ChrisBFL

I'm new to the writer's forum but I wanted to post the first few pages of my book. I wrote it while recovering from being hit by a car and it has had a couple of at least positive responses (as well as a few rejections) form some agents. It's also out on submission to a couple of sci-fi publishing houses. Anyway, any commnets would be appreciated.

Chapter 1: The Hive: 10,000 BC

The Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy stretched like a brightly glowing band across the sky. The great ice sheets of the past forty thousand years had finally receded. The hunting bands of humans rested about their fires, full and satisfied from a great feast of meat from the afternoon’s kill, their tensions and fears of a difficult winter were now receding. They were confident in the knowledge that the successful hunt would feed their group and families through the long cold and dark months ahead. They would survive. A hunter, near exhaustion from the physical effort of killing the great tusked beasts lay back peacefully on a cured skin of an antelope and gazed upon the night sky before he descended into sleep. His closing eyes looked upon the luminous band of light, like a bridge across the heavens. In that boundary between wakefulness and dreams, he thought of it as a great sky path to be traveled upon, closed his eyes and was enveloped by sleep.
Two thousand light-years away in that same glowing band of light, the Orion arm, an orange dwarf star, half the size of the sun, shone its ruddy light on the second planet of a system of seven worlds. The night side of this second child of the small sun was alive with light in a pattern of necklaces and fine webs of luminosity. This world was companioned by two moons, both equally aglow with activity on their dark hemispheres. The space between the seven worlds of the small orange sun was an intense scene of activity with the moving lights of painfully brilliant tiny suns, the fusion exhausts of space craft plying the blackness between the planets. This was the system of the Hive. They had evolved, developed and spread out to exploit all the resources of their solar system.
It was late in the season. Mating had concluded and the eggs were being tended to. The ritual killing of the "different" was only twelve rotations away, Millions of the “wrong” and of the unfit would be torn to pieces in the strong mandibles of the “correct”. The bodies of the “wrong” would serve as a food source for the growing larva of the new generation. This is how it had been since the earliest ancestors of the Hive, had been nearly mindless crawling things, scraping their armored carapaces across the dry landscape of the Hive home world. The Hive had expanded. The Hive had conquered and exploited their system of worlds until there was no longer room for their exploding numbers and their systems’ resources were near exhaustion. Yet an imperative deep in their genetics drove them with the unquenchable need to expand. The facetted lenses of the Thinker and Engineer casts had scanned the stars. The new ships had been built. The Hive in a great swarm was ready to move out among the stars, to conquer and exploit the worlds of other suns. If those worlds they came upon were inhabited, it was no concern to the hive, they would exterminate all other life forms for the Hive must dominate at all costs to survive and expand.

Russia: Tunguska, Siberia, 1908:

The Hive probe had traveled for well over a hundred years across the eternal blackness of interstellar space. The main bus of the probe containing its nuclear fusion engine and the great dish antenna separated from the much smaller planetary probe to take up an orbit between the two great gas giants. The planetary probe fell inward to the warm heart of the yellow sun’s system of worlds. Planet three, a water world had already been detected. Not only this, but as the probe crossed the comet belt, intelligent but primitive modulated radio signals had been sensed. This information was already on the way back to a Hive outpost world.
The probe swept across in a descending orbit about the blue and white sphere and sent images, temperature and atmospheric data back to the main body of the robot ship to be collected and sent to the Hive. It was an inhabited planet which meant a food source to support the next generation of Hive conquers. The probe had completed its task and in its last orbit around the target world, fell toward the great northern land mass, devoid of inhabitants. If a target world held intelligent beings, the probe had been programmed to destroy itself without any trace or evidence to serve as a warning that the Hive would be coming. Ten kilometers over the great swampy forest of Northern Siberia, a tiny laser igniter fired an intense beam of energy through a precisely drilled channel. It was directed through a series of optical surfaces then reflected off a perfectly spherical core of polonium. The beam was focused on a tritium isotope pellet in the center of the core. Packed within the compartment and surrounding the polonium core was more tritium encased in beryllium. The beam superheated and compressed the tritium heart of the core and the atomic nuclei began a runway fusion reaction. In an instant a new sun filled the sky over Tunguska as the force of a fifteen megaton nuclear explosion devastated the forest below, erasing the visit of the probe without a trace. Because the self-destruct device lacked a plutonium trigger it produced no measurable radiation. On June 30th 1908, at 7:15 in the morning local time, the Earth had been found. The Hive would be coming.

United States of America, San Gabriel Mountains, California: October 2018

Colin Hewette stretched out on his poly and down filled sleeping bag, and relaxed his tired muscles near the inviting yellow glow of his campfire. It was a very long day of hiking in the mountains, a well deserved three day weekend for this hunter. He was a hunter of life, in charge of two NASA programs to search out living organisms on other worlds. His baby, the one he had nursed through birth and development had already accomplished the feat of depositing a Lander-Rover on Jupiter's icy moon Europa. His baby, the combined Jupiter-Saturn probe would continue on to deposit second rover on the surface of Titan, Saturn's giant exotic moon. The Jupiter probe was a prelude to a follow up mission: a robot submersible, to explore the great ocean beneath Europa's ice sheets. For Titan however, this would be the real deal. A rover designed to explore the surface of this frozen but Earth-like world for two years with a power supply from its tiny nuclear reactor. This was Hewette's life work and a great satisfaction filled him, secure in the knowledge that NASA would succeed as an agency and he would succeed in proving that life beyond the Earth did in fact exist. As sleep overcame him, he fixed his gaze upon the glowing river of light cutting a swath across the black sky, the Orion arm of the Milky Way. As his eyes closed, he thought of this band of stars as a road to one day be traveled, from sun to sun, finding new worlds and life forms. As Hewette drifted off in dreams, he could hardly imagine that nearly a billion miles out in space, his "baby" would make a discovery to change the course of human existence and bring our species face to face with our worst nightmares.

WriterJohnB

As a SciFi reader from way back, I'm immediately wondering about Orion being an "arm" of the galaxy. Orion is a constellation, only visible from our solar system, an abstracton invented by man. The suns that comprise this constellation are nowhere near each other, we're only looking at the ones that line up (in our vision).

Other than that, it sounds like a good book, although earth-invasion books have been around since "War of the Worlds," there's always room for more. The writing is good. Good luck with selling it.

JohnB

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Non Serviam

If you look down on the Milky Way from above, it forms a whirl with a galactic core surrounded by a series of spiral arms. In conventional cosmology, the four main branches are called the "Perseus Arm", "Cygnus Arm", "Scutum Arm" and "Saggitarius Arm".

Between the Saggitarius Arm and the Perseus Arm is a smaller, minor arm called the "Orion Arm". The Sun and most naked-eye stars are situated in the Orion Arm.

It's quite true that they're very distant from one another on a conventional sci-fi scale, but on a whole-galaxy scale they're relatively close together.

In other words, this author hasn't invented the term "Orion Arm"--he's taken it directly from modern cosmology and used it appropriately.

Aside from this, I agree with everything JohnB has to say (as I usually do).

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WriterJohnB

Ahh, thank you NonServiam, I can't keep up with all the changes in astronomy that have gone on since I was a kid. I'm always pleased to be proven wrong, (well, almost always) because I can eliminate a false assumption, belief, or fact that I was unaware of.

JohnB

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Danny77

Your first three sentences all start with 'the'. Reword two of them.
Thats a long read for one sentence. I'd make it into two.
Put a comma after 'He closed his eyes'.
I deleted the quote, so I may be wrong, but didnt you just describe it as 'glowing band of light' a few sentences ago? Try to change it up.
I think you see what Im getting at. Change your opening words up. Make them more active. Show the people what they are doing, dont just tell them=)
You know what Im going to say=)



Here I lost interest and will stop my critique. However, this is not bad writing at all, but could use some...reshaping. First and foremost, the first few paragraphs of a book are the most important. Therefore, you must captivate your audience. Sentence after sentence of description gets old, especially with no action, hook, intrigue, mystery, or emotion to back it up. If it were me, I'd completely redo the first few paragraphs (and perhaps the entire chapter?) Start off somewhere where there is something that will catch the readers attention. Im not saying delete this at all, but save it for later. Throw it in as a backstory, where its meaning is like 'ah, that makes sense' for the reader.

Again, don't get down from my critique. In all honesty, this is better than the majority of the works I see on here. Good luck!

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ChrisBFL

Hi, thatnks, good points! I took your advice and made a minor "tweek" on the opening. as in:
The Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy stretched like a brightly glowing band across the sky. The great ice sheets of the past forty thousand years had finally receded. Bands of human hunters rested about their fires, full and satisfied from a great feast of meat from the afternoon’s kill, their tensions and fears of a difficult winter were now receding.

This lost one of the "The" 's and seems to pick it up a pace.

You seem to be pretty astute on this and I do not fell the slightest bit upset about getting good advice on this project. After tall the object here is to get it published and not to stand on my "creative ego". If you would, let me know what your opinion is of this "action sequence about mid-point in the book:

Karen Gleason turned to Demidov. “Major, can you hit that thing’s antenna without damaging the probe? It’s like trying to shoot the apple off a circus performer’s head from here.”
Demidov adjusted the targeting array to bring a series of three concentric circles to bear on the huge dish antenna while Captain Gleason carefully pivoted the Prometheus to bring the particle beam cannon into position. Without using the ship’s target acquisition radar, a dead giveaway that a second ship was approaching the artifact, Major Demidov relied on just the visual information available on his screen. The concentric circles on his monitor lit up in green when the internal targeting system indicated a lock between the muzzle of the particle beam cannon and the alien’s antenna. The major looking as if he were a hunter taking aim at a wild beast pulled the firing mechanism. Instantly the one hundred million volts stored in the banks of the charged capacitors gave up their energy with an audible “crack,” like someone breaking a well seasoned wooden board. At the same instant, fifty kilometers away, the alien’s huge dish antenna simply vanished in white hot flare, leaving only a melted stalk projecting from the probe to mark where the antenna had been.
Karen Gleason was about to congratulate the Major when she suddenly blurted out, “Oh Shit! Quickly! Recharge the weapon”.
Both the Major and the Captain watched as the alien slowly came about and trained its two remaining weapons on the Prometheus. “I guess we got its attention.”
Even with the reactor up to full power, there wouldn’t be enough time to apply thrust and pull clear of the high specific impulse of the alien missile. Demidov watched the seconds counting backward from forty five to zero that would indicate the capacitors were fully charged and he could fire the cannon once again. The Major switched on the radar targeting system, concentrating on the alien and held his finger just above the trigger as Karen Gleason called out the seconds until he could fire. If he pulled the trigger too soon, nothing would happen. The cannon would only fire once the threshold voltage had been attained.
In the background was Gleason’s voice: “”Thirty eight, thirty seven, thirty six…”
Sweat was beading up on Demidov’s forehead; “The alien has now completed its turn. The missiles are aligned upon us!”
“Twenty four, twenty three, twenty two.”
“Missile has detached from alien”
“Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen,”
“Missile ignition!
The alien probe with its self correcting decision making programming had realized that it had been attacked and could clearly image the object that had fired upon it from the discharge of the Prometheus’s weapon. Its programming told it to locate and destroy the target. This was another large spacecraft like the one it had just vaporized, unlike the small probe that it had destroyed months earlier with a projectile weapon, the size of this intruder would require expending a second nuclear weapon. Once the target was locked, the alien automatically fired the second nuclear tipped missile. It streaked away to cover the thirty some miles distance that separated the Prometheus from the probe, closing the gap at a fearful rate.
“Seven, six, five, four, thee, two, one…fire!”
Once again the capacitors discharged and the deadly particle beam leapt from the blunt nose of the cannon. Less then half a mile and only a fraction of a second from impact, the beam of charged sub atomic particles slammed into the alien missile, disintegrating it before its circuits could close and detonate the nuclear warhead.
“We aren’t out of the woods yet!” It was Gabriella Espinoza’s voice, in an adrenalin charged shout.
The alien sentry’s on board artificial intelligence momentarily was puzzled by the incoming data. The transmission from the second missile showed that it ceased to exist, yet the large antagonist was still where it had been, undamaged. Its circuits sorted this data through a series of probability templates and then made the decision to fire the third and final missile.
Karen Gleason stared down at her control console and fired thrusters to turn the ship’s nose away from the alien. “Everyone strap in! We’re getting the Hell out of here now!” Her hand slammed the throttles open that poured liquid hydrogen fuel into the preheat chamber and then into the reactor core. Instantly millions of pounds of thrust fought against the ship’s mass and they began to accelerate. Behind them, Demidov’s radar indicated a second launch. To his dismay his own computer told him that even with the ship’s acceleration, the final missile would strike before the particle beam cannon had fully recharged. This left only one option and the Major took it, flipping the arming switch on for the ship’s Aegis close in defense system. The radar on the turret of the twin thirty millimeter Gating guns locked onto the rapidly approaching nuclear missile. The Prometheus was accelerating away from the missile, not fast enough to out run it but fast enough to give the Aegis defense system time to get a positive lock on the target. At five hundred yards the twin Gatling’s came to life, spewing out hundreds of rounds of thirty millimeter explosive tipped shells in a matter of seconds. The shells closed the distance in a near instant, ripping into the alien missile and exploding its fuel supply, sending its deadly cargo, the nuclear warhead spinning off harmlessly into deep space.

Danny77

I'm going to do some of my own changes to this...

Stretching like a band,(I STARTED OFF WITH A MORE ATTENTION GRABBING SENTENCE) the Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy glowed in the night sky.(AND GOT RID OF SOME UNNECESSARY WORD BAGGAGE) Great ice sheets(DELETED 'THE', AND WHAT HAVE WE LOST? NOTHING) of ages past(AGES PAST PAINTS A BETTER PICTURE IN A PERSON'S MIND, 40,000 YEARS IS UNECESSARY DETAIL. READERS DONT RELATE TO 40,000 YEARS, BUT THEY CAN TO 'AGES PAST') had finally receded. Bands of hunters(ISN'T HUMAN ALREADY UNDERSTOOD? i COULD BE WRONG, HOWEVER...) rested near their fires, satisfied(FULL IS SATISFIED, IN A WAY. NEVER SAY THE SAME THING TWICE. AVOID REDUNDANCY. FIND THE PERFECT WORDS FOR EVERY SENTENCE. LESS CLUTTER, MORE CLARITY = BETTER PICTURE = SUCCESSFUL WRITING) from the great feast that('MEAT' IS TOO MUCH AND RUINS THE FLOW. PLUS, ITS OBVIOUS THAT ITS ALREADY MEAT) their afternoon's kill yielded.


*Wipes brow* Thing is, the sentences still lack coherence. There's no real transition from one to the next, just kinda three seperate thoughts of description that 'kind of' fit together.

Maybe a paragraph or two...

Stop here. First thing you need to remember is that the best writing is short, concise, and without baggage. Im not saying delete delete delete, but get rid of extras that only clutter up the good stuff. Here, for instance, we do not need to know that she 'turned to Demidov'. TMI, plus 'turning' is a dull and unexciting action. Again, Im not saying to never do it, but not here, in this situation. Just start off with the quote, or have Karen do something instead of turning to someone else. Demidov will obviously be introduced in his response.

unless this is not the beginning of a chapter? And somewhere in the middle of a chapter?...
Again, avoid excess. 'from here' is unecessary. Delete it.
That got long and confusing. Lets trim some fat...

Demidov adjusted the targeting array, BRINGING (another point, try to ALWAYS use the best verbs as possible, and avoid ones like bring, put, set, etc. Ill let you do the thinking for that one) a series of three circles to bear. Carefully, (placing the word here with a comma adds needed emphasis to what he's doing, painting a better picture, eh) Captain Gleason pivoted the Promethius to BRING (there it is again! Again, try to think of a better verb) the cannon (Im guessing they already know its a 'perticle beam' cannon, and Im just going to reduce extra wordage. Plus it sounds better without it) into position.



Well, you must understand that quality, in depth critiques(something VERY rare around here) take time, time that I just dont have, so I'll have to apologize and stop here. I would seriously recommend a book on writing for you. 'getting the words right' by theodore Rees Cheney. GREAT book! Taught me so many things, and would do wonders for your work! If you take writing seriously, than do the same for this book.

With that said, good luck and keep at it!

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duston

I apologise if I sound impertinent considering that this is my first post here and you are apparently a "prolific" writer, but I disagree with some of the changes and critiques you've made.


Firstly the objections you had with the introduction, specifically the initial three sentences. I see no real problem in allowing them all to start with the word "the" because when I first read through it I presumed it was a stylistic choice.

"The Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy stretched like a brightly glowing band across the sky. The great ice sheets of the past forty thousand years had finally receded. The hunting bands of humans rested about their fires,"

If you look at the three images presented they actually form a rather interesting progression, taking a grand and encompassing image, then scaling down to individual actions of humans. We have cosmology become geology become sociology. Although perhaps it would be better presented as a whole sentence, such as
"The Orion arm of the Milky Way Galaxy stretched like a brightly glowing band across the sky, the great ice sheets of the past forty thousand years had finally receded, and the hunting bands of humans rested about their fires..."

It has a lot more cohesion when you consider this scoping selection of imagery, and in comparison your substitute makes it seem even less cohesive.
Although if you are to run with the idea of the progression of imagery, the position of the ice sheets should be delineated with a measure of space not time. The Orion arm is placed against the Milky way, and the humans against their fires, so it sounds less cohesive to place the ice sheets in "forty thousand years."


"A hunter, near exhaustion from the physical effort of killing the great tusked beasts lay back peacefully on a cured skin of an antelope and gazed upon the night sky before he descended into sleep."

I didn't think there was anything wrong with this sentence's length. Admittedly it isn't properly structured, there should be a comma after "beasts", but it didn't seem too long when I was reading it.


The repetition is acceptable here as there is a comparison being drawn between the hunter's perspective of the glowing band, and the star within it. It allows a greater juxtaposition for comparing the Hive and Earth, as both fall under the same light, yet contain vastly different inhabitants.
(On another note concerning this, you complained that he referenced the hunters as human even though you considered that to be obvious, but bear in mind this is science fiction and there is a good chance they could not be human. By clarifying this it ensures we understand the comparison between the humans and the hive.)

I do agree though that the introduction is slightly tedious considering it is just backstory, although that's not to say that the introduction of a novel is the most important part. Perhaps commercially, but a novel's worth is in its entirety.