurred to me that this might be the perfect place to brainstorm some similar things - someone submits a phrase, word, concept or such and we try to brainstorm a new term for it. For my own work, one significant thing is augmented reality - a computer generated overlay of what you see. I already had this concept, but I've been 'poisoned' by Alistair Reynolds' work, where he posits a global system that gets referred to as 'the aug' or 'the augment'. So, I need a better term for this than 'the aug'. I thought about 'jack', for 'jack up'. 'Sym' for both a word-play on 'simulation' and the more accurate 'symbiotic device', but that also triggers my 'y-substitution in made-up terms' allergy. What sort of terms are you struggling with?

Good Point. I think Badad is mixing a lot of lies with a little truth here - I have vague ideas about this setting and part of it is that wizardry is completely intuitive. You can't actually teach it to anyone, you can just point them in the right direction and hope they don't kill themselves with it, which most still wind up doing.

The idea I was trying to get across here is that Chisa is trying to behave like her Mam, who I see as a pretty bold and brassy adult, so she's trying to establish dominance over what she's pretty sure is a snotty patron who thinks he can throw his weight around because he's a wizard and she's young. I could just come out and SAY that but I was trying to get it across with her attitude. Obviously I need to work on that part. She's fascinated by him and a little envious but not reverent - in the beginning she's not concerned with meeting his eyes even though it's 'known' to cause 'bad luck'. I've dithered over expanding on that but it feels extraneous. Almost nobody calls over the manager to ooh and ahh over the service or food; it's almost always to complain. Chisa being 12 is an artifact of this story originally being written for a young person's anthology. I can certainly see the point. I'm thinking of putting in something about the other inhabitants of the Free Quarter looking after her and her brothers because they are simply that good at cooking, and that buys you a lot of goodwill. A huge amount of thanks to everyone that has commented. This is exactly the sort of critique and commentary I've been looking for. I only hope I can do as well when I put down my thoughts about other people's work.

First-time submission: complete short story at 3036 words. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I'd love to hear back from you with comments, critique, etc.

Hey, everyone. I posted in the intro thread but found this one as well I'm Wayne and while I have a handful of short fiction in various anthologies I have yet to break into a professional market. I like Fantasy and SF about equally well, with some horror and mystery thrown in on the side. I'm also an avid comics fan and half my published work has been superhero-related fiction. I'm currently trying to complete a science fiction novel, and I hope to be able to share some short stories or excerpts with y'all. I'm also scheduled to go on the next Writing Excuses workshop cruise.

I recently finished Alastair Reynold's On The Steel Breeze, and I liked his use of the non-binary pronoun. There is one character, Travertine, who is never described but refereed to using the Keri Hulme pronouns ve, ver, vis. I'm going to run into this same quandary in my novel or novel series at some point - in my future history, the more technologically advanced worlds have gotten to the point that changing to another fully-functioning sex is an outpatient procedure taking a few weeks of time. I may need something either totally neutral or have ones for each of n number of genders. The Hulme construct might be more to my taste than Singular They, but I'm unsure.