The Hundred Light-Year Diary - Greg Egan
Short Story
Number of words : 5500
Percent of complex words : 12.3
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 19.6
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 12.7
Flesch : 54.7
Flesch-Kincaid : 10.5
PEOPLE
James
A husband to be.
Alison
His wife to be.
Francis Chen
An astronomer who looked for time-reversed galaxies in space.
Hazzard and Capaldi and Wu
Astronomers who work on the hardware to communicate between future and past.
Pria
James and Alison's best man.
Lisa
A political staffer and mistress of James.
Henry Kissinger
A politician.
Maura
A politician.
PLACES
Kashmir
Disputed region between India and Pakistan where war breaks out in 2079.
ORGANISATIONS
Fulvio's
A restaurant on Martin Place.
St Vincent's
A hospital with a Casualty Department.
God Averts His Gaze
A cult with the political balance of power in 2077.
TECHNOLOGY
Hazzard Machines
Allows transmissions of messages from the future, 128 bytes per person per day.
ROMs
Digital information discs.
CONCEPTS
Shunting
Fictional theory that you can avoid something preordained communicated from the future.
PLOT
Astronomers discover that time reverses with the contraction of the universe. This allows the construction of machines that allow people's past and future selves to communicate - the amount of which is limited by bandwidth, and, of course, government desires on what people should atually know when it comes to wars. People of course cannot be made to communicate with their past selves, and a mistress of James desire to not do so, her pragmatism and political job and some conversations leads him to some terrifying realisations about what is going on.
3.5 out of 5
Number of words : 5500
Percent of complex words : 12.3
Average syllables per word : 1.6
Average words per sentence : 19.6
READABILITY INDICES
Fog : 12.7
Flesch : 54.7
Flesch-Kincaid : 10.5
PEOPLE
James
A husband to be.
Alison
His wife to be.
Francis Chen
An astronomer who looked for time-reversed galaxies in space.
Hazzard and Capaldi and Wu
Astronomers who work on the hardware to communicate between future and past.
Pria
James and Alison's best man.
Lisa
A political staffer and mistress of James.
Henry Kissinger
A politician.
Maura
A politician.
PLACES
Kashmir
Disputed region between India and Pakistan where war breaks out in 2079.
ORGANISATIONS
Fulvio's
A restaurant on Martin Place.
St Vincent's
A hospital with a Casualty Department.
God Averts His Gaze
A cult with the political balance of power in 2077.
TECHNOLOGY
Hazzard Machines
Allows transmissions of messages from the future, 128 bytes per person per day.
ROMs
Digital information discs.
CONCEPTS
Shunting
Fictional theory that you can avoid something preordained communicated from the future.
PLOT
Astronomers discover that time reverses with the contraction of the universe. This allows the construction of machines that allow people's past and future selves to communicate - the amount of which is limited by bandwidth, and, of course, government desires on what people should atually know when it comes to wars. People of course cannot be made to communicate with their past selves, and a mistress of James desire to not do so, her pragmatism and political job and some conversations leads him to some terrifying realisations about what is going on.
3.5 out of 5