Lo Family Payoff
pulp, science fiction, short story
Published on:
Apr. 7, 2008, 8:01pmWord Count:
2248Last Edited:
Apr. 7, 2008, 9:23pmWork Description
Nguyen Lo has stolen his father's ship and put his entire crew in danger for a hypothetical BetaFlux node which may contain the entirely conjectural coordinates to Earth, which no one really wants to find.
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Giang accepted, the grappler crew was no doubt disappointed that
they would not pinch us between huge arms, drill in and shoot us
all in a bloodbath, Nguyen Lo Junior was stony faced, crying,
knowing that he was, in all likelihood, dead. And it was all his
fault.“Payoff,” he whispered. “Payoff.” It was all he could say when his father finally washed his hands of blood and sent him away. Sent him to die in some grim hole.
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Dude,`this`story`is`king`man`the`setting`the`jargon`woahhhh.`
I think your basic idea is great, though rough. I'm not
sure I agree with <a href=
"../../../authors/ariadne-president/">Ariadne President</a>'s
suggestion about Word, but mainly because I've had problems with
its changes not making sense to me before 
Plot wise, I think you have a solid base, not only for this story, but for possible World Building. You might want to develop the backstory a little more. if you haven't already, maybe sketch out a timeline? Though it seems as though you have most of one already!
Pacing could be smoother. It might help to smooth the transition to your flashback a little.
I love your descriptions, again just a tad rough. You paint a nice picture.
Like Ariadne said, some punctuation and grammar, but no one is perfect. When I'm doing roughs, I usually resist the urge to edit, even spell-check, so that I can focus on putting "pen to paper", so to speak, so i think a lot of the stuff you have on that score can be forgiven in a rough.
Overall, I like it. You've got a solid start. Keep it up!
I found this work to be interesting and engaging and the world you created fascinating. It left me wanting more, of course, but that's always the sign of something good.
The plot was believable and easy to follow, although it seemed to end a bit bluntly/shortly, but filled with action. I really enjoyed the explanation of how bullets work. There was so much thought put into the ship and the world that part of me really wants this to be more fully developed, since the hard parts seem to be in place.
It is a little abrupt from 'people leaving' to 'traitor' and then trying to bargain with Alex. I'd like to know more of their past in some ways, although it's hard to do that without a big info dump. Perhaps a scene before the 'traitor' part where maybe Alex saves Lo's life in the 'war before.' That would make Alex killing him more poignant and perhaps show how much Lolost his way and perhaps how Alex was dehumanized in the process.
I really enjoyed the descriptions of the ship and the world building here. I really think that's the strength of this story. Loved it.
There didn't appear to be any inconsistencies in the point of view.
I did like the characters, but I would've liked a little bit more from them, something bigger to hold on to. I think a short scene or two in a flash back might help round them out.
It was, and I really enjoyed the authorial voice in this, too. It had attitude and was very engaging.
I didn't see anything serious.
This is a great story and really interesting. I'm looking forward to reading more stories by you!
Hello, Frank. Great work and plot for a science fiction short story! This was a great first work that you posted up on scribophile, but however, it needs some revision in parts of the short story and they must be changed immediately.
You should say Maybe it was women's intution, or even something more rather than leaving the words it and was out of the sentence, because readers will mistake this as a fragmented sentence, and a fragmented sentence in a story is not what you want to come by ever in your writing career or on your stay on scribophile.
The word "pos" could possibly be spelled wrong. Are you sure you mean "post" and not pos?
Right before the word Merc, you have a period. That should be a comma because when you are talking to someone for example when you say "Do it. Ed." you should have a comma before the name. So the sentence should look something like but it isn't one of ours, Merc, more than likely."
Are you sure that you were supposed to say good and well instead of full well? Here is all what I have for now. I believe that you will have this story to be a potentially great science fiction story if you follow all of my suggestions. Better yet, in order to find any other errors in this story, if there are any, copy and paste this story page by page onto Microsoft Word or Microsoft Processor, because both programs can spot out any potential errors, whether they are grammatical errors, spelling errors, or fragmented sentences. Please contact me on my scratchpad if you have questions on this critique or possibly even a thank you note. I look forward for this work in edited format!