DeMarquis
(4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#2: Aug 22nd 2018 at 2:34:04 PM
I dont see anything that is too over the top to swallow, and sometimes its better to err on the side of being too obvious than too subtle. That said, its hard to tell without reading a sample chapter of your work. I would advise you to head over to the Constructive Criticism thread and link us to your story.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.
Total posts: 2

For the last several years I have been writing stories mainly set in a shared universe in which human beings are, other than human-constructed or AI-constructed AI, are widespread throughout the habitable regions of the Local Group of galaxies (but don't venture much beyond because of technological and resource limitations. There are no intelligent aliens and most planets where humans live are terraformed but there are a few "native" ecosystems, they are very primitive, with the implication that the spinal cord was a fluke of evolution on Earth that didn't happen on other worlds where most life even lacks a hard-shell carapace, being soft-bodied invertebrates, microbes, fungi or plants. And the terraformed planets have live based on Earth's ecology, though modified (and Earth is lost to myth, like Atlantis, they even call the 28th century + astronauts who originally left Earth "Ancients" and spend a lot of time trying to reconstruct their technological marvels). Most human beings in this far-future (roughly 40,000 years from the invention of faster-than-light travel, the least "hard" tech by far in the stories) never leave their planet or moon of birth and other with the possible exception of those in military service, but only a fraction of those people ever travel on an FTL-capable spacecraft through a wormhole to cross interstellar distances. They stick to their own solar systems and those that go on interstellar journeys are still limited in range by finite resources and technical constraints. So a lot of "local culture" develops, especially because the colonies usually lose spaceflight and other high-tech in the tumultuous settlement phase when they have to make do with functional but often primitive tech, and future generations might (or might not, as in many cases) be able to redevelop rockets and FTL drives, etc, when the new civilization reaches a point where it can support the necessary infrastructure. So I am dealing with isolated cultures that have to redevelop civilization, often from a pseudo-medieval (or sometimes even more primitive) level something like 99/100 times humans colonize a new planet. A few very early colonies managed to avoid the tech regression but most settings I am dealing with other than the nomadic Starfarer culture (people who are born, live, work and die in interstellar space), have to recover from the post-settlement regression.
Many of these stories have taken on a satirical character and focus on social criticism. I am interested in knowing if the criticism is too obvious, too subtle or just right, on a "meta" level.
So I am going to list some examples of everyday things and the ways they are different in this setting. Not an exhaustive list, just examples.
Religion-:at some point in what future people consider "Preancient T Imes" (anything prior to the invention of FTL), and continuing some time after the first couple centuries following the invention of FTL in "Ancient Times" when the first extrasolar colonies were founded, Earth was going through a number of highly destructive wars that left most communities with a distorted understanding of their ancestors' culture and time period. Some one or some group tried to reconstruct the past but they confused a lot of world religions with secular traditions like various fictional works, actual history, etc, and just like a lot of people today have a hard time realizing that the Revolutionary War and Civil War were almost a century apart and very different times, the future-humans have a hard time understanding when exactly Rome fell and they don't understand that NYC on 9/11/2001 wasn't a colony of Rome when the Twin Towers were hit. They think Captain Cook and Captain Kirk were the same person, a space explorer who was killed by hostile natives on Hawaii. And just like the question of "Why doesn't the Bible mention Native Americans or Indigenous Australians" has vexxed religious scholars, the question of why the "Sacred Text Files" of their "Holy Canon" mentions intelligent alien life but none could be found in the Local Group galaxies perplexes future-human religious scholars, who think of all manner of handwaves to explain how empty space is while not losing credibility. Of course, not every individual follows this tradition, and some cultures develop their own traditions that are not variations of "Canonism." Yes, the word "Canon" is a "take that" to science fiction fans who replicate the worst dogmatic behaviors of religious fundamentalists. They also have a tendency to ascribe a kind of quasi-secular "sainthood" to many historical (and occasionally fictional) figures... Saint Gene (who wrote the Book of Gene AKA "Star Trek"), Saint Lucas (George Lucas), Saint Darwin, Saint Hawking, Saint Lincoln, etc.
Language: it's stated and implied that the characters aren't speaking English, EVER, because NO ONE speaks English in the 427th century, and a translation convention is in place. Sometimes I use "pardon my klingon" or another language trope. But given it's a Translation Convention, I have fun with this. I am a Philadelphia native, so my loving mockery of the science fiction cliche that everyone speaks English on every planet is "Everyone speaks Philadelphian. Various dialects of Philadelphian."
Economics and Social Justice: I tend to skewer capitalism a lot, and I specifically do this by showing societies in which technology theoretically should have eliminated certain social institutions, except that it hasn't because those social institutions are linked with hierarchical power structures. So a society might develop full automation and have nanotech-operated 3-D printers, and everyone could in theory have a materially rich life, this happens on only a few planets, mostly ones where the people allow themselves to be governed by AI, because on most worlds with human-dominated governments the people in power benefit from having a desperate underclass they can manipulate. Human beings still operate space warships and civilian heavy equipment alongside drones because of military aristocracies and politically powerful trade unions. For a million well discussed reasons, no civilization that has interstellar travel practices chattel slavery, but there ARE indentured servants, caste systems, sexual discrimination, discrimination against AI sometimes, though in many places they legally defined as human and have civil rights, where humans also have them (otherwise they're otherwise they are oppressed pretty equally as much as humans, and the only things close to utopias are run by A Iare just as human or subhuman as others in the eyes of the local law)... and of course, capitalism, even though they have the technology to make other types of economies work better, people hang on to their traditions, their power, their things, and so most of these civilizations still have wage slaves because even with the potential for full automation the ruling elite still fear what they can't control and would rather keep the underclass in check than share with them the plenty. There are also some civilizations whose cultural values are militaristic and expansionist, who conquer other people simply because that's their way of life, and culture is also an economic force. But these civilizations are never portrayed as monolithic or entirely as heroic or villainous, even the Rigelians, who nobody likes (because they are arrogant braggarts with a big military that enjoys a strategic advantage over everyone else except their closest rivals, the Rosenleicht Cargo Dynasty, and they insist they invented democracy... basically, Americans, and as close to a "Proud Soldier Race" as any civilization in my shared universe, though they are meant as a deconstruction).
I am an anarchosocialist and I tend to write science fiction about anarchosocialist themes, but I'm afraid this critique (especially the last one) may be too subtle without directly stating it. I don't necessarily think this is the way the future will be; many of the setting details other than the technology (which I try to keep relatively hard despite having FTL in the setting) are more oriented toward the service of satire than traditional futurology. I also try to be balanced and explore the flaws of social structures that I find more appealing because of my own value system.