Paula’s Comments (group member since Oct 28, 2015)

Paula’s comments from the Science Fiction Microstory Contest group.

Jeremy wrote: "Yeah, it needs something. I'm unlikely to work on it further at this point though."

It needs very little, imo, to make it work well, but that's just an opinion. Anyhow, agreed--no point to working on it unless it still interests you, its author.

Quite an amazing story, Alina. Powerful punch it has, indeed. It is a very fine work.

Thank you, Tom.
Jeremy, wow, that is amazing! Now I shall try to link to it--that is REALLY amazing!

Thank you, Jot and Jeremy! Very much appreciated!

Jeremy, re your story--no, not at all boring. Last couple of sentences could perhaps use an extra twist, though, or some densifying/added details/material or character, or a change of pov, so it shines rather than quite so quiet/slow-fade [in the film sense] an ending. That is--so that it gives us a new surprise, or a new unforgettable character, or a deepened emotion/emotion-stirring detail/s, or the like, in the ending. imao.

Jeremy, that story's not at all boring. (see my post in the Critiques thread.)

Jot wrote: "One step at a time."
But which step? Maybe 1st diverse pop., 2nd whatever currency reform/changes the people determine necessary--

Kalifer, what a wonderful story--and genuinely moving. Queen Tibilla reminds me of so many . . . well, not to write any spoilers here, but . . . she does.

And then they say "T'ranna rex"?Jeremy wrote: "Posted.

When I travel, if I say I'm from Canada, people think I'm a US person in mufti. I usually say I'm from Toronto ("T'ranna") even though I live north of there."

Kalifer wrote: "On the discussion of how we are perceived overseas, there ought to be night classes for those travelling. We should have knowledge of how the US and US travellers are perceived in the destination c..."

"Ah bon, j'habitais a Paris pendant trois ans," and I just don't say *which* 3 years. Then I'm fine.
OTOH, how many times can one get asked "Oh yeah, you related to that economist?" --Fortunately, it's cool once I remind them "When the Czar demanded Jews in the Pale of Settlement take surnames, it was the name most taken." One does, though, have to remind people.

Interesting! The tech details are very interesting. And so the established nations, or a group of nations such as the E.U., could through some international court half-control the currency operations of a new or small or "controversial" nation--?

Decided to put a fiction where I've been chattering merrily along, so have posted a story now, folks. Pure raw prose, indeed.

Answer, Doneldo
copyright 2021 by Paula Friedman

Well, we didn’t know. We thought it might be on time, that there might have been time.

I am so sorry you are gone. All of you, my beloveds. Even you I barely knew—even you I didn’t much like. Even you whom I did not even know. O my beloveds, all of you, humans or softly warm furry or feathery. Now gone.

All gone. All, all the way gone.

We are so sorry that—yet could we have stopped it? How, in actual fact, could we have stopped it? Or prevented? Or been on time--?

--on time in leaving the contaminated planet? Our contaminated planet, Earth? (Earth, and—well, any of its too-swiftly, equally-entirely, contaminated settlement planets, exploratory planets, even our exploration vehicles across those green or pink-tinged or cerulean skies of what (not long enough ago, it has turned out) were once worlds never touched by us). We were not in time to stop it—either the exploration or the older or the new contaminations.

You ride in the back of this lonely ship with me, Doneldo.

Doneldo—why do I call you that?—Doneldo, vision of my later prime, my later years, tale over tale of how we grow, how we develop, learn our human truths (or what we see as truth, perhaps), how we evolve, each in our decades—that is, our “tens of years”, the word ‘decade’ a derivation from the Latin, ‘deca’ and its cognates, as you know. As you indeed know, Doneldo, fond memento, fine amalgamation, glorious AI-compendium of Earth-folks’ knowledge, thoughts, imaginings . . . or at least those small, indeed minuscule, portions of portions of portions, which for me have been the whole of what I’ve known.

Now you ride behind me in this ship. No one else here. No one remains, from any and all appearances, but how can I know? How can we know, Doneldo? The proof of a negation may, in perhaps-definable cases, be impossible—logically impossible.

But what are the infinities of logics, Doneldo? How are you—happenstancely—even here?

Or are you, Doneldo? Am I?

Indeed. And even if I am, the time (if still to be termed “time" or even be recognizable as, in any meaningful sense, time)—this time will come that I no longer am, that indeed perhaps no consciousness, no sentience, may be. Not anywhere out there (“out there”)!

Ah, Doneldo, memento of mementoes, carrier of thoughts, of images, of feelings of my century, our centuries—indeed, of this species and related species, Earth’s few species’, conciousnesses—must you, are you, will you, then be dying out with me?

Doneldo, here in this ship, behind me—or beside me, with me—pointed as we are into this darkness, this unending/ending, dribble of mind, of shivery thickness and of cold, “chilled to the bone” (as it were/so to speak), Doneldo, speak to me, beloved, speak for all our beloved, say: who/what consciousness, if any, may yet sometime supercede us, who/what will, in future time/space, come to be?

Answer me, Doneldo.

Answer us, anyone. Help.

[518 words]

Good points, Jot--one question: who'd be controlling the currency? Human or AI--and if AI, developed by whom? Or, if humans controlling the currency, which humans?

Can we still discuss the stories this month? Because that one of Justin's is brillianr--seriously brilliant. And humorously, too--in a way. NICE work, Jusrin!

Jot, many years ago I met a woman who'd lived in Eastern Europe during the Nazi occupation when she was a child, and she said the American planes flying over were like liberating birds. But by 1970, when I lived in Europe, one would have had to look really hard to find anyone who took the idea of the US as a country that might "lift up other countries in the world" politically. Sorry. The vaccines, yes; the US helped with their development very much--and that is hardly nothing. On the political front, though, and diversity in particular, maybe check with some black persons or with some of the surviving indigenes in the U.S.--which is not to question that for years, until 1922, or earlier for Asian peoples, the U.S. did serve as a refuge--and (I have read, but don't much about), leading up to the French Revolution, the U.S. emerging as a new nation without a king or (formal) aristocracy was something of an example--but, as the saying goes, "That was then, this is now."

Jot wrote: "Tom> I'm under the impression you and I will never agree on the issue of BLM and what it stands for. and "I do not see our border as artificial."
How are borders, including those of the U.S., not artificial? (Aside from there being some bodies of water around some sides of the nation's land area?)
I like what you said about US diversities being a strength! Am puzzled a bit by this expression: "We represent what the world can achieve as a single but diverse race"; is "race" a correct word there, or would "nation" or "national grouping" or somesuch be closer...? (Probably too much an "editor" question, but the word "race" has for decades or more been so much bandied around--!)
And this--you say, "if we can't feed, cloth, educate, house and care for the people already here, then we have to limit those coming in that would put a further burden on the country. That is the law." Your first sentence goes to the gist of what seems to me the only substantive argument that might--might--make sense re "enforced borders," although we have also the long human tradition of welcoming the stranger (as in "For you were strangers in the land".) Not sure how "That is the law" makes an argument re whether those laws are right or not, lol.
And finally---yeah, AI is/are going to be replacing human workers more and more, definitely. I fear Stephen Hawking may have been all too right re whether humans survive the next century or so.
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Kalifer wrote: "Jot, you are right about the Islands. They started building them in 2014 two years before Trump's reign. The funny part of that is, the Islands are sinking and they have never been able to use the ..."
This is interesting, Kalifer. Sometime around 1999 or so, I edited an academic book about China's long history re the South China Sea and the region's islands. Such a long, and involved, history; I think US people--and administrations--are mostly not acquainted with any of it.

Thanks for understanding, Tom. I think we need to be wary of over-accusations around any mass event that has, as did this one, ambiguities and probably multiple factions.
Jot, you said "It's not right for an honest American worker to pay taxes and healthcare, when a large group of others do not. Nor is it fair to hospitals who are still required to provide emergency care, when the guy doesn't pay a dime and has large stash of cash at home." Certainly that is true, when the nonpayer in fact has a large financial stash (at home, in the bank, or through owning the bank itself, lol)--but, having lived in neighborhoods, at times, where people were so poor they were either on Welfare or minimum-wage (generally while raising small kids on their own, or in impoverished old age), and read quite a bit on this, beginning with the midcentury classic How the Other Half Lives, I assure that most those persons getting free (generally quite minimal, and sometimes much too minimal) medical care etc. are, indeed, poor, and sometimes desperately poor.
I agree with you on the hardworking warmth and family-orientedness of Latinate cultures--and of Arab culture, Jewish culture, Chinese culture, Irish culture, and many or most other cultures, for that matter. We should probably be happy for just about every group of immigrants who arrive here. My ancestors--and perhaps yours, too--reached American shores in the long stretch of years before the 1922 ff. immigration restrictions were set up--by extreme US nationalists and White Power folks (e.g., the KKK of the time) anxious to prevent persons from groups they called "dirty"/"germ-carrying"/"ignorant" from "reaching our shores" . . . a policy disastrous for the Jews of much of Europe; perhaps if we wish, as clearly you do, a peaceful world of racial and other equality, we may consider loosening rather than "enforcing" what are artificial national borders--?

Tom--to answer your questions to me--(1) no, I wasn't "referring to the press as 'political partisans?"; rather, I was suggesting the vid displayed may have been stitched together by political persons from pieces by (for the most part, serious) media persons. (2) Was I "questioning whether the insurrection happened?" Only whether it happened quite as the vid had it, and what percentage of those persons participating were "insurrecting" and what percentage were trying simply to demonstrate; certainly some on-screen in the footage shown on the day of, and after, the event were, at most, rioting, and in many or most cases simply demonstrators. Note I say this even though I'm strongly opposed to nearly everything Trump has done or stood for.
Jot, whether or not "the country who had the most to lose from the Iran 'treaty' is Israel" is true--though the phrase is certainly used often as a truism--it's a statement that has normally been thrown into discussions to divert attention from US politicians' actions against the treaty. Not sure what it was doing in your post, there.
Btw, I agree with you that sometimes--some, and only some, of the time--Trump has made some peace-leaning moves that, yes, the mainline Democrats likely wouldn't have. But then he would take them back--and meanwhile was pulling the US out from treaties--one must think of the nuclear treatys--shoring up what peace the world has for now; in other words, he has at times dangerously risked catastrophe.
But meanwhile, even while we discuss all this--and write stories, ftm--if we think of what the current pandemic could mutate into--and many US states' and other nations' vaccine deliveries/priorities/policies may be pushing mutation--some of these subjects may seem considerably less relevant to those who may survive.