"Buddies" (1st draft, 1st chapter)
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
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This is historically a rather common deal, especially in rural areas. The criminal is not actually conscripted in punishment, he is offered the choice (by the judge) of agreeing to volunteer, or doing the time for the crime. This is only done when the Army is short of recruits, and it is semi-informal (like all bargains of this sort).
The fact that the judge offered Johnny this deal implies that (1) the Army needed men, as Johnny himself points out, and (2) the judge disapproved of the tactics of the ATF and wanted to give Johnny an out. He also issues the order to drop any asset forfeiture.
In a case severe enough to warrant asset forfeiture, it seems unrealistic to think that the judge would let him off the hook with a suggestion that he enlist a few months down the road.
You would be scared if you looked into just how trivial the crimes for which asset forfeiture may be carried out happen to be. In one recent case, a man had the FBI more or less steal $400,000 from his safe -- his life savings -- because he kept a supply of medically prescribed marijuana on his premises. If anything, I'm making assumptions favorable to Johnny's family by assuming that (1) the judge does this, and (2) the ATF obeys the judicial order. The ATF, dealing almost entirely with victimless crimes as it does, is a very nasty organization, one of the worst in the whole Federal government.
2) I think the slang makes the protag come off as an uneducated hick more than a self-taught man. If he is educated, even self educated, there ought to be some evidence of that in the text. I wouldn't assume that readers are going to pick up on that.
I'm going to revise the slang, but the revision is going to make Johnny seem even more of a hick, because I'm going to revise it in the direction of genuine West Virginian hill dialect, rather than just "generic back country" which is what I'm writing right now. Real Appalachian dialect is fun, because it hearkens back to 16th-17th century style English, as in Shakespeare and the King James Bible -- with of course a lot of changes both from other English dialects and from its own weird evolution.
Johnny will still be speaking close to standard English because he's talking to someone from a coastal urban area in narrating the tale, and he wants to be comprehensible. Being in the Army for four years will also have caused him to lose a lot of the hill speech.
Um, there's "self-educated" and then there's "self-educated." The clues I dropped that Johnny was smart are that he reads for pleasure, and that he has mastered a complex mechanical trade, specifically gun-smithing. Note that he was good enough that men were coming to him, at age sixteen, to have him do specialty work for them. This is not unbelievably smart (he's not in Artemis Fowl territory) but it does imply a fairly high IQ.
He just didn't like school, obviously. And notice that his main reason was that he found it boring. A lot of smart kids are like that.
Writing this, it just occurred to me that the ATF might have had a better case than I originally thought, because a naive 16-year-old being flattered that adults appreciated his skills might not be too careful about who he worked for! Hmm, but asset forfeiture still sucks ...
Do you plan on submitting your short to any of the magazines?
Working on it here may preclude that as a "prior publication," but since it's not going to get beyond novella length, and will probably top out at around 10-20K works max, it's not like it would be a hugely valuable property anyway. I mostly need practice and miss having a writer's circle to bounce ideas off -- that's why I'm doing it in public here.
And yes, your suggestions are pertinent.
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This is historically a rather common deal, especially in rural areas. The criminal is not actually conscripted in punishment, he is offered the choice (by the judge) of agreeing to volunteer, or doing the time for the crime. This is only done when the Army is short of recruits, and it is semi-informal (like all bargains of this sort).
Historically, perhaps so. But you aren't dealing with history, you are dealing with the future. Legal development is cumulative, so it is not believable that in the near future of the United States, criminal punishment would have regressed, and little else would have changed... Due Process is the bedrock of criminal procedure, and an abandonment of due process is farfetched in a future where states are still states and the United States is still the United States.
Even judges that are sympathetic to defendants aren't going to abrogate their duties that easily, unless there is some outside pressure on them. Believe it or not, judges don't arbitrarily make decisions based on personal preference. They have to justify their actions, because otherwise their decisions will be overturned. Despite the fact that the protag wouldn't have appealed, most judges aren't going to issue ridiculous rulings because having their decisions overturned is not good for them politically.
You, as the writer, have the power to make this believable by better explaining the judge's motivations, explaining the history that took criminal procedure to this point, or better yet, cutting the judge out of the equation and getting him into the army some other way. Maybe the prison system released him to the Army as a sort of parole?
The fact that the judge offered Johnny this deal implies that (1) the Army needed men, as Johnny himself points out, and (2) the judge disapproved of the tactics of the ATF and wanted to give Johnny an out. He also issues the order to drop any asset forfeiture.
Also keep in mind that a case of this type would never be in a local judge's chambers, because he wouldn't have jurisdiction. A case that the Justice Department is prosecuting is going to be in federal court, and federal court judges are not sympathetic people. And most likely, the asset forfeiture punishment is not discretionary, but is established by statute... in which case, the judge couldn't simply order it away. Also, I think asset forfeiture in criminal cases is usually levied post-conviction, in which case the federal prosecutor wouldn't seek it until after John had been convicted of something.
I don't know a lot about military structure or culture, but I do know something about the law and the courts- and as it stands, the depiction of his brief encounter with the court system is inaccurate and not believable.
The ATF, dealing almost entirely with victimless crimes as it does, is a very nasty organization, one of the worst in the whole Federal government.
Maybe so. But let me caution you about something that I, as a reader find very distasteful. I absolutely hate it when authors put their own feelings about something into the mouths and minds of their characters. Good writing is demonstrative and *shows* why something is unjust. Lazy writers have their characters restate their own opinions.
Heinlein did that a lot. Ben Bova does it too. Kim Stanley Robinson, on the other hand, has a lot of political and social commentary in his stories, but it is so finely woven into the story, and so crucial to it that as the reader I don't mind.
If you really feel that strongly about asset forfeiture and the ATF, my advice would be to either go into more detail in this story and make the story demonstrative of that point, or save it for another story in which you have more leeway to do so.
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Historically, perhaps so. But you aren't dealing with history, you are dealing with the future. Legal development is cumulative, so it is not believable that in the near future of the United States, criminal punishment would have regressed, and little else would have changed... Due Process is the bedrock of criminal procedure, and an abandonment of due process is farfetched in a future where states are still states and the United States is still the United States.
I do not know for sure that judges ever stopped "recommending" troublesome youths for Army service. I know that they did this at least as late as the Vietnam War.
The judge does not directly force you into the military. However, if you make the deal with him and then DON'T go into the military, if you ever appear before his court again (and you probably will, someday), don't expect him to go easy on you.
It makes a lot of practical sense, anyway. The kid is likely to learn discipline and employable skills in the Army -- he goes in a petty hood, he comes out a responsible man who can get a decent job. Most of the time, he comes out the better for his experience (the US Army historically has a very low rate of casualties).
Johnny wasn't all that bad a kid, but it's precisely the least bad kids you want to take this option. The Army doesn't really want hardcore violent felons, anyway -- they cause too much trouble in their own units to be worth it for the possible extra damage they might do the enemy.
I'm just assuming the practice continues, is all.
And most likely, the asset forfeiture punishment is not discretionary, but is established by statute... in which case, the judge couldn't simply order it away. Also, I think asset forfeiture in criminal cases is usually levied post-conviction, in which case the federal prosecutor wouldn't seek it until after John had been convicted of something.
I am neither an expert on asset forfeiture law, nor assured that such will continue unchanged for the next 35 years anyway. The RICO statute was only passed a generation and a half ago anyway, it might be "reformed" in various ways and any direction in between then and now. Also, what the Feds have to do by law, and what they actually do (in either direction along the leniency/severity access) is rarely the same thing, especially when the defendants are neither hardcore criminals nor have rich friends to protect them.
If you really feel that strongly about asset forfeiture and the ATF, my advice would be to either go into more detail in this story and make the story demonstrative of that point, or save it for another story in which you have more leeway to do so.
It's just throwaway background, and serves a few minor chraracterization points in that it establishes that (1) Johnny is smart, (2) but not afraid to stick his neck out, and (3) my future society of 2042 has warts. I'm trying to write a story about the nature of humanity and the claim to civil rights, not about asset forfeiture law. If I had a character in a story who went free on a murder charge because both he and the jury were black (as did O. J. Simpson) that doesn't mean that the story would be primarily about the problem of racialist jury nullification, either.
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