[IF Comp 2013] 100,000 years
100,000 years, Pierre Chevalier, Twine
accessed 10/17/2013
This is really more of the outline of a short SF story than the story itself. It put me strongly in mind of a very-unfinished game of the history-building RPG Microscope. It takes less than five minutes to play, and probably took under an hour to write.
It's hypertext with no branching whatsoever. The main reason for presenting it as hypertext rather than static text is that the plot bites its tail, with the protagonists turning into their own victims. The secondary reason is that you can read in either direction, with the text changing from '100,000 years before' to '100,000 years later' depending on the direction you're traveling.
As advertised, the plot advances in increments of 100,000 years; this is a story more about the fate of entire species rather than individuals or nations. A primitive species massacres a weak but high-tech spacefaring one, uses their tech to exhaust its planet and move into space, becomes something very like the high-tech species and then repeats the cycle.
These ideas - ancient spacefaring civilisations, uplift, the circularity of history, primitive + vigorous vs. cerebral + weak - are not particularly novel for SF. Normally that wouldn't matter all that much; there's plenty of excellent science fiction that takes hoary old chestnuts and transforms them into something spectacular. 100,000 years, however, does little more than present the idea without elaboration (each section consists of three short lines, and there are five or so sections in total) so the novelty of the idea is all that it has going for it.
Narrative outlines are not, in themselves, often very interesting. The best that you can say about one is that it's got potential. Whether they become good, bad or indifferent depends on the work that's done in fleshing them out. The bare bones of a narrative idea, on its own, has very little value.
Microscope isn't designed to create fictions of any lasting value. But the very worst game of Microscope I have ever played was richer, deeper, more imaginatively fruitful and more fun than this. Microscope zooms in on details, you see; it makes you elaborate on your basic ideas and takes them in directions that you might not have expected. In storytelling, that part of the process is not optional.
Score: 1
accessed 10/17/2013
This is really more of the outline of a short SF story than the story itself. It put me strongly in mind of a very-unfinished game of the history-building RPG Microscope. It takes less than five minutes to play, and probably took under an hour to write.
It's hypertext with no branching whatsoever. The main reason for presenting it as hypertext rather than static text is that the plot bites its tail, with the protagonists turning into their own victims. The secondary reason is that you can read in either direction, with the text changing from '100,000 years before' to '100,000 years later' depending on the direction you're traveling.
As advertised, the plot advances in increments of 100,000 years; this is a story more about the fate of entire species rather than individuals or nations. A primitive species massacres a weak but high-tech spacefaring one, uses their tech to exhaust its planet and move into space, becomes something very like the high-tech species and then repeats the cycle.
These ideas - ancient spacefaring civilisations, uplift, the circularity of history, primitive + vigorous vs. cerebral + weak - are not particularly novel for SF. Normally that wouldn't matter all that much; there's plenty of excellent science fiction that takes hoary old chestnuts and transforms them into something spectacular. 100,000 years, however, does little more than present the idea without elaboration (each section consists of three short lines, and there are five or so sections in total) so the novelty of the idea is all that it has going for it.
Narrative outlines are not, in themselves, often very interesting. The best that you can say about one is that it's got potential. Whether they become good, bad or indifferent depends on the work that's done in fleshing them out. The bare bones of a narrative idea, on its own, has very little value.
Microscope isn't designed to create fictions of any lasting value. But the very worst game of Microscope I have ever played was richer, deeper, more imaginatively fruitful and more fun than this. Microscope zooms in on details, you see; it makes you elaborate on your basic ideas and takes them in directions that you might not have expected. In storytelling, that part of the process is not optional.
Score: 1