Life in the Year Two Thousand

September 2010

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Sep 14 - lutzr(42)

[Paul Hughes]

Life in the Year Two Thousand
by Russell Lutz

An eighteenth-century gentleman wakes up in the twenty-first century.


http://www.silverthought.com/lutz06.html

[lutzr]

I suggested to Paul when I submitted this, and now I'm suggesting to you, if there's any interest, to please use this story as a jumping off point for a discussion about rewriting.

I'm very, very bad at rewriting.  If I don't nail something in the first go -- with some careful editing, of course -- I generally give up on it.  "Life in Y2K" is a story that I love... but many editors did not agree.  It holds the honor of being my most rejected story.

So, what would make it work?  What should be yanked, or added to, or changed?  Or is the story simply a lost cause, a nifty idea (I really believe the idea is nifty) that just doesn't make for engaging fiction?

In short, tear it up.

[scott]

In short, tear it up.

You and I have been down this road once before.  Shall I tackled it again?

[SirLawrence]

The prose in this story was very well-written, and I could "imagine" myself as the main character (let's say a late 1700s Revolutionary/Patriot-type gent) writing in his journal.  So the characterization, to me, was on par...how one from that era would go about writing a letter or prose "within" a journal.  The language was streamlined in my opinion (to fit that era) nice, and the characterization good.

I interpreted a time-travel (by mind) slant, and I would've liked to have seen this described further or better fleshed out.  In case I am given a peer review on it, I'll use this interpretation with analysis of certain areas or parts, likes and dislikes explained; read it a second time.

Don't tear it up though.  Serious.  I liked this better than Olympic Cold Storage.

[Paul Hughes]

Scott--you should tackled it again.  I always enjoy a good running conflict involving old pieces and revision.

To me, this piece is an interesting set of alternate-history vignettes.  I'm a sucker for single events that substantially change history and spiral off new possibilities.  I kept asking myself what next while reading this: the steam-powered prosthetic, horseless carriage mass-transport, steam-augmented sailboats.  There are plenty of chuckling moments (horses still used outside the city, the childlike wonder at things we now consider quaint) and Russell handles the dialogue well, but the third act seems tacked-on.  I have a bad tendency to want shorts expanded into novels, and that's probably not what this piece requires, but it's a book I'd buy.

[lutzr]

Most of the comments I've gotten revolve around the story.  (i.e. There isn't one.)  I suppose I could give Josiah more of a quest to go on, to find the final words of his long, lost love.  But I think that would feel even more tacked on...

What I was going for was science fiction as written by an author in the year 1799.  Fiction from that period (at least that I'm familiar with) wasn't often action packed.  Perhaps I'm trapped by my own premise.

Scott, yes, remind me what you thought of the piece.

[vinniethevole]

Scott--you should tackled it again.  I always enjoy a good running conflict involving old pieces and revision.

Oooh my ears are burning, my ears are burning! cough cough... enemy... cough cough

[vinniethevole]

I thought this was a great short story, though Paul's comment about the final act being tacked on rings true.  The only time I personally get that feeling that Paul is talking about is when the story's content and format really take my liking.  You had me with the language here, but frankly there's only so much you can do with a time-travel storyline.  I can think of one, maybe two stories like this that I've come across where the content was intelligent and interesting enough to hold my attention on a scale larger than a short story.  "12 Monkeys" being the only one that comes immediately to mind.

What this story has going for it is buckets of characterization, linguistic charm, and your own signature plot-device creativity.  Some people can write narratives with endless thematic complexity and story arcs that are airtight, but have no ear for cleverness when it comes to characterization and plot-devices.  Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" is an example of this.  There is a lot of story happening in "Crime and Punishment", but it is cloaked heavily in mundane, predictable characters and boring settings.

Your story is just the opposite.  The setting and characters are as eye-popping Lutz as ever, but there's not much happening beyond discovery.  Honestly, though, this is a recurring problem with time-travel stories, which is why I almost universally ignore them.

[elenapedigo]

I really like the idea of writing something in the character of an 18th-c. narrative, which, yes, has lots of digressions and apparently useless descriptions.  I think overall you did a good job.  I especially liked the opening paragraph.  My biggest criticism of the language would be the occasional repetition of words in a sentence, for example:

"but as she was only six years old at the time, it became necessary for me to hold my childlike passion in restraint until a more appropriate time."

It seems to me that most 18th-century authors would a) try not to repeat words, and b) look for longer words.

On the other hand, that might make it an even tougher sell to editors!

BTW, I must TOTALLY disagree about C&P.  Dostoevsky was genius.

[lutzr]

My biggest criticism of the language would be the occasional repetition of words in a sentence...

A pet peeve of mine!  I hate it when I miss those.

[scott]

The main issue I have with this piece is its lack of conflict, and I think that is largely due to its length.  It is far too short to be a solid read.  Inside thirteen hundred words, you introduce a man and woman in love, a conflict involving a third party, her leaving her lover alone, and his supposed death.  Then you start the story.  You transition to a brand new world, which, while interesting in concept, is inadequately built.  You throw out an enormity of concepts, ranging from the geo-political to medical to technological, and you do so with a paragraph or two, or sometimes even a sentence.  And then the story ends, with no real climax, no real denouement.  Then again, there is no need for a denouement, for there is no viable conflict with the story.  The man discovering he’s in a different world is minor conflict, not enough to build a story around.  The only major conflict lies in the early part of the story, the conflict of the star-crossed lovers.  But once that ends and the new world begins, conflict is forgotten in favor of mere world-building, which, again, is far too short.  And with some of the concepts, I have a difficult time believing them.  A chain under the streets of Boston?  Pulling carriages along?  To any destination on the map?  I stumbled hard on this one in particular.

I know you have a ton of stuff on your plate, but my opinion is that this piece needs serious revisiting to add those aspects that make a story a story, rather than observational text.