20 Comments

That's an impressive amount of worldbuilding for a short story. Whole novels lurk within those depths.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it! 😊

Expand full comment

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!

Expand full comment
author

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!

Expand full comment

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!

Expand full comment

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!

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! 🐙

Expand full comment

Dang! This is lovely, poetic, and so deep (pun not intended, but it's pretty good, yeah?)

Expand full comment
author

Thanks Mary!

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment
author

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! 😅

Expand full comment

I love this. Wildly creative. I loved being immersed (haha) in this world.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it!

Expand full comment

Excellent! Since I am familiar (as are you) with land dwellers, I fear for the people of New Deep if they attempt contact.

Expand full comment

This has been in my Saved list for far too long, and I’m so glad I finally made time to read it! This was a fascinating story, and the amount of worldbuilding you fit into such a small space is incredible. As sad as it was, I think my favorite part was the recount of the attempted first aid and eventual autopsy for the astronaut - it’s chilling to think how the attempts to save the human only killed them faster.

Expand full comment
author

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed it 😊

Expand full comment

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.

Expand full comment

Great story. I don't quite understand the we vs We. Is there a type of group telepathy involved, regarding the fieldfeel?

Expand full comment
author

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! 😊

Expand full comment

Awesome. From the other viewpoint.

Expand full comment