Uptime  By James Brian King

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Megawatts
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Re: Uptime  By James Brian King

Post by Megawatts »

Nice story! I love shifts in time stories, and this one had all the right mixtures. Going forward and backward in time will present many problems, and this story told about one of those problems.<br><br><br><br>Good job!<br>
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kailhofer
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Re: Uptime  By James Brian King

Post by kailhofer »

On the whole, I thought this was a solid effort that yielded an acceptable result.<br><br>It is written with professionalism, and is easy to understand. I did not stumble over any writing choices for style or format, and could just enjoy the tale as it unfolded before me.<br><br>The universe is suggested to be the same as ours, just changed by time traveling. This, however, is where the concrete nature of things stops until Benjamin describes Melissa. His lab is described as nothing more than a platform, which later had chips & data storage devices in them that were torched. Other than that, however, this could have been anywhere, and the techs in the room could have been the Beatles’ Blue Meanies or perhaps Willy Wonka’s Oompa Loompas for all they were described. In other words, this was hardly a setting that came alive with lovely descriptive phrases and sensory input.<br><br>I think the characters suffered a little bit in believability. Benjamin accepted the future, I thought, a little too easily--this, after all, crushes his dream. Melissa, as has been noted, is awfully closed-minded about her own son visiting from the future when she herself works on a time travel project. Further, I thought if she gave a better hint of her shallow nature before she split with Ben, it would help. Still, Benjamin changes and grows as the events in the story unfold, and that’s the most important part of character development. What he learns during the story changes him to the point that he can do what he does at the end of the story.<br><br>The general plotline was a great idea--time traveler gets the tables turned on him by another time traveler. Now, given the question does this story have the ring of truth about it, I’d have to judge yes, but only barely. I think additional character development to make David more concrete and a longer storyline that gave the reader more time to adjust to the fundamental changes in the universe of the story may have helped. Also, those descriptive bits I mentioned above would have helped make the whole world seem more real, so it was easier to believe that this story was really happening somewhere to real people. Without that appearance of truth, it was hard to buy into it all. <br><br>On dialogue, I would have liked to see more diverse voices when these characters spoke. David is not very different from Ben, and although he may be Ben’s son, David never met him. It is unlikely they’d sound alike. I prefer moderate use of favorite phrases or accents, as well as different inflection markers, so I can almost tell who’s talking without have the taglines. Enders was clearly all business. Melissa all slut, and then all bitch, but David & Benjamin blended together.<br><br><br>So, all-in-all, I felt this was an ok effort, but one that could have used some more polishing to really shine.<br><br>Nate<br>
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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Uptime  By James Brian King

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

The scary scenario here is that even a very limited visit to the past changed the timeline enough that the future from which David travels was already destabilized. The people in the lab were different (in terms of character, status, etc.) from those in the lab Benjamin left.<br><br>Hmm. Did Benjamin return to the lab he left? Or did their time travel technology actually move him across timelines as well as along the 'past'-'present'-'future' axis? In that case, he didn't change his own present -- he just ended up on/in a different pre-existing timeline from the one he left.<br><br>Of course, the problem of having the same molecules coexisting in his remains and in his living traveling body would still exist no matter what timeline he tried to visit in the 'future' direction ...<br><br>Robert (I'm so confused...) M.
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