Power By E. S. Strout

[TaoPhoenix]

Thread Opener.

[TaoPhoenix]

Cute little spin on the First Contact With Aliens theme. Far from being interstellar menaces, apparently they are only "The B Team" of aliens!

Thanks, Tao. Yeah, as well as being interstellar klutzes, they were the same with diplomacy. As protagonist Adrian Maas said, "Why didn't they just ask? We could have shared technology."

gino

[Lester Curtis]

I thought this whole story was in just too much of a hurry to get finished. Examples:

thirty three year-old slim, dark haired and hazel-eyed Susan Grant, M.D. said.

Thirty-four year old subatomic particle physicist Adrian Maas

The five-foot ten inch sandy-haired rail-thin researcher smiled

I think Gino's stories would benefit if he slowed them down some. Let the readers catch their breath.

Funny thing about those aliens; they just barely had their own language. They borrowed Greek to name their spacecraft. Who'd they swipe the FTL from? And how'd they manage to work it without help?

And someone's going to be in BIG trouble for stealing my credit-card number:

7146 3214 8804 9601

JUST KIDDING

Thanks for your incisive comments, Lester. I must have fallen asleep when they discussed multiple descriptives in the freshman writing course I took a thousand years ago.

gino

[TaoPhoenix]

I thought this whole story was in just too much of a hurry to get finished. Examples:
...
I think Gino's stories would benefit if he slowed them down some. Let the readers catch their breath.

I've been pondering story lengths on and off for a long time. Suppose certain writers are just best at certain lengths. A lot of that is implied by the deep overall pacing. So suppose Gino is in fact best at stories of X length. But then your comment reminds me of a boxer trying to skimp one more pound of water weight, which may actually weaken overall strength. So I haven't done a word count yet, but just suppose you take each of those examples and make three sentences out of each adjective.

I've been reading through this month's stories in order... and that being the case, it took me a little bit to get down to this one on the list.

But man, oh man was it worth the wait!!! I don't know that there's a hugely original premise or "set-up" for this piece, it's a "classic" treatment as the lead in describes, but...

What it lacks in that category it certainly makes up for in execution. I couldn't stop reading. The pace was great, the detail was just the right amount and the amount of peripheral information (right from the opening sequence about "star[s] in a binary system") was delivered at just the right time, and just the right amount to draw me in and nudge me along.

And the conclusion with the final lines about the antique Thunderbird and the return to the "power" theme of the title, wow! I wanted to go back and read it all over again.

There were some really good stories this month, but all in all, this one was my favorite.

It worked as a good overall read, while reaching for something more, invoking some nice bits of nostalgia. Great stuff!

Thanks for the kind comments, Jay. I try to keep my stories tight, in other words not leaving any significant gaps or lags.

gino