Oolite Bulletins

Here you go folks. Apologies for the longer interval. Not much spare time recently.

Chapter Four

Cheers,

Drew.

Great stuff Drew, as usual looking forward to the next part

I agree, this series is shaping up to be a real twisted 'Tale of the Unexpected'.....

Captain Hesperus

lovely

A double twist. who is telling the truth? very interesting.

On another note, the constant lines of dialogue pulled from star wars and references to the hitch hikers guide totally cheapen the experience for me. It makes the story feel like a kid wrote it - be brave enough to stand on your own two feet and make your own one liners and own intoxicating drinks.

Glad you're enjoying it folks. It's quite a bit harder to write this time, as the plot isn't so linear...

Jack_H wrote:

On another note, the constant lines of dialogue pulled from star wars and references to the hitch hikers guide totally cheapen the experience for me. It makes the story feel like a kid wrote it - be brave enough to stand on your own two feet and make your own one liners and own intoxicating drinks.

Fair point. The reason being that Elite, and thus Oolite by imitation, had similar references 'in game' - 'Mostly Harmless' etc - and the stories continued in a similar vein. 'Status Quo' was full of 8-bit computer references too. They are 'Elite/Oolite' fanfic, as apposed to a vaguely serious attempt at sci-fi after all...

What do people think? References, in or out?

Cheers,

Drew.

I think it's like the Oo-puns discussion. A light smattering here and there is good, but to be honest, unless you are heavily into Star Wars then the quotes are quite obscure. I'll freely admit I didn't catch many references to non-Elite canon (apart from the H2G2 ones) and as Drew says, Elite (and to some extent, it's decendants) does borrow from many cult sci-fi books and films, so it's hardly beyond the pale.
Keep up the good (by that I mean fantastic) work, Drew!

Captain Hesperus

I say keep em in and ignore the criticism. Status Quo was excellent and so is Mutibilis, both very Oolite.

And anyway it's not like your after a Booker prize or want to analyse and discuss style and content ad infinitum.

My only comment about Mutibilis is that the chapters are too far apart timewise, so an old dodderer like me has to go back to previous chapters to pic up the threads again, personally I would prefer to read the whole thing in one go! so that is what I'll do.

Keep up the good work.

I'll go with CH on this, I'd say to use them without abusing or you'll end up creating too much familiarity.
Maybe once per chapter or even less should be enough, but when they do appear they should put a smile of cumplicity on the reader's lips (as with the ZX Spectrum or the gold and lemmon).

This is of course, my opinion and nthing else.

you should cater to your audience and if the ppl reading love it, keep donig it. it just makes me cringe, not smile. maybe thats just me? perhaps im too analytical.

Oh dear, I failed to spot *any* references in this chapter!
Just re-read (or maybe read for first time - I'm not sure if I read the novella 20+ years ago!) the Dark Wheel; enjoyed it.
I'm enjoying this chapter; I like the way I can imagine playing the missions myself!
Just one typo spotted: there's a "lead" should be a "led" I think. Hope you can use a Find to spot it.
Keep up the writing
*cat

Good stuff, Drew. Here are a few corrections/thoughts:

He frowned, it looked like a mis-jump, the co-ordinates were for interstellar space...

Lots of "comma splice" errors throughout this chapter.

“He was not in his cell when he was retrieved."

"...when they went to retrieve him"?

"Discrete" should be "discreet" in both instances, and "enmass" should be "en masse".

"Together you must bring stop the Chief before he locates Raxxla."

There's another one of these elsewhere (see below).


Possible consistency issues:

“The Dark Wheel is sworn to protect a number of things... And one of those things is the location of 'Raxxla'.”

“Yes, or the Dark Wheel is pursuing Raxxla for their own interests."

Why would they be pursuing it if they already know its location?

“Somehow they know that someone with access to Galcop security has recovered the file, so they are eliminating anyone who has knowledge of it."

Why would the Dark Wheel allow GalCop to have a file on Raxxla, but not look at it? I don't get it, particularly as Iacobus says:

"The Dark Wheel briefed a number of Galcop officials on limited aspects of our knowledge of Raxxla. They had access to a Galcop file."

I suspect the issue is not so much that the file has been accessed, but that someone has started trying to use the information within it.

"I believe he is going to attempt to locate Raxxla, and attempt use [sic] whatever power it contains to regain the esteem and control that he lost over the Manhattan project debacle.”

"I need to confirm who is setting us up before we end up in a war with the Dark Wheel."

The pres seems clear in his mind that the ex-chief guy is going after Raxxla (and the Dark Wheel are therefore retaliating), then suddenly introduces the idea that someone is setting them up...

Also, I agree with Jack_H about preferring original dialogue. (Which is why I hate that scene in Sliding Doors where the writer demonstrates how "hilarious" John Hannah's character by having him quote from Monty Python. Ugh.)

Thanks for the typos and grammar checking, will sort...
EDIT : New copy uploaded. (not addressed the comma splices yet - I'll do that in a final draft at stories end)

As for the other points...

Why would they be pursuing it if they already know its location?

The Dark Wheel does indeed guard the location, but do they know the location themselves? Perhaps better to say 'key to the location of' - but that strikes me as an unlikely piece of dialogue. Also, in light of recent events, could it be they have changed their mind(s)?

Why would the Dark Wheel allow GalCop to have a file on Raxxla, but not look at it? I don't get it...

Galcop isn't acting as one. Splits, factions and divisions are (and have been) appearing. Who knows which parts you can trust and which you can't? Is Galcop supposed to have a file about Raxxla? No. The president has only recently become aware of the file's existance...

I suspect the issue is not so much that the file has been accessed, but that someone has started trying to use the information within it.

Indeed. Perhaps keeping a file is ok, but loosing control of it...

The pres seems clear in his mind that the ex-chief guy is going after Raxxla (and the Dark Wheel are therefore retaliating), then suddenly introduces the idea that someone is setting them up...

Yes, mistake. Should be 'confirming the chiefs involvement'. Looks like I duplicated that in that paragraph. Will fix!

Cheers,

Drew.

Also, I agree with Jack_H about preferring original dialogue. (Which is why I hate that scene in Sliding Doors where the writer demonstrates how "hilarious" John Hannah's character by having him quote from Monty Python. Ugh.)

I have to confess I disagree with that sentiment. I mean, how often do you find yourself quoting some film/TV Show/song whatever because it's easier to dredge that from your memory than come up with something witty yourself. It happens all the time, so characters in fiction quoting other things not only is entirely normal and acceptable it actually makes THEIR world move believable by quoting the same things we would quote.

Or something, I kinda got lost there.

He he. Just goes to show that 'you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can never please all of the people all of the time' !

I must admit I tend to quote quite of a lot of comedy stuff (blackadder, red dwarf, h2g2, etc) in real life (sometimes I'm even amusing so I've been told ), so there is point to made that fictional characters might do the same thing. But I agree it can easily look forced and unnatural.

I guess in my story it's specifically for the amusement/annoyance of readers, as it's pretty unlikely people in 3148 would be able to quote from sci-fi references from over a thousand years in the past!

Cheers,

Drew.