Onyx
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- Joined
- Apr 24, 2018
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This is either the beginning of the book or the chronological beginning of the story. The main character is 17, but will be much older for most of the story, so this is background more than establishing the character fully.
I am trying to not spell everything out - that's for the reader to figure out how this planet works as they read. So I'm trying to inject enough detail to pull the reader along without boring anyone. Is this interesting? How is the writing?
Any comments or questions are welcomed. Thanks.
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“Ma, I’m going to visit the Vikings.”
This was final notice; negotiations and preparations were behind him. Dinner table discussions had given way to extra hours of work and study to create time that was Anthony’s alone. Three weeks, banked with late nights at the family forge and a complete withdrawal from his social circle.
“Bike, gear, food, trinkets?”
“I’m packed.”
She kissed his forehead with weather-worn lips and pushed into the yard ahead of him. The clack of the door behind him brought his father’s head up out of the pea patch. His wide brim hat nodded a simple farewell.
The site of the Knarvik Catastrophe was twenty eight hours Northwest by bicycle. Their population stable, the Viking settlement had remained close to their object of veneration for well over a century. Economic rescue by Fair Oaks as unlikely as the Knarvik rebooting, they had remained conceptually stranded between old dreams and refugee status. So the Vikings gathered the abundant wild foodstuffs, built orderly Stone Age villages and held frequent symposiums, tests and classrooms in the fundamentals of system administration, data extraction and manufacturing control oversight. The true skill sets they had brought to Iopia were not going to wither from disuse.
“Viking” was pejorative, and Anthony reminded himself once again to screen it from his speech. The eleven thousand odd hunter/gatherers were a potent group of technocrats with no access to high technology, and absolutely no inclination toward warfare. Anthony’s colonials had slapped that name on the Scandinavian crash survivors as both satire and warning to keep clear of the shoeless blonds, lest they start mixing into the population. The administration at Fair Oaks only had a viable recovery plan for their own population, and the Norwegian expats were in no danger if neglected a bit longer.
Cresting the last of the hill line left by CO2 glaciers, Anthony could see a corner of the Knarvik jutting unnaturally from the landscape.
“Is this a police action?” The spearman was tall, near naked and only dirty below the shins. Several furry carcasses ran down his back. His smile spelled out the humor without any real warmth. He materialized out of the bush by magic.
“I’m Anthony Kall. I was invited to visit the Svengards? I’m not with Administration, or anything like that.”
“The sun is still up, bicycleman. Don’t let me delay you – you’re spooking the meat.” Anthony rolled on, feeling the spearman’s eye calculating several kinds of trajectories.
I am trying to not spell everything out - that's for the reader to figure out how this planet works as they read. So I'm trying to inject enough detail to pull the reader along without boring anyone. Is this interesting? How is the writing?
Any comments or questions are welcomed. Thanks.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
“Ma, I’m going to visit the Vikings.”
This was final notice; negotiations and preparations were behind him. Dinner table discussions had given way to extra hours of work and study to create time that was Anthony’s alone. Three weeks, banked with late nights at the family forge and a complete withdrawal from his social circle.
“Bike, gear, food, trinkets?”
“I’m packed.”
She kissed his forehead with weather-worn lips and pushed into the yard ahead of him. The clack of the door behind him brought his father’s head up out of the pea patch. His wide brim hat nodded a simple farewell.
The site of the Knarvik Catastrophe was twenty eight hours Northwest by bicycle. Their population stable, the Viking settlement had remained close to their object of veneration for well over a century. Economic rescue by Fair Oaks as unlikely as the Knarvik rebooting, they had remained conceptually stranded between old dreams and refugee status. So the Vikings gathered the abundant wild foodstuffs, built orderly Stone Age villages and held frequent symposiums, tests and classrooms in the fundamentals of system administration, data extraction and manufacturing control oversight. The true skill sets they had brought to Iopia were not going to wither from disuse.
“Viking” was pejorative, and Anthony reminded himself once again to screen it from his speech. The eleven thousand odd hunter/gatherers were a potent group of technocrats with no access to high technology, and absolutely no inclination toward warfare. Anthony’s colonials had slapped that name on the Scandinavian crash survivors as both satire and warning to keep clear of the shoeless blonds, lest they start mixing into the population. The administration at Fair Oaks only had a viable recovery plan for their own population, and the Norwegian expats were in no danger if neglected a bit longer.
Cresting the last of the hill line left by CO2 glaciers, Anthony could see a corner of the Knarvik jutting unnaturally from the landscape.
“Is this a police action?” The spearman was tall, near naked and only dirty below the shins. Several furry carcasses ran down his back. His smile spelled out the humor without any real warmth. He materialized out of the bush by magic.
“I’m Anthony Kall. I was invited to visit the Svengards? I’m not with Administration, or anything like that.”
“The sun is still up, bicycleman. Don’t let me delay you – you’re spooking the meat.” Anthony rolled on, feeling the spearman’s eye calculating several kinds of trajectories.