Introduction

I started off writing about a dude with a really, really big ... spaceship. Yeah, I know. And then I had him rescue the helpless princess. Who was appropriately grateful. Sort of like a fairy tale, but with sex, and in space. And while it was amusing to write, I started thinking “what if the princess rescued herself?”. Then I started to write an intro bit in a different style, because the first scene kept playing through my head, and it turned into this. Which, of course, has no relationship to how I wrote the rest of the story. What’s worse, I was probably too clever for my own good, since I’m not clever enough to think of where this would go if I tried to tell a story just from news reports. And it would probably be boring. This chapter is mostly dialog, but the rest of it won’t be.

So, anyway, I present to you my first effort at posting anything on SOL, (or anywhere) and the first time since 6^th grade that I’ve ever let anyone read my fiction. It’s unedited other than by me and Microsoft, but after 4 or 5 passes, it’s time to stop tinkering and push it out of the nest to see if it flies. Or bombs. Or crawls back with a broken wing saying “Fix me...”

It’s the opening chapter of what may or may not be a re-write of my original story, which is, at least currently, a first-person space opera from a male POV that looks nothing like this chapter. I had fun writing this, and it took on a life of its own. It’s compelling to me, and interesting to me, but then again, I wrote it. So I’d appreciate comments, particularly constructive criticism. For example, I tried to give each character his/her own voice, but also keep in mind that 2 of the major characters in this chapter are just the newscaster personas of two real people. Did it work? Or is it too technical? Not technical enough? Too much “handwavium”? You get the idea.