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[icaruslived]

When Captain Clarisse Kirkson had been not yet seven years old, her grandfather had pulled some strings to take her into space. Clarisse had been too young, really, to know what she was seeing, but she remembered the catch in the old man's voice as he introduced her to Axolikaduranifoxicisugit - Axol, to its friends.

She didn't think she could

Comments

[jem0000000]

All the tardigrades with names have minds of their own. :)

I like the way you've contrasted her own adventuring spirit -- and, by extension, the adventuring spirit of those who set out on this last desperate venture -- with the council's desire to maintain their own safe status quo.

[icaruslived]

There was a line that I kept circling around to - "This mission is to safeguard humanity, not humans" - but ended up cutting because it just felt too cheesy :P Good to hear that some of the sense behind it still stayed in!

[jem0000000]

Lol! The problem with following a long tradition of sci fi is that all the good lines have either been taken or sound cheesy. :)

[favoritebean]

This was quite a fun piece to read. I do hope the three of you will collaborate again perhaps to continue this story.

[icaruslived]

I really enjoyed working with jem and lrig_rorrim as well! I dunno about continuing this story in particular - I'm not too sure the idea has enough legs to sustain any significant delving - but I definitely would love to work with them again!

[karmasoup]

Oh, I love this! I love that she and Axol have such a bond, and I love that these people have more or less mostly turned into the idiots from "The Fifth Element," and need a revived cooler head from a bygone era to save them from their own dysfunction. Fabulous!

[icaruslived]

I mean, be fair - if you knew the fate of humanity was riding on your ship, it takes a special kind of guts to be all "SCREW IT we're going over to say hi anyway!" :p

[i_17bingo]

So I wanted to read all three if these before I commented (and I'm copying and pasting the first paragraph to all three entries), mostly because I read them in the wrong order, and I wanted to see the whole universe before casting judgement. And my judgement is this: This is one of the best... threesomes? anthologies? ... because they utilize each writer's strength and combine, like a literary Voltron, into one continuous story.

What I like about your style is your balance of Big-Idea sci-fi with the character focus of good space opera. This entry fits that mold ad reminds me, tonally, of early Star Trek: The Next Generation, with its attempts to predict the sure-to-be baffling fashion of the future and optimism and curiosity. This was a great perspective of the tardigrade and it's person, and makes me want to see more of their adventures. But not see more of the skulls. Ugh. (My favorite detail, by the way, was the fake names.)

[icaruslived]

So I actually consciously tried to run this as more traditional, big-idea scifi than I would normally run - the tardigrades-in-space idea is a pretty damn big concept that deserves it, I think!

And I'm probably miiildly unhappy with where it is on that dial - there is a lot more Cool Stuff I could have highlighted that would have been fun to play with...

And, uh, I may have cheated a bit on that TNG feel by explicitly naming her Kirkson :p

[kajel]

These were so great. I really enjoyed Clarisse.

[icaruslived]

Thank you! I really enjoyed writing her, too :P