wilkes

I'm a big sci-fi enthuisist and I LOVE it! I want your first copy -I think somebody already claimed it but I'll take second, third, etc...
I'm like Nutboy. I think you have real talent! I was spellbound waiting to see what happened next. Your use of descriptives are phemonominal!! Start preparing your speech for all the awards...Good Luck!

I would suggest that you just put a post on the regular CV that says, "anyone interested, please go to book club and read excerpt from my book.

I still have not gotten a chance to read it. I look forward to it.

Toetagger, I don't know where you are in your writing career, but if you're still working on this next summer, you might want to see about signing up for one of the writer's workshops at Dragon Con. An amatuer novelist buddy of mine said they had great speakers last week...writers, editors, and publishers, extremely informative. He returned home intensely inspired. Best of luck to you!

Toe, like I said, I don't think that you will get very many comments in the Book Review section. All total, including myself, there have been 4 different 'responders', not quite enough to give you both critique and praise. Granted these 4 responder's have been more in line with what you were asking for than what you might expect and WILL get from a community voice thread.

Anyway, keep up the progress on your book. I look forward to readin more.

Toe, you hve intrigued me with your post. I find the writing, spell binding, leaving me wanting more. The use of adjectives to describe the various sense's and and locale's is very interesting.

I will say that your writing will probably not reach the Harlequin Romance crowd , but I find it very refreshing.

I think that you might possibly be able to convince Jason to let this post go to the community voice page for more exposure. I know that the cretins on that page , at least most of them, can not appreciate GOOD literature, but you could get more feed back there. Just a thought.

As several others have stated...I want a copy also...authographed of course...but not personalized. That way when you win the Nobel, my copy will be worth more than those who wanted you to say..."To my devoted friend, etc., etc.

further, yes... there is considerable attention directed toward the moral/legal/political correctness of genetic manipulation of the general masses without their consent nor knowledge.

The sections I've put forth, below, and others not yet posted, are all from the same book. Several different things are going on at once... and all tie in down the road.

To answer your ?s CLT'eer, in the book, and much as in real life, many technologies come to fruition thru war. By exploiting some techniques in DNA manipulation, the rogue military researchers develop a series of virii that incorporate themselves into human DNA and remain dormant until called upon. (much like a retrovirus such as HIV). Using common vectors, enemy combatants are infected, unknowingly. As these invading forces initiate their march across our borders a signal is transmitted and the infected drop like flies. (care to know more on that, gotta come back when I post it!)

Companies begin using similarly derived techniques to 'tag' their consumers to track buying habits. If Susie Q eats at Nitro Burger, she gets label A, but if she also eats Wang Fu's frozen tofu, which is produced by a larger conglomerate which manages BOTH companies, she's getting label A and label B, delivered in the food she eats. Marketers merely run scans thru television ads which then react with the labels and are sensed thru upgraded radio and cell towers. They can track Susie Q and anyone else who ingests their products. This ultimately allows their marketers to follow trends in consumption, and allows the company to pump money into ad campaigns in regions where levels of consumption dip too far below projected or intended forecast models.

That works fine and dandy for about 8 yrs before folks start having adverse health reactions, and reproductive disorders. It comes out in the news as to what happened when an MD researching the mysterious death of a patient revels some alarming adnormalities in their genetic make up. The FDA steps in, and starts testing foods, and realizes the GRAND magnitude of this labeling system, and mass panic and hysteria ensues.

News of this exploit catches the attention of several terrorist sects who take food samples, and modify them into weapons which further distresses the masses around the globe. I'll leave it there for further posts.

Sergey's untimely death is an approach to describe a different philosophy on the termination myth... where do we go when we die? In this book, when his soul is released from his physical form, his soul slows and separates. The earth continues on its orbital trajectory around the sun, but Sergey's soul debrides from the clutches of earth's gravity. As the earth speeds away, his perspective is that he's lofting to the heavans... but its more like being left on the side of a trail after being dropped off an apple cart... the earth just slips away from him. He's in the Van Allen belt, but is about to be propelled deep into space by the solar winds. I'll touch on his celestial journey some. But, Sergey will return later in the book as he chances upon a later manned space craft launched centuries later from Earth

more to come...

Thanks for your input!

Both are very visual.

I like Sergey's the best though. Reminds me of a dream I had - the transcension aspect.

Then off on another tangent. Got me to thinking of a futurist, John Smart.
___

Wikipedia - Smart is the principle advocate of the concept of “MEST compression,” the idea that the most (ostensibly) complex of the universe’s extant systems (galaxies, stars, habitable planets, living systems, and now technological systems) use progressively less matter, energy, space, and time (“MEST”) to create the next level of complexity in their evolutionary development.[2]. A similar perspective is found in Buckminster Fuller’s writings on etherealization.

In what he calls the ’developmental singularity hypothesis’[3], Smart proposes that MEST compression, as a driver of accelerating change, must lead cosmic intelligence to a future of highly-miniaturized, accelerated, and local “transcension” to extra-universal domains, rather than to space-faring expansion within our existing universe.

Good storytelling. I like your use of words. In my opinion, you do not use complicated words to get your point across, which I mean that as a high compliment. In my opinion, the over usage of complicated words tends to make me believe the writer is trying to show off his intellectual skills, which to me always seems arrogant, and takes away from the story.

You paint an interesting picture with your words, and I hope to see you keep pursuing this project. I find your writings so far to be very impressive, and you have talent. There's no doubt about that.

I felt like I was in the blue beast with him...thanks for sharing tagger.

Here's another segment should anyone care to read it and provide any further feedback:

* * * * *

The hypnotic tic-toc emitted from relay switch in the ‘86 Ford Escort’s left turn signal supplied Brian Scokey counter rhythm to his finger wrapping on the steering wheel while he waited for the traffic light to change. Chewing on his lower lip, all the while his head rocking back and forth in sync with the drumming mêlée imposed on the column. The single over head cam, 1.6-liter inline four-banger revved dis-rhythmically to the gas pedal inputs of the zoning teen pop star wannabe. Swaying under torque and shuddering from the internal beating, the rusted out cobalt blue Escort endured.

His eyes closed, arms flailing, wrapping back and forth on the dusty maroon dash and steering column, Brian imagined himself onstage in a grand concert hall performing a jaw dropping drum solo amid thousands of cheering fans. His hands worked their way outward he flanged from the steering column to the dangling bug eyed alien air freshener lynched from the now askew rear view mirror dubbing as a cymbal crash. As he drew his hand back from the cymbal, his over grown nails clanked across the headliner-less ceiling. Beginning an overhead ramble with both hands, feet stomping on the floorboard his vision was cut short by the loud blare of a car horn behind him. “Come on, Buddy, move that piece of junk!” a voice etched out from beyond.

thanks. As I near completion, I'll drop you a line.

you better hook me up with a copy. that's an interesting and original idea, and I wish you well.

This is an excerpt of a book Im writing. Deals with genetic manipulation as means of warfare and terrorism, and a struggle to reconstitute the human race to its premanipulated state in efforts to preserve our species.

I appreciate the feedback!

I think your words paint quite a graphic picture. I think it is well written, and I like how you do not go overboard on the use of words.
I say you have talent.

Do you plan to finish this as a short story, or a novel?

I think you are off to a great start, and hope you continue this.

Hey, everyone. Just thought I might drop a small bit of writing I've been doing lately here to get some feedback what ya'll think. I'll post more if anyone cares to read it.


Sergey’s hands trembled, almost convulsively, failing him in his attempts to remove the jagged shrapnel protruding from the stinging abdominal wounds received just moments earlier. His ears rang so loudly from the bomb’s blast that he could not hear the screech from the disco tech’s fire alarm system just over his shoulder. Barely able to breathe, Sergey looked about and realized his plight as his eyes picked up, thru distorted blurry vision, images of the dead and fragmented comrades he had danced amongst only moments ago.

Only inches from his head the glimmer of a gold watchband about the wrist of someone near him caught his eye. Sergey reached out to grasp hands but then realized what he drew toward him was a severed arm partially covered in a torn and smoldering light blue cotton sleeve. Horrified, he instinctively released his grip with a gasp, recoiling his arm to his bloodied chest and turned his head away. To his right he could make out the ghostly charred face of a woman whose expression of surprise was forever frozen in time as a splinter-edged steel table leg had passed thru her skull just behind her left ear and out the forehead.

Through the haze and hanging blue-gray smoke, a hint of daylight was now streaking into the windowless room by way of the now collapsed ceiling. Silhouettes of unseated faux stucco ceiling tiles dangling from their support rigging above provided rigidity to the otherwise surreal and incompletely defined environment. The thick smoke and dust were increasingly suffocating as they filled the room. Lying partially exposed under a heap of refuse from the explosion, Sergey could not free himself from his snare and choked on his bloody saliva as he remained otherwise motionless and he slipped into an excruciatingly painful state of semi-consciousness and despair.

Slowly divided from reality, Sergey could his slain body pinned on the floor, below, as he evaporated away. A now splintered cherry colored wood bar table had come to rest atop his lower torso and a main support beam from the ceiling structure had collapsed and came to rest diagonally across the stout table. Tossed about in the thermal currents emitted from the fires present in the room, his presence and visual perspective were tumbling backward and counterclockwise. A warm calm settled over him as his pains subsided and Sergey fully realized this was his time and he withdrew from his earthly form.

Without a moment’s contemplation, it was evident to Sergey that he was no longer living and had passed to another realm. But just where was he… had his life long religious devotion won him a seat in heaven? Continuing skyward in ascent, the thermals emitted from the structure fires below had decreased effect and the tumbling visual perspective stabilized enough to allow Sergey to view the scene as it unfolded below. He could just make out the lights of the approaching ambulances and police cars on the streets below when he entered the wispy vapors of a ***ulus cloud.

Still not hearing anything from his physical surroundings, there was a shrill static sound that surrounded him from every angle that became louder and appeared to become closer with each passing moment. The intense monotone then centralized above and below him in a polar fashion. Suddenly, a series of chromatic tones began emerging thru the polarized white noise sound waves along various angles in every direction.

Several of these tones became noticeably more prominent thru the admixed ambient yet dissonant tones and eventually, one tone stood out greatly beyond any other. Sergey could feel an electrical presence in the direction of this sound and it was almost as if a static charge caused his presence to be drawn to this field. Upon their occlusion, Sergey became immediately aware of all experiences just previously obtained by this other field. Alexandra Poplanya had also, moments ago, been merrily dancing away in the disco before the bomb had detonated. No true thoughts could be sensed nor relayed by Sergey but in his chance encounter with this other life force, he knew he was not alone in his journey.