Daniel Johnson wrote:Each vote above was tabulated within each rank. When tabulating votes for first place, only those cast for first place were counted. The same for second and third places.
That's a... unique scoring method. I feel I should point out that it's remarkably easy to craft a set of votes such that every single voter agrees story A is better than story B, yet B is placed and A is not.
So thank you for posting the vote counts as well.
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As to specific stories:
Kate: Your story touched on ancient themes - adultery and death - in a futuristic scenario. But it wasn't just an old story with new words; there was something fundamentally
different about Mars, something that affected humanity in a deep and primal way, that (together with the disaster on Earth) forcing interplanetary travel to continue no matter whether or not the economics could otherwise support it. But there was one thing that bothered me about the world you drew, and that was this - in such a futuristic society, surely the news media would be at
least as good at getting news out to people as they are today? And, under the circumstances, the first baby born on Mars - that would be
big news. Sure, I can see how someone might not believe that this guy in front of them is the guy who was on the news as the father of the first Martian baby - but to not have that story known and discussed all over the ship seems more than a little odd.
Nate: Brilliant story, excellently executed. The fussy old lady, the young bride, the broken heart - all stood out well in this short piece. Very well done.
Hope: Your 'hero forge' people are, to put it bluntly, idiots. Yes, they put people through incredible emotional trauma, and yes this can lead to people who have a lot more drive to interact with the world one way or another (or people who withdraw completely into themselves), and that can make them a power in the world, but nowhere in there can I see the bit where the victim becomes a power
for good in the world. After all, every villain has his tragic backstory, and they're simply mass-producing tragic backstories. For all that, though, the story itself was good - it's just the characters who were deeply flawed (which is not a bad thing in and of itself).
Jim: ...that wife must have really gone
all out with that disguise if her husband of ten years couldn't recognise her. Well described, perfectly competant writing, but nothing that really jumped out at me as particularly memorable. (Going down the list of names, yours was the first one I had to go back and re-read the story because I couldn't remember it from the title alone).
Eddie: A good story in many technical ways. First-person stories about brutal murderers in the act tend to leave me rather disquieted, though.
Robin: The second one I had to go back and read again before commenting on. An excellent start, a good middle, but there's something missing from the end, and that something is Frank's reaction to the situation. All that we see of Frank after that point are at the edges of what Tom does; but Frank's reaction is an important part of that final scene.
Kandi: Ah, the fiercely independent daughter who finds out in the end that her father had a really good point after all. And, um... that's pretty much it. There's no unexpected twist, no sudden swerve in the ending.
Bingemeister: That general was clearly trouble, and I can see why dozens of witnesses insisted that the jeep drove itself. I imagine a fair number of them were only disappointed that they hadn't been in the jeep at the time... but that section with Hoo and Watt just seemed disconnected from everything else. And with so many calls on his time, the General just turns and slips out the back door?
Jean-Paul: Ouch. A nasty situation. A really, really nasty situation. (To be fair, he doesn't actually
know that his was the code that triggered the devastation - it could just as easily be that his was the code that triggered the retaliation. Not that that's really any better...)
Sergio: Oh, dear. A tyrant who refuses to listen to even the voices who want to help him,getting himself deeper and deeper into trouble all the time... an excellent plot, and for the most part very well executed.
Fisher: You've clearly defined and delineated the abilities of your villains - a powerful worldwide conspiracy secretly controlling most of the human race and getting to work on the fraction they don't have control of yet. But where are your heroes, your protagonists? There's some hint of one person typing up the story at great personal risk, but even he seems to have given up hope of doing more than merely telling the story...