H
Hastrman
Guest
I realize this is perhaps a borderline shameless plug, and is definitely me asking you to be my uncompensated market research, but…
I’ve written a SF novel (it’s rather long), and wanted to know if anyone would read it.
The plot concerns the aftermath of a war between the humans (basically as we are now, except Capitalism and Socialism have compromised by become Belloc’s servile state) and an alien race (whose Empire has a social structure something like a cross between early Imperial Rome, Medieval Europe, and Renaissance Poland, with guilds, fully enfranchised peasants, and a noble class whose members are raised to be warriors and leaders, but whose honor in peacetime is entirely contingent on how well their subjects are ruled), and a plot by certain humans to try and start a second war.
The twist is, the aliens’ religion involves them having been ordered, in our year AD 33, by a female being cloaked entirely in blue, to search for their “godly champion”…the female being’s son.
The main/POV characters include a human woman whose family was killed when the aliens blew up the space station they were on, who’s in love with the main villain; an alien cop sent to investigate some kidnappings of citizens; an alien woman whose mother and brother were killed by the humans and is one of the kidnap victims; a human gunrunner who was kidnapped by the UN as a small child and experimented on to enhance his telepathy; and an assassin android that belongs to the main villain, and hates him, but can’t do anything about having to follow his orders.
It has three alien languages of my own invention, and two fairly well thought-out alien races, though I say so myself.
I tried to make the parts that are actually science-based (ie the tech, the planets, the biology) as scientifically accurate as possible, other than a little stylistic fudging and that I assume a few things (like artificial gravity and Alcubierre-de Broeck warp being possible) for the sake of the story.
It also has future versions of the samurai and ninja (only in Japan, where the military class came back to prominence after the Chinese invaded them), psionics (telepathy etc.); genetically engineered super-humans who were partly inspired by Brave New World; androids and AI; both the bad and the good (and yes, there are good) aspects of organized crime; and a space battle in which I actually took note of what nonreactive drives would mean.
There’s also discussions of philosophy, sociology, languages, and economics. There’s dialog in the alien languages, Japanese, French (mostly Cajun), Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Korean, but where it matters I translate it.
Apart from the main plot I have a little yakuza-movie subplot, a little of what might be magic, two love stories, some unresolved sexual/romantic tension, a couple capoeira games, some swordfighting, some gun fights, some unarmed fighting (savate vs jeet kune do, notably), some space-geeking out, and a twist ending my sister compared to the “the bottom fell out of my mind” feeling she got from the first time she saw the ending of a Metal Gear Solid game.
It has lots of violence, a little language, and some non-explicit sex (you know, they kiss and fall down on the bed and fade-to-black) that’s necessary for the plot, and a little crude humor, mostly on the part of the assassin android (whose personality is best described as a mix of Roy Batty from Blade Runner, Ash from Evil Dead, and Crow T. Robot from MST3K).
I realize it’s a bit like Quentin Tarantino (putting everything I think is cool in, I mean), but I think I’ve pulled it off okay. My novel-writing style reminds me a little of Tony Hillerman, who I’d never read before I finished the book (weird, huh?).
So, would you read it?
I’ve written a SF novel (it’s rather long), and wanted to know if anyone would read it.
The plot concerns the aftermath of a war between the humans (basically as we are now, except Capitalism and Socialism have compromised by become Belloc’s servile state) and an alien race (whose Empire has a social structure something like a cross between early Imperial Rome, Medieval Europe, and Renaissance Poland, with guilds, fully enfranchised peasants, and a noble class whose members are raised to be warriors and leaders, but whose honor in peacetime is entirely contingent on how well their subjects are ruled), and a plot by certain humans to try and start a second war.
The twist is, the aliens’ religion involves them having been ordered, in our year AD 33, by a female being cloaked entirely in blue, to search for their “godly champion”…the female being’s son.
The main/POV characters include a human woman whose family was killed when the aliens blew up the space station they were on, who’s in love with the main villain; an alien cop sent to investigate some kidnappings of citizens; an alien woman whose mother and brother were killed by the humans and is one of the kidnap victims; a human gunrunner who was kidnapped by the UN as a small child and experimented on to enhance his telepathy; and an assassin android that belongs to the main villain, and hates him, but can’t do anything about having to follow his orders.
It has three alien languages of my own invention, and two fairly well thought-out alien races, though I say so myself.
I tried to make the parts that are actually science-based (ie the tech, the planets, the biology) as scientifically accurate as possible, other than a little stylistic fudging and that I assume a few things (like artificial gravity and Alcubierre-de Broeck warp being possible) for the sake of the story.
It also has future versions of the samurai and ninja (only in Japan, where the military class came back to prominence after the Chinese invaded them), psionics (telepathy etc.); genetically engineered super-humans who were partly inspired by Brave New World; androids and AI; both the bad and the good (and yes, there are good) aspects of organized crime; and a space battle in which I actually took note of what nonreactive drives would mean.
There’s also discussions of philosophy, sociology, languages, and economics. There’s dialog in the alien languages, Japanese, French (mostly Cajun), Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Korean, but where it matters I translate it.
Apart from the main plot I have a little yakuza-movie subplot, a little of what might be magic, two love stories, some unresolved sexual/romantic tension, a couple capoeira games, some swordfighting, some gun fights, some unarmed fighting (savate vs jeet kune do, notably), some space-geeking out, and a twist ending my sister compared to the “the bottom fell out of my mind” feeling she got from the first time she saw the ending of a Metal Gear Solid game.
It has lots of violence, a little language, and some non-explicit sex (you know, they kiss and fall down on the bed and fade-to-black) that’s necessary for the plot, and a little crude humor, mostly on the part of the assassin android (whose personality is best described as a mix of Roy Batty from Blade Runner, Ash from Evil Dead, and Crow T. Robot from MST3K).
I realize it’s a bit like Quentin Tarantino (putting everything I think is cool in, I mean), but I think I’ve pulled it off okay. My novel-writing style reminds me a little of Tony Hillerman, who I’d never read before I finished the book (weird, huh?).
So, would you read it?
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