"Buddies" (1st draft, 1st chapter)

[jordan179]

I began writing this military science fiction story, and I thought it might benefit from some informed commentary. For starters, I am not the world's greatest expert on military ettiquite -- in particular, while I know that one addresses a commissioned officer as either "sir" (if of lower rank) or by rank title plus name (if of higher rank), I am

Comments

[jordan179]

Hmm, I actually thought of John MacLean as being closer to the classic "self-educated" rather than the classic "hillbilly" stereotype. I have never lived in the Appalachians but I have lived in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, and country folk really do like guns and vehicles. (Also hard drinking, but that's not Johnny's particular vice). I think it's obvious even in the first chapter that he's smart, though not too arrogant about it. He's not sophisticated, but he's highly intelligent, not retarded.

The main scientist isn't "mad," just callous. I have read books by animal behavior scientists (which is of course one of his two fields) who go on and on about how great apes are clearly "just animals" even when reporting highly sophisticated, complex, and clearly-intentional behavior. Some of the things experimenters really do to them are quite hideous -- and these aren't even usually for military purposes.

Pam as an alien -- yes, in way, you're right about that. I don't know that she's a cliche alien, though -- there are only a few stories about augmented great apes, and none (as far as I know) about augmented bonobos (mostly because most people aren't even aware of the difference between a common chimpanzee and a bonobo. She's actually not being treated as an alien by our society, though -- she's being treated as chattel property. Or, in plain English, a slave.

You're spot-on about the dialect, though. I am going to some sources on that and will modify it in a later draft. Rural New Jersey is very different from Appalachian, which is a sort of Scots-Irish-Elizabethan survival dialect in many ways.

As for Johnny's family -- do you know how hideous the Asset Forfeiture laws are? For real? If they find a "criminal enterprise" on your premises, they can confiscate everything on those premises, even if you didn't participate in the enterprise, even if it was purely consensual, and even if you didn't know what was going on. You then have to prove that any particular thing, on an item-by-item basis, was purchased with legitimate income, and then you have to get a court order to that effect, and then half of the time the authorities still refuse to return the items in question, or return them with severe damage and no compensation for use. Johnny is saving not only his family's fortune, but his own, if he survives his hitch in the Army.

Also, remember that Johnny doesn't do any prison time (unless his family couldn't get a bail bond). Serving in the Army is not seen as a particularly terrible thing by most country folk: it's one of the expected and honorable career paths, often leading to either becoming full-time career military, or leaving at the end of a term with valuable skills which one then uses in a civilian career (in Johnny's case, it would have been becoming a normal mechanic of some kind, possibly a gunsmith, except for what's going to happen to him). It's certainly nowhere as bad as doing hard time in a Federal prison.

I prefer to do this chronologically because it's being narrated by Johnny to someone else after the fact. It's going to be strictly First Person Limited Narration, save where Johnny reports something that someone else tells him. Johnny does do a little jumping about (by way of foreshadowing), and in the next chapter Pam's going to tell him some backstory.

[baikonur]

John Maclean?

[jordan179]

Damn, now I have to change his name! The funny thing is I wasn't thinking Bruce Willis, I was thinking "Scots-Irish." I still want John, I'm just going to change the last name to something else Scots-Irish.

[juliet_winters]

I do have West Virginia self-educated hill relatives who have served in the military and thereby got into Ivy League engineering schools, and I think you captured it fine. I would have assumed that you had relatives from around those parts.
You are correct. They would have had very little problem with their boy joining the army, and they certainly wouldn't have dragged high priced lawyers into it. They would have seen the advantages.
(Not sure they call them coon dogs though. A dog is a dog is a dog over there.)

As to a name, how about McClung?
There were a passel of them in the Civil War. Formed their own cavalry units. Tons of them, so many with the same names recycled that they had to have nicknames like "Devil Sam." A successful farmer and quite a character.
Or Caldwell. First student at Virginia Tech was a Caldwell boy with no documented formal education who just showed up with his brother via an Indian hunting trail. He did wonderfully well in marksmanship--then a required course. Not necessarily so strong in the other subjects. ; )
This might interest you:
http://spec.lib.vt.edu/archives/125th/students/add.htm

Military science fiction is its own beast. I wouldn't worry too much about psychoanalyzing your characters.

[jordan179]

Forrest Gump was the wrong word, but a better explanation would be some kind of savant whose talent lies in things that go kaboom. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's characterization and then there's stereotype. You're a pretty good writer, but you haven't quite crossed that line here- I really wish I could tell you how to do it, but all I can say is that you haven't really done it yet. Maybe you could add a little more detail?

I get your point. Well, John's not an idiot savant, he has a high IQ but simply had issues with school. I've known people like that quite well, though in the Bronx rather than West Virginia. I don't mean him to be a stereotype -- if he's any kind of stereotype I'd say that he reminds me a bit of some of the heroes of Heinlein juveniles -- you know, the "soft-spoken but tough smart country boy" type?

And the "alien" thing that I was getting at (I'm a lumper, not a splitter- can you tell?) is the fact that Pam is being treated as one in the fact that she's not human and she doesn't fit in that society.

Yes, that makes sense.

Frankly I don't find it believable that her trainers didn't give her some briefing on casual interactions with humans- she'll have to know how to handle people when they're off duty, and she really should know that there are lines that they shouldn't cross, even if it is just in the context of "using materiel improperly". She's different, she knows, and she's constantly made to feel that everyone else knows as well; the fact that she's property is immaterial.

Specifically, the reason why Pam comes off as extremely shy is that while she was raised in a lab-culture version of bonobo society, one thing that the trainers did not change is the reaction of a low-status ape to a higher-status ape. From her POV, which I haven't gone into in the part I put online, she is lower in status than any human on her own side (she's had that drilled into her), and she's a newbie, which means that she can't relax until a higher-status person has shown acceptance of her (note that she begins to relax when John does just that).

What John does not yet realize at the point that he's narrating is that she's not calling him "sir" because she mistakes him for a commissioned officer. She's calling him "sir" because he's human. (Presumably, it would have bothered her trainers too much with historical parallels if they had taught her to call him "master.")

Another thing- the only one that treats her like a decently is the hero.

So did the other scientist, who hugged her before abandoning her to the Army. I did that specifically to avoid the stereotype of "uncaring scientists," I'm actually quite pro-science! :)

By the way- is there a particular reason you made her female? You might want to go into the scientific reasoning behind that.

Well, she had to be one sex or the other. Female apes of all species are more tractable. Bonobo females also tend to be more socially competent; in fact in wild bonobo society they dominate the males by being better at forming social networks.

Ironically, while common chimpanzees, and male apes in general, would make better fighters (bigger, stronger and more aggressive) they would have problems with accepting a subordinate status for long periods of time around humans, including humans who might provoke them through stupid acts of aggression toward them. The project that created Pam would like to use other sexes and other species in the field, but they are starting with the smallest, weakest (aside from humans) and least aggressive great ape -- and a smaller specimen at that -- to avoid difficulties of that sort.

There is an obvious problem with the intersection of bonobo and human culture, but as I'll show later, her trainers thought of that.