Oolite Bulletins

The third installment...

Mutabilis Chapter Three

Please PM me if you spot typos!

As ever,

Cheers,

Drew.

A great read - I finished reading Status Quo today in my (ahem) "lunch break" and read the first two chapters of your latest, so this is well timed.
Oh it's too addictive: playing a game, reading stories about it and then chatting about it...
I'm looking forward to more.
- *Cat
PS:Didn't notice any typos.

Another good chapter.

Here my typos:

p2: "Yosie, said." without comma.
And another "As apposed to" in the next sentence.
And I guess "Blast the closet Asp!" should be the "closest".
"laser coils,”All loaded.”" misses a space and therefore has a wrong quotationmark.
"Yosie snapped,”Load?”" ditto.

p3: "and then the second,”Ditto!”" the same again.

p5: "commlink onto wideband,”Mayday, Mayday!" same again.

p6: "Sanjay argued back, ”Look at the" wrong quotationmark, inspite of space being there.

p7: "curiously subdued, ”This is commander Weston" ditto.
"exhaled simultaneously, ”Thank frag.”" ditto.
"at the severed cable,”Uh, cap...”" like the first one.
"Yosie snapped,”Quick," ditto.
"Even with the damage they had sustained they would make
enough profit to get them onto a much firmer financial footing.
It had been too much of a near thing though. None of them had said
much on the inbound flight." There is much "much" here.

p13: "no longer has any meaning for me. “ Rebecca said heavily," another wrong quotationmark, and shouldn't it be a full stop in the end?

p14: "she replied annoyed, ”and you can stop playing games" again.

p3: "and then the second,”Ditto!”" the same again.

And it should be a full stop rather than a comma. And "ditto" must have a different meaning in the 32nd century! I'd suggest "check".

p6: "Sanjay argued back, ”Look at the" wrong quotationmark, inspite of space being there.

Also, the full stop and the comma should be swapped over: "No, it's a Cobra Courier," Sanjay argued back. "Look at the..." Plus, "Sanjay insisted" or "cried Sanjay" would probably be better than "Sanjay argued back". (There are lots of punctuation and phrasing issues throughout, but can't be arsed to go into them all!)

Also, page one: "That meant a ships with…"

And page seven: "…some of the ships appeared to be handing off the walls…"

I'm gonna stop now!

Cool as always.

LOL at the (v subtle) HHG reference on the vodka. Also liked the Darth reference!

"Impressive. Most Impressive!"

Read it whilst downing a couple of pan-galactic gargle-blastersers!

And "ditto" must have a different meaning in the 32nd century! I'd suggest "check".

'Ditto' was in there for a very good (8-bit) reason....

Cheers,

Drew.

If that's a reference, it's way too obscure for me! But in any case, ditto means "the same thing again", surely an odd response to the question "Load?", or indeed any question. (Incidentally, why not "Loaded?"?)

Roberto wrote:

If that's a reference, it's way too obscure for me! But in any case, ditto means "the same thing again", surely an odd response to the question "Load?", or indeed any question. (Incidentally, why not "Loaded?"?)

It was a (probably too obscure!) reference to the loading function on the ZX Spectrum "Load ditto ditto"...

Or press 'J' (load), followed by shift-P twice (")- it was always mentioned as Load-Ditto-Ditto.

I may rewrite a few sections of this chapter, as on re-reading it doesn't scan as well as I like. Will keep you updated! I'll laser all the typos too. Not sure what happened on the quotations marks. I suspect I might be having a bit of openoffice-MSWord conversion issues or something!

Thanks for all the help - I need a full time editor/proof reader...

Did anyone spot the LOTR quip?

Cheers,

Drew.

For less obscure reference:

A crimescene reconstruction...(part of a..)
"Back in the crewlounge, he poked in his SecureID-number on his lockerbox, the door smoothly swung open and a trumble peeked out. Being on Jazz at the time, crewman Jack had a nervous breakdown and collapsed. Incapacitated, the trumble began to feed. Half a week later, the rest of the crew returned from their lunarpatroll and found the inedible remains lying under a pile of fur. Station security was notified at 34:15::01:45"
Who can spot all references?

Well one maybe. (Jazz spirit - HHG).

actually unintentional...
...is that from the mighty boosh? or the HHG tothe Galaxy?



loading node eight point one...

Jazz Spirit is drunk by Ford Perfect, whislt talking to Zoniewoop, on the slightly delayed liner. The liner has been delayed for 20 Million Years whilst waiting for its complement of lemon-soaped paper napkins to be brought aboad. The passengers are kept in suspended animation until take off. Coffee Breakes are held every 20,000 years (Episode 5 of series 2 of the orginal BBC Radio Series). When Ford challenges the logic of this course, (pointing out that the civilastion has been destoyed over 200,000 years ago and the planet is a wreak) he is met with the auto-piolt's logic:-

"The statistical liklehood is that there will be other civilisilations. Other Civilizations will therefore arrise. There will one day be lemon-soaped paper napkins. Until then there will be a short delay. Return to your Seats!!!!" (auto-piolt of the liner)

My Dad was a big fan of this Radio Series as a kid (20+ years ago) and taped them for me as a 9/10 year old!

HHG (Douglas Admas - circu 1981)


Share and Enjoy!
(Moto of the Seris Cybaetic's Corperattion Complaints devision. - now covering the major land mass of over 5 inhabitated planets _ HHG )

"Whilst many hich-hikers have dismissed the Guide's entries to many planets as glib or widley inacccurate., in many cases the Guide's best advice can be found on the cover, where it states in those large and famouly friendly letters: DONT PANIC".

Nobody spotted the references to C64-code? POKE and PEEK
or SID (the soundchip contained in the C64.
LunarPatroll was a game for same machine.

I must admit in lowercase and buried in syntax (_error) , they might have been hard to spot.

Jazz just sounded like a drug cool cats would take while the captain was away.

---
Back to topic:
page 1 "to use the trader vernacular." not sure, should this be "the traders' vernacular" ? no, checked it. you used it correctly.
page 9 "some of the ships appeared to be handing off
the walls" => '...hanging off...'
p10 "It was a well equipped ship." => well-equipped
p10 "characteristic half visible flicker of light as the shields unfolded"
suggestion: '...flicker of diffracted light as the shields folded in upon...'
"least we can do is buy
her a gin. We’d be dead otherwise." LoL! yes, Han Solo style!
p11 "waif like" => waif-like
p11 "Sanjay and Cogie were simply starring," => staring
p12 "It was a peculiar drink," nothing wrong only suggesting 'concoction' or 'gut-rot'
p13 "killing for killings sake," killings looks wrong to me.
p13 "looking for an trace" => 'a trace' or 'any trace'
"That assassin had destroyed everything she counted as a valuable." suggestion: '...everything she had considdered of value to her.'
---
really beginning to like the style and the development of the storyline, right on!
The focus on the states of mind and human interaction reminds me a bit of 'the Gap' series by S.Donaldson, I like it alot. (those books take up in excess of a foot of shelfspace by the way)

Arexack_Heretic wrote:

p12 "It was a peculiar drink," nothing wrong only suggesting 'concoction' or 'gut-rot'
p13 "killing for killings sake," killings looks wrong to me.

"Peculiar concoction" sounds best to me...

"Killing for killing's sake" is the correct punctuation.

concoction suggests a mixture though, while gin is a distillate.