16.09.14 - Tal Spektor - Codename TONY (530 words)

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

As usual, people. I have this small hunch that this is not even halfway decent, but I did my best with this stupid idea. I intended to give you something I think is better, which is a collection of my poems. Maybe next time. Would you like that?

[CommandanteLemming he/him]

Since you want grammar I will try and make notations as I read:
 
"The sky has gotten so filthy that he could not see the sunrise anymore, as it was blocked not by mountains but by the air, thick with pollution. It was not like that just yesterday."
 
"Has" is present tense, "could not" is past tense. It seems this is in past tenet  so I would do "had gotten so filthy that he could see the sunrise anymore". I would also put a period after "anymore" so it reads "could not see the sunrise anymore. It was blocked..." (Present tense would be "has gotten so filthy that he cannot se the the sunrise anymore)
 
Non grammar note - I like your term "overwater".
 
 
"And he finally got rid of the mental images"
 
Never start a sentence with a preposition if possible - unless you're in first person in which case bad grammar is fine. I'd go with something like "He had finally rid himself of..."
 
"but they will not die from it, not too much."
 
One would think that even a little dying is too much    Not sure what "too much" references. Too much unheated air. Right now it references "die from it".
 
"Maybe this place would not just produce the plastic plague and would not pollute the cities as any other place TONY tried polluted everything"
This needs internal punctuation. With the current structure, the comma would go between "cities" and "as any", but even that reads a little clunky. I would try rewriting this as two separate sentences and maybe explaining a bit more that TONY pollutes a lot of things.
 
"He trusted the underground better, too."
 
I would eliminate the word "too", and better does't work with trusted. "he trusted the underground more."
 
" earth-coloured grass growing everywhere"
Dead grass, by definition, does not grow. 
 
" The expeditions were successful, after almost three thousand years since the original breakthrough."
I would eliminate the word "since" and move  "after" - "successful, almost three thousand years after the.."
Personally I would reverse it for dramatic effect "Almost three thousand years after the original breakthrough, the expeditions were finally successful." - but that's a style choice not a grammar or flow issue.
 
"Vajez remembered hearing of days when sun was captured to electricity without losing more than 98.573% of the power."
Love this sentence. 
 
"They soon will grow so small in numbers"
Say "the colonists" or "the settlers" or something - right now they references "efficiency" and that doesn't work.
 
"make them of only one gender"
This is clunky - I'd go with something more colorful like "wipe out the fertile females" or something like that. (Granted my suggestion just sounds weird lol)
 
" It provided too little a place for garbage gardens for the million on it,
You use "for" twice here - I'd be more flowery - "too little space for the waste gardens. The refuse of a million people could never fit so small a footprint" (just a suggestion - but something like that)
 
 "It often fell, killing people sometimes."
BEST. LINE. EVER!!! I'm not sure if I'm supposed to laugh at this, but it's hilarious in it's understatement. Almost like it's an afterthought. "Oh yeah, and sometimes our garbage falls back on us from space and kills people...no big deal"...LOVE IT!
 
"Door riddled with holes, air started rushing out."
 
I'm assuming something punched the holes - so maybe "the door was riddled with holes"...not sure
 
 
ON THE WHOLE: I like it, it needs polish but I like it. Haven't figured out the nature of TONY but not sure if you want me too. Vivid imagery. Felt the world, like the progression. Good start.

[CommandanteLemming he/him]

Also it's not only "halfway decent" - it's actually pretty cool. More please.

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

That is all. The human race just died. Nowhere to continue. Except in a neg-version with other animals.

 

Sorry for the tense and preposition stuff - I write/talk instinctually, and rarely can distinguish between more complicated tenses, or follow these small rules... Comes when you talk more than you study, I guess.

 

I still need a ton of work. I also want to say - these people are stupid, and they become progressively more important (with the exception of 4, whom I would like to fix). Like, dead grass growing on animals -- that is called fur. I wonder how to make that clearer...

 

Note: I might be so casual about the garbage falling because I am used to

A. a more dense population by several orders of magnitude

B. the offending objects being intentionally aimed to kill

C. the offending objects being rockets

All of which I am really casual (afterthought-y) about. Perhaps because it rarely hits anyone.

 

The door was holed by rocks from the asteroid belt. Perhaps I am too sciencey, so I assumed it was sort of obvious that at the asteroid belt, you will be hurt by asteroids. That is a statistical certainty. 

 

I am surprised you liked that - I shall need to revamp this considerably. Any more notes are welcome, of course!

[Mandamon he/him]

I liked the structure of this, showing glimpses into what happens in the future.  However, I thought this was rough overall.

 

I couldn't quite tell what was going on, whether this was an actual environmental catastrophe, or if it was humans looking for new places to live and then messing up those environments.

 

Without any reference to dates, I also couldn't tell whether the sun was getting dim, or if people had just polluted their environment so much they couldn't get enough sunlight.

 

This reminds me of an old story in Ranger Rick (if anyone remembers that), where the Earth is covered in garbage and a bunch of animals tries to figure out what happened.  It stuck with my young self because I just couldn't imagine any way Earth would be completely covered in garbage--eventually people would just reuse it.  That was sort of the same reaction I had here, simply because I was confused on the reason for the future apocalypse.

[andyk he/him]

Like Mandamon, I didn't get a clear idea of what was going on, beyond an assumption that the snippets were in chronological order. You're playing with an interesting idea, but each section is currently too short to give much idea of what's happening or how it connects together. There are some interesting fragments of ideas, but rushed.

[Robinski he/him]

This piece certainly raises a lot of questions. There are a lot of interesting images that get the mind thinking, looking for explanation. My difficulty was that the explanation didn’t seem to be there. Okay, I can make up my own explanations and follow story threads down avenues that I want to take them, but the feels more like Role-playing or Writing to me than reading. I get that you want to make the reader think, I just think there is a lot more to said about the subject that seem to be at the heart of the piece.

 

The language could be sharpened up in quite a few places, but – to be fair – I think you did say this was a piece that you hadn’t edited a great deal, hope I remember that correctly. Then I start to ask if the problem is with me and my attitude to flash fiction.

 

Maybe it is just me, but I feel you have enough interesting ideas in there for this to at least be a short story, since these are big topics and deserve more investigation, even if it’s only over half a dozen pages. I mean, the concept of the human race dying out, physically, in your story really hit me – and then I thought what a wasted opportunity it was to explore that a bit further, how it came about, the mechanics of it, the logistics, are absolutely fascinating to ponder. Wrapping it up in a couple of sentences feels like a cop out to me.

[Mark]

I'm a bit late to the party, but figured I'd comment anyway. 

 

I got a distinct sense of Isaac Asimov in this, particularly 'The Last Question', which is good. Unfortunately, this wasn't as clear, so I wasn't so sure what was going on. I did like the writing style though. 

 

I was going to point out the grammar errors, but it seems they have already been addressed. Those you can learn to avoid in time, I don't see them as too big of a deal. 

 

I would have liked to have understood it better, as I was genuinely interested in what was going on. The idea of a giant corporation destroying the planet is an intriguing one, reminds me of WALL-E. 

 

All in all I liked it, and I look forward to reading more of your stuff (and hopefully understanding it!). 

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

Thank you for dropping in!

 

Asimov is one of my favourite authors, and that story changed me somewhat. The layout was taken from 'the Last Question', that is true. I am sorry the story was not clear, but I submitted it in a rush, because at the last moment, I lost the poem collection I was going to give you, and I had nothing else up my sleeve. This was an idea that struck me just days before, and I had very little time to write it and make it clear, so it sort of came out as a first draft.

 

Uhm, this is not a corporation ruining the earth, but the opposite in reverse. Yeah, I know. Sounds strange to say it.

 

Basically, Tony Gillgiver is the saviour of mankind, and he is the person who made us go all environmental. Every character here is dim, at least to an extent, and humanity is just as dim, sometimes more. Every time, the TONY corporation (sort of the environmentalist front line) tries to make it all better, but the human race is just so intellectually dead that they just move from place to place and die in space. Yes, depressing story, but it is almost plausible, the way we are headed.

 

 

If you liked this, you might want to try "Washed Orchards", which I think is my best piece so far. It has been sent to RE three weeks ago, I believe.

[Mark]

damnation, sorry I didn't pick up on that. So it's a testament to the overwhelming stupidity of mankind? Still a good idea. 

 

I'll have a look at 'Washed Orchards' now. 

[Dysphoric Kitten she/her]

It's a rough story. Very natural that you have not picked up on this, as it is quite odd to write an environmental story about good people who fail because they are idiots, especially since this was not a well written, nor clear, piece. I understand that now, in retrospect.