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I'm trying something a bit different. This is a link to the story on my story site (metamorph.org.uk. All my other stories are available there on a single page (no more cliffhangers and waiting for the next chapter). In time I hope to make at least some of them available as downloads (either pdf or epub).
Click on the Future Perfect link above this text to go to the story.
Chris Palmer lives in the near future (you may recognise his grandparents). This is an upbeat look at the future because, let's face it, we kind of need it right now.
If you don't want to leave a comment on my site (I haven't got it working quite the way I want it yet) you can come back to Big Closet when your done and give me comments or kudos here. I'd be grateful for comments on how people feel about me posting stories like this. There's a link somewhere below.
If you liked this post, you can leave a comment and/or a kudos!
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Comments
Really loving the story
...but, having it one long piece has meant that I have had to (temporarily) bail out.
I love the idea of being able to read it in one go, but perhaps it would be easier to have it in chapters, so that you could pause at some point?
My concern is that the window will "crash" overnight, and I will need to find my place again tomorrow.
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
Useful feedback.
Will have to think on that. Chapters maybe, but hard to know where to put them.
Big smile!
Nice to see a new story from you. Just got through Rachael’s [spoiler deleted] and will pick up when time permits. So far, it has your usual brilliance with characters, and a great set-up. I’m looking forward to reading it in full!
— Emma
It's Midnight Here
So I'll have to come back to this later. Never fear, I will always read a Maeryn Lamonte story.
I'm counting on it
You're one of my favourite reviewers. I always look forward to reading what you have to say.
Hopeful tale
Lots to both unpack and enjoy in this story!
The narration has a Heinlein feel to me. The wry asides, perhaps? Or maybe the wonderfully geeky elements, coupled with philosophical musings? I didn’t get all of the SciFi serial references, but I do remember Thunderbirds. It made quite an impression on me as a child, though I watched an episode decades later as an adult and found that my memories were better. :)
As always, I appreciated your discussions of the trans elements of the story. I particularly appreciated when Chris and Surya concluded that their male and female elements were always there. ”I know I talk about one side or the other a lot, don’t I? But it’s not like that when you think about it, is it? We’re always a bit of both at the same time. We just try to fit in with the world around us, which means we sort of lean one way or the other.”
The flying felt very realistic; it’s clear that came from experience. I can add another hoary bit of flying wisdom to the ones you quoted about old, bold pilots and the many p’s: “it’s true that aviation has made the world smaller. But’s it’s still really hard to miss it if you crash.” :)
Lots of good characters, and Chris is enough of a paragon to make the perfect ambassador. For science, for trans folks. Maybe for humanity.
The ending did feel a bit compressed — Chris moved very quickly from one promotion to the next; his “Captain Scarlett” phase was very brief. But that’s a very minor quibble with a fine tale.
— Emma
Love the
But’s it’s still really hard to miss it if you crash.
Me too
I hadn't heard that one, and I thought I'd heard most.
Heinlein definitely inspires me
I haven't read any of his for a while though, and the stuff I've gone back to hasn't been as good as I remembered it, but I did totally fall for Stranger in a Strange Land, Time Enough For Love, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, and even Starman Jones (despite the circular slide rules for calculating hyperspace routes)
Thanks for the comment on the trans element discussion. I've been feeling of late that it's getting a little repetitive. I mean, I try to give it a bit of a new twist each time, because it's part of my exploration of the condition (if that's the right term) but it feels like I'm going over the same ground at least some of the time.
The flying is definitely from experience, although always in little planes. No jets, no turbines, nothing special like the Angel and Archangel aircraft mentioned here.
I agree the ending was compressed, but I wasn't sure where else to go with it without the whole seeming like more of the same. Kind of like Monty Python's Holy Grail. Couldn't think of what to do next so send in the police and arrest everyone. That's one way to end a story. It felt like a happily ever after, but maybe I'll revisit the backend some time and see if I can decompress it a little.
Did you recognise Chris's grandparents?
I’m afraid I didn’t
Is that one of the stories I’ve read?
My all-time favorite Heinlein story was The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. He got pretty weird as he got older (and, let’s face it — any writer, much less a SciFi writer, starts with a solid core of weird!).
— Emma
Loved the story
As Emma said, there were echoes of Heinlein, with a totally believable future world. As always, your science, even the made up bits, feels real, and the characters are excellent.
Thank you
Lucy xx
"Lately it occurs to me..
what a long strange trip its been."
What made up bits?
Okay, sodium alloy nets in the stratosphere reacting chloring radicals is a little out there, as are the solar algal farms and employing ex farmers as forest guardians in South America and the social media bots undermining capitalism, and... Sod it, okay, it's all made up (except for the bits that aren't)
Very enjoyable references
Having gotten to know you „personally“ through the weekly Zoom chats, I enjoyed the story even more. The quip you quoted about „knowing something of everything and everything about something“ also applies to you, and it shows in this story. I also subscribe to that wisdom, especially the first part.
This story can be classed as Sci-Fi, but it definitely is not of the hard-core variety where the Sci is almost all Fi. Here the Sci is almost entirely Sci, and the Fi is the context where the Sci Sci lives.
The Star Trek and Star Wars references are mostly lost on me, since I grew up in an isolated community with no TV access until the 2-3 meter satellite dishes became somewhat affordable in the mid 1990s. And movies were very limited and heavily censored. Apart from the lack of access to full archival material of the Star Trek universe, my very limited attention span makes binge watching very difficult (especially all by my lonely lonesome). And what I have seen of the original Star Wars movies is just a tad bit to violent and bloodthirsty for my own comfort.
In the last few years I have had a bit of exposure to several the G.Anderson series through a few fan-channels on YouTube to appreciate the references. Unfortunately seeing just a few clips and isolated episodes makes it difficult to get to know the characters or understand the storyverse. But it was enough for me to get the references in your story.
Your historical references are spot-on with the history taught and published in western Europe in the second half of the twentieth century. And your personal background and experience also shows through in a subtle (though obvious) way.
In my opinion, and for my own enjoyment, the better Sci-Fi stories keep the Sci not only plausible and believable, but also mostly factual, with very minimal suspension of disbelief. And the Fi part is kept mostly to the setting, the characters and the story-line.
The religious debate was also very well handled. I have gone through a lot of those debates myself, from both sides of the arguments. (Though not at the same time.) I have even written out some of those debates citing all the relevant biblical references I could find.
Your argument that translations are biased is very true. As a court registered translator myself, I know that very well. You have to know not only the words of both the origin and destination languages, but you also have to know the cultures of the author and the intended reader.
Translation is not only a science, but also an art. You have to balance the strictly literal translation and the figurative interpretation of the original text. And even literal translation has its perils, since often one word can have more than one meaning, based on context.
One story my mom has told repeatedly from a time when my dad working on a Master's degree in Boston in the early 1970s, and we were living in the international student apartment building. A fellow student's wife (they came from Germany) wanted to prepare a typical German cake called Binnenstich. To get the special ingredients, she looked up the name Mandel in the dictionary before going to the grocery store. Imagine her shock when she asked for a pound of tonsils and being told to go to the hospital for that. She was in tears when my mom asked her to see the dictionary that she used. Well, the dictionary had two different English terms for the German Mandel: The first was tonsil, and the second was almond! The context determines when which translation is applicable.
Another example comes from my own personal experience. The German term Bürgerrecht is quite literally [right to] citizenship. In our „isolated“ community the term Bürgerrecht is/was used as a formal recognition of membership to the community infrastructure (both social and civil [physical]). This became a „problem“ when government oversight agencies finally became present in our area. No private entity is allowed to buy or sell the right to citizenship, as that is the exclusive prerogative of the State!
Now, there are all those [historical] real estate contracts written in German with the term Bürgerrecht being a prominent part. And since the official language in the country is Spanish, these contracts have to be translated if and when it comes to some kind of judicial controversy. I quickly realized that I could very subtly tip the judge's decision by how I translated the term Bürgerrecht, either using citizenship or membership. Both are correct translation, though one is literal while the other is figurative.
The translation thing
It's a bit of a big deal for me. I became a Christian in the 1980's when I was just in my twenties, and quite soon afterwards discovered the Deuteronomy passage. Mix that in with the prevalent idea within the church (then as now) that the Bible was God inspired and perfect. It led to quite a few decades of struggling with my nature and what other Christians believed that God had to say about it. It's only in recent years that a Bible translator in a fairly conservative organisation published a few articles on the web (hope remains online) about what those nasty old testament passages that seem to have something serious to say about LGBTQ people really mean. Going back to the original Hebrew and giving a clear translation of the actual words. He didn't have anything about the T part of the alphabet soup so I wrote to him and he sent me a very clear description of what it means. It's kind of put my in my current situation with regards to Christianity, that I still have time for God, but less so for the people who don't take the time to really think about what they believe. It's one of the worst aspects of religion that it gives people an alternative to thinking for themselves.
Sorry, I've rambled. Thanks for the long and comprehensive response. Maybe you could post the recipe for tonsil cake sometime. It sounds quite horrible.
Something For Everybody
I loved the science, I loved the Science Fiction and most of all I loved your people.
I am not so much a Heinleinian and I was reminded of a story by Poul Anderson (the name of which escapes me) in which a giant balloon is tethered 200,000 feet above Tours in France and controls a territory stretching from southern England to the Pyrenees. That's just me; there is no other connection to your story!
I envisage Cloudbase as a kind of floating aircraft carrier with Angels docking via arrester-hooks and giant balloons two miles above, almost Vernian, but drifting around the planet, maybe in eighty days a transit, with a crew of dedicated scientists and engineers starting to fix the damage we have done to our planet. I would hope that the politics of the time will permit such a venture.
Srangely enough I lived in PNG when there were some massive landslides, although I had nothing to do with any rescue efforts.
I am old enough to remember 'Thunderbirds', one of my favourite TV programmes. There was a terrible joke, in which Parker was transporting Lady Penelope to the airport and the Roller broke down. Parker started to fix the problem and Lady P asked him 'Do you need a screwdriver?' to which he replied 'maybe later, when I've fixed the car, Madam!'
Chris and Surya are both delightful players. Chris is a transgender hero/heroine who excels at explaining people like us to those whose minds are still fixed in the mud. He/she reminds me of a kind of TG Pete Buttigieg who does such a similar job in the present day. Besides that, Chris is a human being who struggles with being her own person and the dichotomy of male/femaleness.
Surya is the woman we would all want to meet, who can relate to our female side and embrace it. I loved the scene with her parents and Chris' parents when they all came to terms with the choices their children made.
I really enjoyed this story, Maeryn.
Like I said
Always a pleasure to hear from you. Would be interested to hear more about your exploits in PNG. I used to work for a misionary aviation organisation and one of our pilots operated helicopters in PNG. Not our usual thing, but he trained on helicopters in the army, then because Papua New Guinea doesn't have enough flat spaces to build airstrips where people need to get, he trained to be a fixed wing pilot to get him close to the places he worked then flew his unattural machine into the places he was needed (fixed wing pilot prejudice there. We think of helicopters as hideous pieces of machinery with bits that move in all directions. They don't actually fly, but they're so ugly the Earth rejects them).
Anyway, he wrote about a time when a major mudslide took out a number of vilalges and the only way they could get rescue workers in was to fly them in with helicopters. He talked about settling one skid on a stable rocky bit of the slope with his rotors spinning less than a foot away from the ground while rescuers jumped off and rescued villagers were pulled on, so the scene in the story is based on fairly recent real life.
My image of cloudbase in the story is of a kind of mess of tubes and scaffolding hanging under thousands of balloons, hence the not very impressive if you're expecting the flying aircraft carrier comment. Still, we each imagine stories in our own way.
I hadn't heard that Lady P joke. The one that sticks in my mind goes, "Parker, take of my dress." Yes m'lady." "Now Parker, take off my stockings." "Yes m'lady." "Now take off my bra, Parker." "Yes m'lady." "And now my panties." "Ahem.. Yes m'lady." "And Parker." "Yes m'Lady?" "Never let me catch you wearing my clothes again."
I loved Surya too. If there's a Surya out there, I'm available and (despite evidence to the contrary) not too needy.