hey Sdg. really liked this. loads of material for novels here. vaguely reminded me of some adrian tchaikovsky novel (I think) where there are octopus beings. I very much like your style of writing. i wonder if you regretted the naming protocol after a while... i can imagine that becoming hard if you had more characters haha!
Thank you Nick! I haven’t read that Adrian Tchaikovsky novel (though I have read one where there are spider beings). I don’t regret the naming protocol, though I do worry about whether the lack of singular pronouns might cause difficulties. Thanks for reading, I very much appreciate your comments!
pronouns really hard when its not he/she/it ! yes ive read the spider ones... maybe it was someone else wrote the octopus one i was thinking about.... fascinating arent they... great idea there. would love to read more!
In the first paragraph I thought "oh man, am I going to be able to keep up with this fast world I've been flung into?" And by the end not only was I fully engulfed, but I completely understood this hypothetical cousin and the plight They found Themselves in.
This reminded me of H. G. Wells; stories like War of the Worlds and The First Men in the Moon. An outstanding job of starting with one simple sci-fi question ("What if society lived underwater?") and using that to build an entire science fiction world. The perspective-switch is well executed. The names, the jargon, the capital 'We' and 'Us' - I felt grounded in the story, despite it being an alien POV.
The lowercase “we” is basically singular, referring to an individual, while the uppercase refers to a plural number of creatures. They use “we” in referring to themselves because each individual has multiple semi-autonomous nervous system processing “centres”, one in each limb, as well as a main brain, so they don’t have a strong sense of “I” being a singular entity. In octopuses, their arms can do a bunch of stuff without direction from the brain, and that’s the inspiration here.
The fieldfeel is an electric field sense, like some kinds of fish have.
That's an impressive amount of worldbuilding for a short story. Whole novels lurk within those depths.
Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it! 😊
hey Sdg. really liked this. loads of material for novels here. vaguely reminded me of some adrian tchaikovsky novel (I think) where there are octopus beings. I very much like your style of writing. i wonder if you regretted the naming protocol after a while... i can imagine that becoming hard if you had more characters haha!
Thank you Nick! I haven’t read that Adrian Tchaikovsky novel (though I have read one where there are spider beings). I don’t regret the naming protocol, though I do worry about whether the lack of singular pronouns might cause difficulties. Thanks for reading, I very much appreciate your comments!
pronouns really hard when its not he/she/it ! yes ive read the spider ones... maybe it was someone else wrote the octopus one i was thinking about.... fascinating arent they... great idea there. would love to read more!
In the first paragraph I thought "oh man, am I going to be able to keep up with this fast world I've been flung into?" And by the end not only was I fully engulfed, but I completely understood this hypothetical cousin and the plight They found Themselves in.
So cool! Really got my mind working!
Thank you! 🐙
Dang! This is lovely, poetic, and so deep (pun not intended, but it's pretty good, yeah?)
Thanks Mary!
This reminded me of H. G. Wells; stories like War of the Worlds and The First Men in the Moon. An outstanding job of starting with one simple sci-fi question ("What if society lived underwater?") and using that to build an entire science fiction world. The perspective-switch is well executed. The names, the jargon, the capital 'We' and 'Us' - I felt grounded in the story, despite it being an alien POV.
Thank you! I was a little worried about the singular/plural “we”/“We” and whether it would make sense to readers, so I’m glad it worked! 😅
I'm glad I finally got around to reading this! You pack so much in to a short story. Deep in more ways than one.
Great story. I don't quite understand the we vs We. Is there a type of group telepathy involved, regarding the fieldfeel?
The lowercase “we” is basically singular, referring to an individual, while the uppercase refers to a plural number of creatures. They use “we” in referring to themselves because each individual has multiple semi-autonomous nervous system processing “centres”, one in each limb, as well as a main brain, so they don’t have a strong sense of “I” being a singular entity. In octopuses, their arms can do a bunch of stuff without direction from the brain, and that’s the inspiration here.
The fieldfeel is an electric field sense, like some kinds of fish have.
Thanks for reading and commenting! 😊
Awesome. From the other viewpoint.