A lot of things will become clear in later chapters – his legs are working fine because of nanotechnology, the woman is a synthetic human and so a little mechanical and 7of9 in her personality at first, the Smartcloth will be partially explained a little later (essentially it is genetically engineered biological material and thus is almost alive), the ‘when’ question is ambiguous on purpose because a lot more time has passed than was meant to between his leaving and getting back. In chapter 2 his memory returns, but he finds out over 100 years has passed rather than the 40 he expected.
As for future chapters – I probably won’t be posting them on Urbis until they have been polished via a writing workshop a few of us have started up. This one was just posted for the opportunity. Glad you liked it though and if you’re desperate to read more, I can invite you to join the Yahoo group where we are posting our chapters. Cheers for the review which will help me when it’s time to second edit.
Sci Fi & Fantasy / Some Other Eden - Chapter 1 (Analysis)
7th November 2008
LJK Literary Management
FAO Mr Laghi
Dear Mr Laghi,
Have you ever wondered what makes you the person you are? Is it your life experiences and memories? Is it the relationships you form with those around you? Is it your biological self - your DNA, your cells? How about your mind? Your ‘soul’?
Philosophers have pondered the nature of personal identity for centuries without coming to a conclusion about what makes a person the same person today as they were in the past, or will be in the future. Cells die and regenerate, memories change and disappear, personalities evolve, friends come and go, relations die, and as for the soul… well, who knows?
My novel concerns Karpathian, an astrobiologist who has been on a mission to another solar system for over 40 years. He awakes to find himself in a strange place, with people he doesn’t know, and others that seem very different to the people he remembers in his past. His body is altered almost beyond recognition and nothing remains of the life he once had. Earth is a very different world, a place of environmental catastrophe and plague, wherev a remnant of the human race hides within the walls of the city Haven, protected by the technology of the Company that runs it, awaiting the opportunity to escape aboard the Ark ship to start afresh, away from the mistakes of the past.
The first part of the book focuses on Karpathian’s desperate struggle to regain some sense of self and to find his place within this new world and a quest to uncover the truth behind the events that have wrecked havoc on the planet, a quest that will lead him to make a desperate escape in order to avoid losing the life he had only just reclaimed. The second part of the book has a very different flavour to it and concerns Karpathian’s exile and relationship with the woman who helped him to escape. They find themselves on Earth, but not the one they left behind. This Earth is idyllic, pristine, beautiful, a veritable garden of Eden. They meet another woman there who seems to be alone on the planet with no memory of how she got there. Together they piece together the mystery of who she is and how they all ended up in this mysterious place, and thus the second half of the book mirrors the first – a search for answers and personal identity. Is this really Earth, or is it some other Eden?
The novel is around 100,000 words. The target market is adults with a love of high-concept sci-fi.
My experience of publishing so far is limited to the realm of student magazines and newspapers, although I have been writing for my own pleasure since I was 15 and have been a member of Urbis for nearly two years. Some Other Eden is my first novel.
I hope you will consider my novel and I look forward to hearing from you. Below is the first chapter where Karpathian is coming around after decades in cold sleep.
Yours sincerely,
Rebecca Davis
mrsbravis@yahoo.co.uk
SOME OTHER EDEN - CHAPTER 1
Karpathian’s first thought upon waking was that he was dead.
This curious assumption was not due to a vision of a tunnel of light, nor was his life flashing before his eyes, instead it resulted from finding himself utterly devoid of any kind of sensory input. He was engulfed by nothingness. He could neither feel what surrounded him, nor any sense of his body – no muffled thump of a heartbeat, no itches, no aches, and no sense of his skin brushing against something solid. As a result of this he was left with a rather disconcerting feeling that he was floating in some netherworld; a mind without a body; a soul on its way to nirvana.
Not willing to accept his death immediately when based on such little evidence, Karpathian attempted to take a deep breath, and then pondered for a moment if he had succeeded. It was so difficult to determine such simple things as breathing when he couldn’t feel his body. He tried again.
There it was… the subtle ache of a chest over-inflated with air, and now the light-headed feeling of a body running out of oxygen.
He did have a body then.
Indeed, having identified the fact that his body existed, he felt his corporeal self returning, as if his mind and soul was oozing back inside a physical body of flesh and blood. It was a most peculiar feeling.
Now that he was fairly certain he wasn’t dead, he decided to try and move and immediately discovered that knowing he had a body didn’t automatically give him any power to control its muscles. He was completely paralysed.
Could he see?
He opened his eyes, realising in the process that he was at least able to move his eyelids, which he took to be an encouraging sign, (although he also realised that if moving eyelids was the best this situation had to offer, then he was probably in a very bad situation indeed). Unfortunately the discovery following this initially encouraging development was that he couldn’t see anything.
From the limited evidence at his disposal he deduced that one of two things was true: either he was in a room where the lights were switched off and there was no secondary light source of any kind, or he was blind. These deductions did little to improve his mood.
He considered the facts as they currently stood: he was unable to move, he couldn’t see, he felt like he was lying down, and finally (and he had only just realised this) he couldn’t remember who he was.
Karpathian didn’t know much about himself at that point, but one thing he was fairly certain of was that panicking when one wasn’t able to move wasn’t going to be much use, so instead he forced his mind to remain calm.
He turned his attention to his total paralysis and, after a few moments of logical thought, realised that this could be explained in a variety of ways, but that most of them were of the horrifying medical variety, ranging from the fairly banal ‘bad fall leading to swelling of the spinal cord causing temporary paralysis’, through to ‘devastating accident leading to complete and permanent paralysis’. There was also the drug explanation; someone could have injected him with some kind of toxin that had temporarily incapacitated him for reasons no doubt nefarious and ghastly. Karpathian searched his memory for some clue as to his predicament, but it was as if someone had erected a very tall, thick wall between his conscious mind and the memories he felt sure were there. He certainly couldn’t remember an accident, but then he also couldn’t remember his own name, or his favourite colour, or even what music he liked.
Regarding the issue of his lying down, he realised that this was obviously a result of being unable to move - after all, it is difficult to be suffering complete paralysis and not be lying down – and this thought was swiftly followed by the concern that if danger were to rear its ugly head, and he should need to flee in a hurry, lying down was not the best position from which to make his escape. Of course being totally paralysed was not conducive to escaping quickly either and so Karpathian resolved not to think about such things anymore. After all, there was nothing to be done unless he was able to move in some way.
It was at this point that he decided to check if this situation had improved in any way by attempting to move his fingers.
How did one go about making fingers move anyway? Everything suddenly seemed so difficult. He summoned all his powers of concentration and focused on the muscles, tendons and ligaments, willing them to move. After several minutes of intense concentration he gave up.
He turned his attention to the complete lack of sound, desperately seeking a basic body function that was under his control. Was he deaf, or was he in a place where there simply wasn’t any noise? He decided to find out by saying something. After a moment’s thought, he settled on the word “Hello?” as it seemed suitably inoffensive. He considered the point that calling out even so harmless a word as ‘hello’ could attract unwanted attention if he was lying paralysed in a hostile situation, but by now he was, frankly, bored and needed answers.
“Huuuuuurrrrrrrrrr!”
Karpathian was quite taken aback by the muffled sound he heard emerging from his paralysed lips and throat, partly because he had half expected not to be able to hear anything at all, but mainly because of his inability to articulate even this simple word. It did, however, leave him with the encouraging sign of his being able to hear. Karpathian mentally put a tick next to one of the items on his list of absent senses and felt quite pleased with himself for a few moments.
After this brief interlude of wellbeing, Karpathian’s thoughts turned back to his lack of sight. He was thrilled to find he wasn’t deaf, but was he blind? He blinked a few times without any perceivable difference. Of course there was still the other theory for his lack of sight – that of his being incarcerated in a room either with no lights and no windows or, if there were windows, utter darkness of the kind not found in most rooms.
A windowless prison perhaps?
All at once he was beginning to regret his hasty call. In fact, the more he thought about the idea, the more he became convinced that he was indeed in a lightless prison, and had very likely been given some kind of sedative or paralytic drug to keep him calm.
And was that…?
Yes…
Now that he had some feeling back in his body he could clearly feel a restraining device stretched over him. Unable to move his hands or feet to assess the restraint, he was basing the idea more on the fact that he felt pressure over his entire body than on the presence of any actual apparatus wrapped around parts of his body. Instead, there was an even weight pressing down on his body - from mid-chest to toe - and he felt somehow that, were he able to move at all this… whatever it was would stop him from doing so.
He felt his calm logical resolve begin to disintegrate as his immobile, vulnerable state continued. The darkness became thick and oppressive as feelings of claustrophobia began to take over. His adrenalin fuelled brain began to conjure all manner of horrors and place them around his inert body, lurking in the darkness, coming closer, reaching out to him. He imagined something touching his hand, and felt a fresh surge of adrenalin surge through him, followed by a violent twitch which ran through his entire body as he strived to move away from the threat he felt sure was near.
Karpathian felt the feelings of panic subside. He had moved. He concentrated again and, with his heart hammering in his chest, he tried to move his fingers again. After trying so hard earlier with no success, he now seemed able to move them without really thinking – slowly at first, but then more easily as his joints and muscles lost their stiffness. After a few seconds of finger wiggling he felt movement returning to his wrists. He tried moving them too. He rotated his hands a few times and felt life returning to his arm, then his shoulder, then his upper body before moving on down through his legs to his toes. Not quite believing how quickly movement had returned following such a protracted period of total paralysis, he lay still for a few moments savouring the feeling of tingling warmth spreading over his body. It felt as if he were slipping into a warm bath.
Then there came the screaming torture of pins and needles in almost every muscle in his body. For a few moments Karpathian’s body was rigid, contorted and twitching with the pain, his eyes screwed shut and his finger and toes clenching and unclenching, but after a few moments he realised that moving was just making it worse and he forced his body into stillness.
As the agony receded, Karpathian opened his eyes and noted with relief that he was no longer blind. There were only small glimmers at first, but soon there was a red glow of an image resolving in front of him, like the gradual development of a Polaroid photograph. He tried blinking. The blurred pattern of reds and oranges swirled and settled into more distinct shapes. They became brighter too, less red and orange, more yellow and white…
And then all white…
And then suddenly it was a blinding light.
Karpathian’s eyelids snapped shut as red hot pain lanced into his eyeballs. Turning his head to one side to try and shield his eyes from the light that penetrated his eyelids, he wriggled his shoulders and moved his body from side to side whilst gradually working his arms out from underneath the restraint lying across his chest. After few such movements his arms were free. He placed his palms over his eyes and felt his eye-ache retreat. Karpathian was somewhat surprised how easy it had been to free himself of his restraint, and with relief he felt the prison theory weakening somewhat.
Where was he then?
With eyes still shut tight against the light, he lowered his hands and pushed the restraint down further, then levered himself into a sitting position. Opening his eyes a fraction he squinted at his surroundings. Through a blur of lashes and tears he could see that he was in an intensely bright white room. Light seemed to emanate evenly from the walls, floor and ceiling and his eyes began to ache again from the brightness of it.
He groaned. His voice still sounded strange and constricted. He coughed, felt something shift in his throat and emitted a few loud ‘ahems’ to clear it. He tried to open his eyes again and was rewarded with another stab of pain.
“Too bright,” he groaned, and surprised himself, partly at how clearly he could speak given his earlier difficulty, but mainly because he felt certain the lights in the room seemed to dim a fraction in response to his words. He opened his eyes a little more – it did seem a little less bright. “Still too bright?” he tried. The lights dimmed a little more.
Interesting.
A prison with a voice controlled lighting system didn’t seem too likely, and Karpathian felt his spirits lift a little more.
He opened his eyes fully now, but his vision was blurred. He blinked a few times to try and focus, then looked down at the restraint and saw that it was in fact a white sheet, which was still pulled tightly across his legs. He took a corner of the sheet between thumb and forefinger and rubbed it. It was very smooth, and slippery, like fine silk or satin.
Definitely not a prison.
He let the material go and kicked his legs to loosen the sheet before pushing the material down further. At this point he realised he was naked, felt his face flush, and pulled the sheet back up again. He glanced around the room for possible witnesses, but saw only three glossy white walls and a wall of opaque white glass with a door set into it.
Where was he?
A white bed, in a white room, with no furniture, or decoration of any kind, and he was naked. A hospital maybe, but if so, where were the machines, the monitors, drips, and medical staff?
He decided to attempt to get up and investigate the confines of the room a little more closely. Were there any clothes he could put on? He scanned the room - none were immediately obvious. Throwing a suspicious glance at the glass wall he pushed the sheet further down, extricated his legs, swung them round, and then stood up cautiously, anticipating the imminent collapse onto the floor considering his recent total paralysis. Nothing of the sort happened - his legs felt fine. In fact, they felt good.
Intrigued by this, Karpathian tested them further by jogging on the spot. He had no idea how long he had been lying in bed paralysed, but he felt sure that this recovery seemed a little quick. At the very least he expected some kind of residual stiffness or, if he had been bedridden for a while, some atrophy of his muscles. Instead he felt like he could run a marathon. He peered down at his legs and saw healthy, well-developed muscles in peak physical condition.
Not knowing who he was his age was also a mystery to him, and so he had no idea what his legs were supposed to look like, but despite this lack of knowledge about his identity and age, he felt surprised at their appearance. He had expected them to look… older.
It was at that moment that he saw his reflection in the glass wall. If his legs had been a surprise then the sight of his whole body reflected in the translucent glass wall took his breath away. All thoughts of nakedness forgotten, Karpathian walked closer to the glass and gazed at himself. He ran a hand over a smooth hairless well-defined torso complete with six-pack and bulging pectoral muscles, flexed each tricep in turn, then turned round, looked over his shoulder, and clenched his taut buttocks a few times before turning back to examine his face. A thick mop of floppy blonde hair covered his forehead. He pushed it back and studied his face – he was handsome. His eyes slipped down to the chiselled jaw with a vague shadow of stubble. He rubbed it with one hand and stood there for a few moments gazing at himself with his mouth open, then stepped back from the wall and struck a few poses.
The person in the reflection seemed familiar, but it didn’t feel like him. He felt older and more grown up than this young man posing in the glass. Although he couldn’t recall any memories of a time before waking up in this room, he felt the weight of life experience somewhere within him, a sense of personal history and events amounting to more than the 25 years the man in the mirror appeared to have lived through.
He examined this thought for a moment. Could this be the gradual return of his memory? A feeling of vague familiarity which over time turns into a clearer sense of self and personal identity? If so, why did he feel older than he appeared to be? Surely the opposite should be true. If he had been paralysed and unconscious in some kind of coma, surely he should wake up feeling younger than he looked, not older?
After several minutes of silent thought, Karpathian suddenly remembered his original reason for getting out of bed – clothes. Reaching to the bed he tugged at the sheet, but it seemed to be attached to the underside of the bed. Crouching down he peered under the bed and saw that the sheet seemed to form a solid loop of fabric around the underside of the bed. He also saw a small white cupboard on the other side of the bed, which must have escaped his initial survey of the room.
The ‘cupboard’ in fact turned out to be a completely plain and apparently solid cube which seemed to emerge from the floor. Suspecting some kind of hidden door, he tried a series of pushes and taps and, when that didn’t work, obscenities, all directed at its smooth glassy white surfaces, but no door appeared.
A beep emanating from the doorway sent Karpathian scuttling back to the bed where he hastily thrust his legs back underneath the sheet, lay down, and pulled it up to his chest, his heart pounding. He tracked a vague amorphous shadow along the glass wall as it made its way towards the door.
The door slid silently to one side and a woman wearing a tightly tailored white suit marched through and then stopped by the side of the bed, observing him silently for a moment. Karpathian stared back at her. She was young – mid-twenties maybe – with white blonde hair pulled back into a tight bun. Her luminous turquoise eyes with their dark lashes and luminous pale skin had no need of make up, and looking into her eyes Karpathian felt paralysed all over again, afraid that if he were to move this beautiful apparition would vanish. He couldn’t remember anything of his past life, but he knew for certain he had never seen any woman as perfect as the one that stood before him now.
Karpathian gazed at the woman. The tight white jacket followed the sharp curve of her waist and covered her from neck to wrist, with only a tiny triangle of skin at the neck revealed. Considering how little flesh was on show, he found the result to be intensely erotic, the cut of the jacket hinting at the delightful body that lay beneath it. The skirt was in contrast to the jacket, finishing as it did just above the knee and revealing slender, shapely legs terminating in white high heels.
It was like someone had reached into Karpathian’s brain, found his hidden memories and thoughts, taken every fantasy woman and female characteristic he found attractive, and then created this woman just for him.
“You are awake,” she said eventually, breaking his thoughts.
“No, I’m still asleep,” he retorted, unable to prevent the sarcastic response that flew from his lips.
“It was not a question.”
“Then why ask it?”
The woman stared at him silently in what he could only suppose was confusion, although he wasn’t completely sure of this since her face remained impassive.
After a few seconds silence she obviously decided to ignore Karpathian’s question and instead turned, walked over to the cube and bent over. Karpathian raised himself onto one elbow and found his eyes inexorably drawn to the fabric of her skirt as it tightened against her buttocks and immediately felt his groin throb as blood began flowing into flaccid veins and muscle. He dragged his eyes away and looked instead to see what she intended to do with the cube. As her hand approached, a door which had been previously indistinguishable from the rest of the unit sprang open. She removed some neatly folded clothes from inside, straightened up and returned to the bedside. The door closed automatically behind her.
He eyed the cabinet and then the clothes with suspicion, until finally accepting them cautiously and putting them on the bed before him. He picked the top item up and inspected it. The shirt was a brilliant white, like everything else in the room, with a slight sheen to the fabric. It felt the same as the sheet on the bed: smooth, slippery and quite heavy, despite the apparent thinness of the material. As his fingers held the cool fabric, he could feel it warm until it so exactly matched his body temperature that he almost lost sense that he was holding anything at all. Then the material moved between his fingers; it seemed alive. Karpathian dropped the garment into his lap and examined his fingers, then looked up at the woman who was watching him with the appearance and attitude of a patient mother waiting for her child to complete a simple task.
“Are these for me?” he asked.
She nodded.
After another quick examination of his fingers, he unfolded the various items of clothing with his fingertips and then looked back at her. She was still watching him. It was quite disconcerting to be studied in this way with only the thin sheet covering his nakedness.
“Should I to put them on?” he asked.
The woman nodded towards cube. “I saw you go to the cabinet. I assumed you wanted to get dressed.”
Karpathian reddened. It she had seen him going to the cabinet, then she had seen him getting out of bed, jogging on the spot, posing at his reflection… Karpathian groaned inwardly. One way glass. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He glanced at her, looking for signs of amusement, but saw none. Her face was smooth and expressionless. Maybe she hadn’t seen him.
Or maybe she didn’t find naked men cavorting around amusing.
Or maybe she was a lesbian.
“Do you need help?” she asked, interrupting his thoughts again. She reached for the edge of the sheet.
He snatched it away. “No! I can do it!”
She withdrew her hand and stood before him with her hands clasped neatly in front, observing him silently, and this time he felt sure he could see a glimmer of amusement in her eyes.
He waited a few seconds for the woman to leave, but it soon became clear she expected him to put them on while she watched.
“Do you think I could have some privacy?”
“This room is under observation at all times,” she replied, “my leaving it would not increase your privacy.”
“Maybe not, but it would make me feel less uncomfortable.”
She raised one eyebrow and seemed about to respond, but instead pursed her lips, pivoted on one heel until her back faced him, and crossed her arms.
Karpathian swung his legs out from under the sheet again and hastily pulled on the garments, starting with a pair of white shorts, looking first at the woman to check she was not turning round and then to the ceiling and walls for signs of the observers that no doubt watched his every move, all the while using the sheet as best he could to keep himself covered.
Once he was dressed in white shorts and shirt, which he assumed were undergarments, the woman turned and walked up to him and reached towards the neck of the shirt. He shied away from her, but her hands took hold of the collar of his shirt firmly. He felt her cool fingers brush against his neck.
“These garments are ‘Smartcloth’. You activate them here…” she squeezed the collar of the shirt, then reached to the waistband of the shorts, “and here.”
At the touch of her fingers on the delicate flesh of his lower abdomen, he felt blood rush to his groin again. He flushed and pulled away from her.
“The material will configure itself to your body, monitor your vital signs and general health, regulate your body temperature, and can stimulate and maintain muscle definition.”
As she spoke Karpathian felt the material spreading over his body with a slow rippling movement until he was covered from neck to ankle and shoulder to wrist. It then tightened until it was moulded to the contours of his body and warmed to match his body temperature. Once the fabric stopped moving he ran his fingers over his torso – it was as if he was wearing nothing at all.
“This is amazing.” He turned his head to look back over his shoulder and ran his hands over the neck and waistband searching for the telltale signs of wiring and microchips. “How does it monitor vital signs though? I can’t see any wires.”
“There are no wires, it is Smartcloth…” She paused and pursed her lips as if stopping herself from saying more. “I don’t have time to explain its operational specifications to you.”
Karpathian note the slight stress she placed on the ‘you’ and felt vaguely insulted, but decided not to pursue it. Instead he eyed his undergarments, her suit and then the room. “You guys are fond of white aren’t you?”
She glanced around the room. “It is practical. Clean.”
“Well it won’t be after a few days.”
She tilted her head to one side enquiringly.
“You know – it’ll get dirty.”
“It is self cleaning.”
“Oh right,” he said. “Well I’m going to need some spare pairs.”
The woman sighed. “It is self cleaning,” she repeated. “It cleans itself, and you.”
Karpathian nodded as if to say “Oh, of course, how stupid of me,” whilst inwardly reeling. He had no idea who he was, where he was, or how old he was, but he was fairly sure that this was the first time he’d heard about a fabric that not only cleaned itself, but also the person wearing it.
“Your other garments?” she said, nodding at the remaining items on the bed. She observed him silently as he pulled on the remaining garments - more conventional grey trousers and shirt, and soft shoes resembling trainers - and then once he was dressed she cocked her head to one side. “Do you know where you are?”
He gave the question serious thought for a few seconds, hoping that the process of being asked the question by someone else might jog a memory. It didn’t.
“No.”
“Do you remember who you are?”
“No.”
“And do you remember when you are?”
“When?” It seemed a curious question to ask, but given his recent feelings concerning his age and self-image, it was probably a reasonable question, although the asking of it confused him even more.
Before he could give the question serious thought, a beep from the door drew both their attention. Karpathian tracked this second shadow as it walked towards the door and felt himself holding his breath in anticipation of who it might be. The door opened and a young man with short black hair and a goatee entered, saw Karpathian, then smiled, walked forward and wrapped him in a firm hug. After a few manly claps on the back, the man released Karpathian and held him by the shoulders and looked into his face.
“What about me? Do you remember me old friend?” the man asked.
A name swam out from the fog of shrouded memories and formed on his lips. “Adam?”
The man nodded, laughed and wrapped him in another embrace. Karpathian wondered idly where the name had come from. He hadn’t even really thought about it, it had just come to him. Maybe his memories would return now, much like his sight and ability to talk and move - one minute nothing, the next fully functional. Maybe in a few minutes time he would be laughing with this man, Adam, about how he strange it had been to not know who he was, and to look at his reflection and feel like a stranger.
Over one shoulder Karpathian saw the woman in the white suit standing with her hands clasped in front watching them calmly. Suddenly without a word to either of them she spun on one heel and marched out of the room.
Adam ignored her departure, released Karpathian from the crushing hug and then looked seriously into his eyes, the smile fading a little and his hands still clasping him firmly by the shoulders.
“We,” he said, “have got a LOT of catching up to do.”
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Reviews
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I’ll tackle the grammer and stuff first.
In the letter:
”- your DNA, your cells?” – Cells are made up of DNA, so putting the DNA part in just makes the cells part redundant in my opinion.
“Cells die… who knows?” – great sentence, grabs the reader’s attention I think.
In the story:
“Karpathian’s first… he was dead” – great opener because it grabs the reader attention again, waking is associated with living so replacing it with death makes an immediately impact.
“Engulfed by nothingness” – this is a tricky one. I’ve used something similar in the past and I’ve been told something along the lines of “if its nothingness then how can you be engulfed by it”? Its just an observation I’m making.
Remove the “of this” in “A result of this he was left” – you don’t need the “of this” because the reader already knows what you’re talking about.
“(although he also…situation indeed)” – this is an uncomfortable sentence to me but somehow it works with the brackets. It’s as if we’re inside his head, but not inside at the same time.
“Unfortunately the discovery… see anything” – there are too long words in this sentence in my opinion. The sentence drags on and its not to the point as quickly as is hoped.
“A beep… heart pounding” – I don’t know what exactly you were trying to create with this sentence, but if you were trying to create some kind of suspense, then it failed. Or maybe you were’t. If you were, then its because the sentence is far too long – suspense required short, snappy, to-the-point sentences. But I will say there’s no real emotional impact upon the reader of what’s happening.
The story was good. The only trouble is that these kinds of beginnings have already been done hundreds of times. If its originiality you were looking for, then it didn’t work. With that said, however, the style of writing, the pace of the story and the story’s themes and plot do enough to make the reader keep on reading.
- add/view comments (3)
First the query:
I would recommend changing the first two paragraphs. There’s no hook, only questions that have been studied and asked a million times before. How does your novel take a new perspective on these issues? That’s what the agent will want to know. What makes your perspective fresh. The first lines need to give the agent a reason to keep reading, your doesn’t.
“My novel concerns” You don’t need this. We know you’re talking about your novel.
“to find himself” Eliminate extra words. If he awakes in a strange place of course he’s going to find himself there.
“Earth is a very different world, a place of environmental catastrophe and plague, wherev where a …mistakes of the past.” A little hard to read being so long. I suggest you cut the sentence into two separate sentences.
“The first part of the book … the life he had only just reclaimed.” Try to avoid long winded sentences in a query. Suggestion. “…planet. The quest will lead him to make a desperate escape to avoid the life he had just reclaimed.
“of the book has a very different flavour to it and” delete, unneeded. Queries need to be short and to the point. It’s not recommended to go over one page. You use a lot of extra words that can be cut.
“The novel is around 100,000 words. The target market is adults with a love of high-concept sci-fi.” There’s always exceptions, but as a rule of thumb this information should be given sooner in the letter. The agent wants to know up front what type of novel it is and where it’s marketable.
The chapter:
Liked the over all idea and this is written pretty well. There are a lot of extra words that can be cut and a lot of repetition in the first few pages.
Great opening line. It would become much more powerful if you delete the second sentence. Right away, bring us in Karpathian’s head. Help us to feel the nothingness.
“As a result of this” Extra words, cut the fat. If you can delete it without changing the meaning of the sentence, delete it.
“Indeed, having identified the fact that his body existed, he felt” His body existed. He felt…
“immediately discovered that knowing he had a body didn’t automatically” Watch the over use of adverbs. If he tried to move and discovered something, it’s obvious that he discovered it immediately. Also automatically, adds nothing to the sentence.
“completely paralysed.” If you say he’s paralysed the reader will assume it’s complete, unless you state otherwise.
“initially encouraging” delete initially
“realized” watch the overuse of the same words.
There’s a lot of repetition, over explaining.
“The darkness became thick and oppressive” This part works really well. I thought the pages leading up to these dragged a little and the part was too long.
“of finger wiggling” wiggling,
“a few moments” moments,
“movements his” movement, his
“Instead he” instead, he
“which must have escaped” delete ‘must have.’ It’s already clear.
I liked the smartcloth.
“Karpathian note” noted
“both their” delete ‘both.’ It’s awkward and ‘their’ implies the beep got both their attention.
Great ending!
You’ve been very good at the detail on all of the senses that put me in the room with Karpathian. The only sense that did not stand out was his sense of smell. What did the room smell like. What was also missing was knowing about Karpathian. Why should I care that he’s locked up? Was he married, divorced, have children? Where was he employed? Some of those details were outlined in the query letter but didn’t appear in the first chapter.
i really liked the part where the main character tries to speak
just out of the blue where he is paralyzed and then next this indistinguishable
word comes out puts in a small sense of humor which is neat.
also the part where he feels restrained from something but in fact it just turned out to be a sheet.
the details of everything is so well put that the reader feels like they are looking through the persons eyes.
the first small conversation makes me laugh.
just like the character has no sense of where he may be to be exact yet he is sarcastic
i do not know if the humor was meant to be there or i just have a weird sense of humor.
well the story is amazingly written.
i do have to say i was not interested at first for the details where OK but i was just not easily trapped but by the time i got a third way i was entrapped and couldn’t and felt impatient for the seconds to count by.
i loved it
details where nicely placed to really draw someone in.
well done
I always prefer to start out with the positive. You’ve got a really good technique. The dry humor as Karpathian takes inventory of his senses and physical capabilities speaks to your ability as a writer.
That being said, it’s a pretty good rule of thumb (and I’m sure you’ve heard it before) that your book probably starts 10-15 pages after you started writing…and ends about 10 pages before you stop.
I think that’s the case here. Your pitch letter drew me in. I’m more of a fantasy than sci-fi person but I wanted to read it. Unfortunately I think the awakening portion is far too drawn out. A literary agent is going to accept something based on how well it can sell. As a person who reads the first chapter of any book before I buy it, I’m not sure I’d pick this up the way it is now.
I don’t think you should nix that part altogether but truncate it some. The part where he’s out of bed and bantering with the nurse is much more of an attention getter so you may want to consider making that come earlier. Also, some of the detail you have in the awakening seen is lacking as he’s talking to the nurse and later to Adam. I know it’s a lot of work but reworking and expanding the conversation portion would make it more interesting. Remember, you only have this short period of time to impress someone and they may only read part of the submission.
If you really don’t want to lose the awakening scene, consider picking a chapter that’s a little further into the book. The more action, the more interesting it’ll be.
Well written. Not much I can suggest to improve it, except maybe a bit of sentence restructuring to improve the flow, as some paragraphs were fairly long. Interesting concept with enough intrigue and substance to keep a reader reading! Good job.
I am not sure about the first paragraph of the letter. It seems too informal. You can address the editor or publisher formally and then give him or her a brief overview of your prose.
a quest to uncover the truth behind the events that have wrecked havoc on the planet. In so doing he uncovers the awful truth. You might say the awful reality. You use truth twice here.
all, it is difficult to be suffering complete. How about to suffer. to be suffering is a passive sentence.
I am concerned about his lack of sensory detail. He had to sense something because he realizes he is paralyzed. If one had no sensory thought,could they reason? And he does have reasoning skills. You might go over this and think about it.
Intrigued by this, Karpathian tested them further by jogging on the spot.
Could he jog after not being able to walk for who knows how long. I don’t know about this. You might think about how you want to present him, seeing that he couldn’t even move a finger at first.
Would she ask him if he were asleep if she saw him looking at he?
The reader will want to know what smart cloth is and how it works.
“And do you remember when you are? This is ambiguous. Explain?
I think you need the woman to show a little more surprise when she finds the man awake. You need to tell the reader what woke him and how long he has been asleep or comatose. I assume you plan to do this in the forthcoming chapter. You might shorten his awakening process. This is 18 pages.
I think this was very well written. I don’t know how i feel about the name Adam or the title. I want to reserve my comments on that until the next chapter to which i hope you will let me know about when it is written. Your writing style, for the most part, is very smooth. Your vocabulary large and you use it appropriately. Your transitions are smooth but i think you could give the characters a little more life. They seem a little plastic and almost stylistic. I am curious about this work and look forward to seeing what you do with it. Sandi
This was well written and edited. A pleasure to read.
Notes for improvement.
While you start off with a conflict, the foreign room, the foreign body, the amnesia, the pacing seems a bit off. By my count, the entire first chapter spans about 7 minutes of story-time. It also took about 7 minutes to read.
This isn’t necessarily a problem in itself. But i would consider moving it along. I found myself growing fatigued with the narrators dilemma. Consider moving the introduction of the doctor character earlier in the piece. Consider spacing out your descriptions, maybe saving some for other chapters. Get to the meat of it sooner. I feel this chapter could be condensed to a page or two. Give yourself more time with the conflict.
Cheers,
James
I went through and corrected words and punctuation that I felt got in the way of your narrative. Overall this was very good. I stayed interested and curious throughout, even though I knew the plot line. Really fine Sci Fi invention. To see the comments, just make sure you hit the View/Markups button on the top menu. To get rid of them, turn it off. I’ll send you this via PC
Your writing style is light and conversational (more on this in a moment), providing a high level of trust for the reader who is counting on you to develop this new world. Karpathain comes across as an intelligent, normal human being. The reader can easily bond with his viewpoint. I thought the building exposition was excellent – no flat spots or feeling like c’mon, get on with it. I’m a big fan of white rooms and ice cold cyber-blondes.
So you have built a credible reality, and revealed an advanced technology all through the simple Smart Cloth. I am reminded of the opening scenes in 2001. The flight attendant bringing the food set up the entire film.
Watch for repeating the same words too closely together – feels awkward when reading. Also, wacth your colon/semi-colon usage. Maybe review in a manual like Strunk or the Chicago Style book.
“without -ever really- coming”
“man where all the things” whose identifying factors, maybe? It’s awkward as it stands.
“When he awakes” just ‘He awakes’
“Earth, too, is” punctuation. Also, this sentence is too much. I don’t think t’s wrong, just too many thoughts, too many commas, too many parts.
Other than that, looks good, lady.
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