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

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

Jot wrote: "Okay, votes still needed from both Andys, Jon, Greg, and Paula, who needs to pick one between her tie for first. :) Sorry Paula, you gotta pick only one for first."
Hi Jot--messaged you a repy. Basically, the first of those two I named is for first place (the second for second place). Thanks. Since one has to be. :)

Just now sent in my votes. Jot, I hope you received them.
--Very very difficult decisions this month. Used my "grading" system--one 1-5 for writing quality, other 1-5 for story (works? originality/concept, power)-plus the usual "Does it super-grab me emotionally or intellectually or aesthetically?" wildcard . . . and, even after 3 readings of each story, plus 1 more for the top (imho) stories, still have nearly a tie for first place, and a 3-way tie for the next rung. Quality of the contest is way up this month.

And probably no coincidence that my nom de plume/guerre in '68 and '69 was a combo of first and last names of 2 characters in his The Wall. lol. --And yes, agreed re Hiroshima. When I read it as a teen, I couldn't endure to read it; it was terrifyingly honest in what it told us. Andy wrote: "Wow, Paula, The Child Buyer! I read that well over 50 years ago. Hersey was a great writer; his Hiroshima was a model of reporting."

I'd suggest turning your robotic auxilliary tropes into cats, Dorthe, Andy, and preferably with AI-enhancing purrs.
Justin, . . .just what urban legends are these? (Shudders.) Reminds me of an Isabel Allende story about child buyers who . . . Which reminds me of a Hersey novel, The Child Buyer, about . . .
But how can we vote without leaving out superb ones, this month?

very very fine and well done stories, Andy, Greg, Jon, Andy, ----and sort of everyone, this month. More before midnight?

Yeah---Justin's got me lol--or maybe it's those spilled apples from the sack the c.o. machine said did not fit my customer-satisfaction profile? Andy, you've actually brought in a trope that terrifies many of us---so, thanks, truly.

John, thank you so much.
People, re "unexpected praise in the flagging area"--please feel free to take, whoever you may be. . .
Trope originally from (so far as I know) a short short story of a note found outside a girls' orphanage saying "Whoever you are, I love you."
Source/original title or author, anyone?

On the button, Andy! (or probably I should use a different tr--uh, metaphor). Nice.

That ancient tongue has past perfect and semicolon stuff and lots of look-back, so I guess the ancient-text trope holds as well as the Rising one, Justin. But seriously, thank you for the sweet comment--much appreciated. What may have made it hard to follow is that, though I *think* it stands alone, it's set in the same worlds and era as my early Sentience story for the contest's first year and references, at moments, that world---though rather more darkly. Thanks for going the extra mile!
Jeremy, I do get the feeling that the word "trope" has turned, somewhere/sometime in this thread/discussion, from "symbolic theme" or "achetypal symbol" or whatever whatnot to--the word that dares not say its name--"word." Perhaps.
Did anyone bet on today's primaries, here in the USA or anywhere, btw? Just askin'

The "Rising" Tropes
Copyright © 2016 by Paula Friedman

Lanaeta had been born a daughter of the Seer caste of Jabar, but she had “done the right thing” and gone with the rebels in the Second Rising, back before the Era of Dearth and subsequent Third Revolution (so-called) of our peoples here on Orr and Lanos, on the Corteix system, and even on Earth, long before we were able to take our place in history with the triumph of the Good, so strangely bland, called the Battle of Jabar on Orr.

But at the time of Lanaeta’s defection, that cruel winter reigned when the Erigi peoples starved on Lanos, and the Hierarchs of Empyr preyed unceasingly on each weakened planet opened by defeat for exploitation, while brutal victors fresh from Earth mis-defined “right” ways of commerce and of love and thought for all the sentients Earth had colonized on Lanos, the Corteixi, and defiant Orr. And at that time, any female—even if of Seer blood—could only be seen as Evil if she denied her fealty to her father-lord and claimed, as Laneata rose to claim amidst Orr’s planet-wide Assembly, “I owe—indeed, we all owe—nothing to Earth anymore.” Staring hard across the space-sweated figures, “Do not deny this truth,” she said. “Exploitation destroys. Even Earthians now recognize their fault.” After which, Laneata fled, crossing Orr’s three oceans to seek and find the rebels hiding out in sand-cloaked rock-bound caves and canyons of Orr’s desert-dry Jabar.

They came awfully close, you know, those brave lost figures of the Second Rising. Nearly won, but their reach did not extend enough, their appeal failed to call sufficiently to our peoples’ longings to love and give. Ensuring their defeat, too, came those critical and carefully managed assassinations of indigenous planetary leaders by Empyr and its Hierarchs—on Orr, on the Corteixi, and of course on Lanos, where the waves break each six hours over early rebels’ bones. Thus the Second Rising failed.

I was very young, still; and one spring I borrowed an apartment in the student town of Sylvan, green and glowing as the township’s name, beside the University of Orr, imbued with centuries of curiosity and deep research though it was only fifteen leagues from red-dust-layered Jabar. Of course, as everywhere on Orr, we humans or humanoid sentients wore filter masks that incidentally sucked in extra oxygen; thus, life was, when we walked outside, indeed a “gas,” and so the quiet calm, yet underlying sense of desolate waiting, in the pretty blonde—her name already changed (we did not know her history) to Lanaeta—intensely struck me. I would watch her cross the campus lawns each afternoon, and blush. Once, even, we both blushed.

She was pretty, and exceptionally competent, she was also one who spoke, eyes peering deep, as if remembering somewhere else. As if she had lost part of herself.

Which she had. Like so many female warriors of the Rising, in leaving her people she had also left a child, never to be seen again. “They will be raised in the Way,” our brave women were told, and certainly they could not have brought a child into a rising—surely too the Path of Good was to be won, above all, for the children. But I think the missing child, like the near-won rising and whoever’d sired him, and comrades she had known, lived for her more than that flattened present on our verdant campus. I would visit, like a casual friend, and sit beside her as we drank Orr teas and chatted of our Darnabeests and other pets, and how a hyperdrive improves vacation trave, but always her eyes gazed . . . I didn’t know where.

Then she, and others, vanished. Soon came risings in Lanosan cities, on Corteix asteroids. Then interplanetary strikes arose . . .

I saw Laneata, in the red sunset after the Battle of Jabar on Orr. She had been taken, the hour before the battle, and they had strung her to a Tarnap, as a Pre-named Evil One. I hope she lasted long enough to see our victory arrive. To see her son fight his way through with our other victors. I have heard he was brought to her, as evening cloaked the battlefield in final peace, and saw himself at last reflected in her eyes before, his own pure tears flowing, he pressed her eyelids closed.

It makes for a better reading experience not to have heard the explications of a trope first. OTOH---"Alligator. . ., Crocodile!" "Abel, meet Baker"----some *very* cool tales, this month.
Seriously some really fine stories, this month, some cool and some serious. A pleasure to read.

". . . directed "Romeo & Juliet" - the version with Leonardo di Caprio in it"-----no no no how could that happen! Or what about an alternate universe where it didn't?

Yes, a brilliant piece, Heather. I'll have to read it again more carefully but yes, as Justin says, it's on a whole other level. Nice.

Okay, Thaddeus, now I'm worried about your health. You've had a hard year this year. . .
Yeah, love those shape-shifters. And trope-shapers, ftm. Good points!

Good lord, Jeremy--you jest, surely!
---Andy, don't even suggest it. Today being the particular memorial day that it is, and whozit having bought that position--

If we put all these together, we could skip the storifying.

and the 5th is you hope fora --
and, J.J., you forgot-- and then she crawls up from behind her boulder through the hot hot sand in the broiling desert sun and throws her dying self across his dying self
and it is said there in the desert is a rose grows only once a year and. .

I like "Utropia." Or "Uhopia." Or. . .
Some very very fine stories already.
And Jack and Justin both, you got me laughin' in the aisle.

WOW, Gary! Thank you for all that work and help!!!

Jeremy, I love this theme, but can you give us an example of a story *without* a trope?
lol