for Photo sapiens10/21/2011 c1 
12macabre thoughts
I have a secret, passionate love of the old 'what if?' sci-fi story. Despite its' length, you touch on so many subjects - the cycle of addiction, the fickle effects of technology, class disparity - it's really well thought out.
The narrative style is almost dreamlike, lilting along. There's no obvious conflict or drama, but that's okay; I feel more like a picture is being painted before me.
If I had to find a complaint within me, it would be that the whole chapter contains hardly any action at all - but that is characteristic of it somehow. Just 'the way things are'. So that point is moot.
The ending is concise, but indecisive. I can't tell if you intend to leave me wanting another chapter, or to close it off completely; there is no definitive meaning or finality. It's nice to see the class gap possibly being closed, for a minute, but I'm not sure that's even what really happened.
My favourite detail has got to be the names. They just make me think... 'and why not, you know?' It's kind of funny.
On the whole, I like this idea. It's fresh, inventive, and deserves expansion (should you ever see fit... otherwise, I want to write fanfiction for it). It's a brand new parallel world, and I'm always keen to hear about those.
Keep bringin' the love. :)
12macabre thoughtsI have a secret, passionate love of the old 'what if?' sci-fi story. Despite its' length, you touch on so many subjects - the cycle of addiction, the fickle effects of technology, class disparity - it's really well thought out.
The narrative style is almost dreamlike, lilting along. There's no obvious conflict or drama, but that's okay; I feel more like a picture is being painted before me.
If I had to find a complaint within me, it would be that the whole chapter contains hardly any action at all - but that is characteristic of it somehow. Just 'the way things are'. So that point is moot.
The ending is concise, but indecisive. I can't tell if you intend to leave me wanting another chapter, or to close it off completely; there is no definitive meaning or finality. It's nice to see the class gap possibly being closed, for a minute, but I'm not sure that's even what really happened.
My favourite detail has got to be the names. They just make me think... 'and why not, you know?' It's kind of funny.
On the whole, I like this idea. It's fresh, inventive, and deserves expansion (should you ever see fit... otherwise, I want to write fanfiction for it). It's a brand new parallel world, and I'm always keen to hear about those.
Keep bringin' the love. :)
9/25/2011 c1 16Ioga
So this was the other fic I picked for the first sampling, because photosynthetic people implies potential for something funky to learn on the side from author research. :)
I was wondering a bit about the use of 'Homo/Photo sapien' vs. 'Homo sapiens'. I'm not very familiar with Latin declinations (or the correct English words for 'word-bending' for that matter), but 'sapien' confuses me. Homo sapiens is singular, and Homines sapientes is (I think) the Latin plural that no one ever uses, but where does Homo sapien fall into here? Is it like a plural of the type "oxen" or a double-singular formed by dropping the -s? (For the latter case, my native Finnish actually has opposite trouble with pluralizations of words borrowed as plurals from English - "muffins" and "pins" have been borrowed as plural-singular "muffinssi" and "pinssi", and their plurals become muffinssit and pinssit - t is our 's' equivalent here - causing double pluralization. And when language committees try to fix it and say "it's really muffini!" (oookay), it goes horribly wrong with "it's really pinni!" because a pinni is a specific type of clicking hair-"pin" for small girls and has little to do with small badges with needles in them.)
Ok, I digressed a mile - I'm a horrible language nerd.
The end of the story felt a bit abrupt, because it ended in the middle of a recently-introduced dramatic event (the first dramatic-personal event, in fact - the guy getting into a danger to drown) - while it was meaningful that she opted to go save a member of the inferior race, it wasn't built up so much as to outweigh the drama of the drowning side so that the end decision would be sort of leaving us feeling that an arch had closed. Maybe the build-up (personal, for the girl) could be increased, or the going-into-water extended so that that arc would come to an end as well? (E.g. instead of saying she went to _try_ to help him, she went to haul him out of the water to safety - we'd find out on the side that it ended well.)
The getting-stuck-with-a-tan vs. having to find the money to pay for the transition was a fun observation. There could be many more societal issues built on this concept, probably!
Thanks for this!
16IogaSo this was the other fic I picked for the first sampling, because photosynthetic people implies potential for something funky to learn on the side from author research. :)
I was wondering a bit about the use of 'Homo/Photo sapien' vs. 'Homo sapiens'. I'm not very familiar with Latin declinations (or the correct English words for 'word-bending' for that matter), but 'sapien' confuses me. Homo sapiens is singular, and Homines sapientes is (I think) the Latin plural that no one ever uses, but where does Homo sapien fall into here? Is it like a plural of the type "oxen" or a double-singular formed by dropping the -s? (For the latter case, my native Finnish actually has opposite trouble with pluralizations of words borrowed as plurals from English - "muffins" and "pins" have been borrowed as plural-singular "muffinssi" and "pinssi", and their plurals become muffinssit and pinssit - t is our 's' equivalent here - causing double pluralization. And when language committees try to fix it and say "it's really muffini!" (oookay), it goes horribly wrong with "it's really pinni!" because a pinni is a specific type of clicking hair-"pin" for small girls and has little to do with small badges with needles in them.)
Ok, I digressed a mile - I'm a horrible language nerd.
The end of the story felt a bit abrupt, because it ended in the middle of a recently-introduced dramatic event (the first dramatic-personal event, in fact - the guy getting into a danger to drown) - while it was meaningful that she opted to go save a member of the inferior race, it wasn't built up so much as to outweigh the drama of the drowning side so that the end decision would be sort of leaving us feeling that an arch had closed. Maybe the build-up (personal, for the girl) could be increased, or the going-into-water extended so that that arc would come to an end as well? (E.g. instead of saying she went to _try_ to help him, she went to haul him out of the water to safety - we'd find out on the side that it ended well.)
The getting-stuck-with-a-tan vs. having to find the money to pay for the transition was a fun observation. There could be many more societal issues built on this concept, probably!
Thanks for this!
7/14/2011 c1 42Catherine Julia Jefferson
This is one of the most creative scifi stories I've seen on FictionPress. Your science is solid, and you've done an awesome job of laying out the consequences-technical and social-of a fairly simple idea. Also, I really love the play on "Photo sapiens." I'd really like to see more stories set in this society.
42Catherine Julia JeffersonThis is one of the most creative scifi stories I've seen on FictionPress. Your science is solid, and you've done an awesome job of laying out the consequences-technical and social-of a fairly simple idea. Also, I really love the play on "Photo sapiens." I'd really like to see more stories set in this society.
7/10/2011 c1 Boy at War
I definitely liked this story! I like the idea of a new class split. The halves becoming part plant and the have nots staying human.
I would think that in such a place the issue of what a photo-sapien was would come up. Are they still human or are they part plant. If your going to continue this I would want to know what would happen if someone took the transformation too far. Say they gave themselves cell walls as well and basically became plants.
As for the romance aspect the photo-sapien backdrop sort of lets you get away with the whole lowly man and high women plot that seems to be done a lot.
I do have to say that the beginning seems sort like an info dump, you didn't really try to present that information into anything until we got to Sandy's introduction.
I review for the Review Marathon! A link is in my profile if you want to check it out.
I definitely liked this story! I like the idea of a new class split. The halves becoming part plant and the have nots staying human.
I would think that in such a place the issue of what a photo-sapien was would come up. Are they still human or are they part plant. If your going to continue this I would want to know what would happen if someone took the transformation too far. Say they gave themselves cell walls as well and basically became plants.
As for the romance aspect the photo-sapien backdrop sort of lets you get away with the whole lowly man and high women plot that seems to be done a lot.
I do have to say that the beginning seems sort like an info dump, you didn't really try to present that information into anything until we got to Sandy's introduction.
I review for the Review Marathon! A link is in my profile if you want to check it out.