The Visitor - Part II

Dear Zeeshan,

I am painfully aware of the adage that ``practice makes perfect``. I honestly wish I had the time and discipline to write every day and become a great writer, but so far I don`t. Still, I enjoy doing it, and I enjoy sharing it with others. For every Asimov there must be thousands of wannabes who don`t make the cut, and thousands more amateurs who don`t get much further than writing as a hobby. For now I`m content to be one of them :-)

I agree that there is no need to lower your standards, Paki or not; I certainly refuse to lower mine. But it does seem to me that the editors, readers and writers of chowk are for the most part not under the delusion that this is the greatest community of writers ever assembled. Nor is chowk a particularly good place to look for great science fiction. I`m only publishing here by a cosmic accident :-)

Furthermore, even good writers produce bad writing as per your Hubert Selby example. So it might be wise to aim your gun a little more precisely, unless of course you`ve read all my other work on chowk and have concluded that I`m a bad writer, which is entirely possible (and no, I`m not arguing that I`m good, just that one bad story ought not to rule out that possibility in your mind). How`s that for a transparent attempt to get you to read my other stuff? :-)

Q

Dear ajeet,

I thank you kindly, but I can handle the critics myself :-) No need to get Zeeshan`s heart rate up; he did after a little prodding from me offer up some legitimate criticism in #12. Personally I`m very grateful to Zeeshan for sharing his honest thoughts about this story; it`s feedback like this that keeps a writer on his/her toes.

Regarding Drake, please keep in mind that his equation applies to the Galaxy only. Clearly when we scale to the entire cosmos there is no question that there must be other intelligent life out there. And if one concludes, as many astronomers now do, that the Universe is infinite, then the simple laws of probabilities tell us that in fact there`s a bunch of ``people`` on another planet in another galaxy somewhere in the universe having this very same discussion! (see last month`s Scientific American for an extremely cool article on parallel Universes/worlds).

As for luck, that has nothing to do with it; we are no more the lucky ones than you were lucky to be born where you were born; you didn`t exist before you were born! So too we are not lucky to have evolved here on Earth; rather, if we hadn`t, we wouldn`t be here to talk about it :-)

As I mentioned, when you add in the factor of time you get very different results. So while I agree with you that over the lifetime of our own galaxy many intelligent life forms are likely to evolve, the probability that any two of them will overlap in time is very unlikely. A similar phenomenon has played out here on Earth for example, with large empires only rarely overlapping in time in our history. Generally human empires follow a boom-bust cycle that one can only assume applies to all forms of life in the galaxy, as there are a myriad ways for life to be extinguished. So the Drake equation tells you roughly how many communicating civilizations the Galaxy may spawn over its x billion year life span, but the probability that more than one is active at any given time is very small.

Given enough time, Earth itself will get hit by another space rock and potentially put an end to the age of man if we haven`t already found another way to go extinct by then. As a sci-fi dreamer I too like to think that we`ll find a way to get off this small planet and broaden our base beyond Earth and ultimately beyond Sol. But the sad truth is that we may have only a very short window in time during which to achieve these ends. The only correct long-term plan for the human species is one that gets us off this planet. Which brings us back to this story I hope :-)

Q

Whoopsie. I forgots QYZ aint a paki.

Thank you for not being an arsehole. I am this close to going postal right now. This this this.
Anyway...
I think...

``But your writing is transparent, lacking completely in subtlety, without promise of good prose, unmoving, uncompelling, childlike unwonder about a huge concept, there is no story, your fascination with war and ideas have led you to toss them naked into writing without plot vehicles or stylised dialogue to keep the reader interested. And that`s just scratching the surface.``

...qualifies as critcism. I have never known why people demand that the world lower it`s standard for pakistani stuff. QYZ is an adult. Christ he`s a dad. If this was written by a 15 year old my criticism would`ve been different. If you are talented, you are talented. You don`t beg people to ``lower your standards please!``
Young amateurs can at least say ``hey get off my case! I`m new here!``
Good writing is good writing.
Bad writing is bad writing.
Confusing the two only leads to people liking the taste of shit.

Qyz, Zeeshanmahmud,

Most of us who have tried our hand at writing are not professionals. I know, for me if the opportunity at chowk did not exit, I would never have thought of writing. As such the stuff we read here is quite decent, considering some of us are rank amateurs. To expect professional standards from these writing, is in my view un fare. This does not mean that legitimate criticism should not be given. In fact it is a must. That is what would make the writers overcome the shortcomings of their writing. However the criticism can be constructive or destructive. To simply say that the writing is trash or not worth reading, does not serve any purpose. If that is all you are going to write then please save your self the time and desist from it. On the other hand if you see something that the writer could improve upon, then please take your time, and the writer will thank you.

Qyz

Regarding the Drake equation, at this point in time there are two many variable, which are just guesswork. The result you receive can be astronomically different based upon the assumptions you make. As far as heavy metals in the planets, you seem to assume that we are the lucky ones born after the destruction of stars because of their turning into Novas. Nature has a way of throwing enormous numbers and it requires only one or two, to succeed. One plant or tree sends out hundreds of thousands of seeds, and even if one regenerates, into its parent the cycle can start again. With the hundreds of billions of stars in this galaxy and thousands of billion galaxies in this universe, it would be height of egotism, if we think that we are the only chosen ones. It has been only couple of hundred years since mankind has seriously thought of life else where. Who know what is going to happen in the next thousand years or hundred thousand years.

I may not think you`re a great writer but you are a gentlman.

In an interview available only on the Requiem for a Dream dvd, Hubert Selby Jr when asked about how learned to write so well replied, ``By sitting down and writing every single day until I could write something that wasn`t worth throwing in the bin.``
Simple as they are they are words of good advice. And the only way writers can improve or achieve anything.
Cheers.

Dear Zeeshan,

Thanks, that`s better :-) I appreciate your willingness to spell it out for me. Your assessment of this story does not ring untrue, though that has obviously not prevented others from enjoying it. It was written essentially at the request of those who enjoyed the Visitor, which was not meant to have a sequel when I wrote it. In part because of that genesis it is probably not as well thought out as you might be expecting. In general I tend to write *very* short stories, focused on a particular idea because I`m not a professional writer and don`t have the discipline (or the time) to write long elaborate stories or novels. Whether or not I`ll ever get there remains to be seen, but in the mean time I enjoy writing these short stories and sharing them with others who enjoy reading them. I also appreciate receiving constructive criticism as it can help me get better. I certainly admire the great writers and may yet someday strive to reach their level, but I`m not ready to devote my life to doing so just yet. I`m sorry if I have disappointed your expectations, but I think your standards are clearly too high for me :-). Nonetheless, your comments are helpful and I will certainly take them into consideration. I don`t dispute that there is plenty of room for improvement in my writing; otherwise I wouldn`t be publishing for free on chowk now would I? :-) Thanks,

Q

You are a gentle, kind and warm human being. Everything that I am particularly not to everyone.
But your writing is transparent, lacking completely in subtlety, without promise of good prose, unmoving, uncompelling, childlike unwonder about a huge concept, there is no story, your fascination with war and ideas have led you to toss them naked into writing without plot vehicles or stylised dialogue to keep the reader interested. And that`s just scratching the surface.
If this isn`t helpful or will not be helpful for the future, take a cue from everyone else on Chowk.
What the heck do I know?

Dear Zeeshan,

My favorite website as well! In fact, they have a great toolbar you can install for quick access. But I`m quite sure they can`t help me understand where you`re coming from!

Q

www.dictionary.com

Dear Ajeet,

Smarter folks than I have pondered this question over the ages, but depressingly enough, many have come to the conclusion that advanced life such as our own should be quite rare. In fact you can try out the famous Drake equation at this site:

http://www.activemind.com/Mysterious/Topics/SETI/drake_equation.html

A good book on this subject is ``Rare Earth`` by Ward and Brownlee (easily found at Amazon.com). In that book these scientists argue that microbial life should be very common in the universe, but that intelligent life would be rare.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to encountering intelligent life however is the factor of time. The probability of being co-located in time with another intelligent civilization is in fact very small. Even if your analysis regarding co-evolution of stars in the galaxy were correct (it`s not, because metal-heavy star systems capable of supporting intelligent life require prior super nova activity to produce the metals), just a thousand years difference can mean that two civilizations would fail to be co-located in time, even if they developed in close proximity in space. It`s not difficult to imagine at all that human evolution would have been delayed by another million years or more, based on when the faithful asteroid that did in the dinosaurs showed up to carry out its dirty work. Without that asteroid clearing out the ecosystem, it`s entirely possible that humans would not have shown up at all! And considering that a thousand years ago we were still fighting each other with swords and knifes, and that today we live under the perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation, one has to wonder indeed how long a time window we have for saying ``Hello`` to our intelligent neighbors :-)

Q

Dear Brat & Ras,

Thanks for the encouragement, and I will certainly continue writing as I enjoy it very much :-)

Q

Dear Zeeshanmahmud,

Please elaborate. Your too subtle for me! If by chance you wish to accuse me of being unoriginal, I`m afraid I can only plead guilty as charged. Since people have been writing Sci-Fi for perhaps 100 hundred years or more, it is quite unlikely that anything I think of has never been thought of or written down by anyone else. But who cares? I don`t :-)

Q

Dear Ajeet,

Me too! Unfortunately I have no control over when my submissions will be published :-( In fact I submitted this story a month ago, as I was inspired by the generally positive response to ``The Visitor`` to compose a sequel right away. Alas, it took this long for Chowk to put it up. Oh well, you can always read ``The Visitor`` again to refresh your memory :-)

Q

Do the words subtelty, Original adult thought, Plot, Story and disguising ideas by reconstructing in your own head mean anything to you?

Quinton

I wish the two parts of your story were not that far apart. I have almost forgotten what happened in the first part.

Interesting, the visitors did not find any other sentience culture in the entire milkyway. The other side of the coin is the star trek, where they are all over. The truth is probably somewhere in between. As far as space faring ability, assumming that the milkyway galaxy came into existence at relativily same time, the star are probably of the same age and the planets formed at the same time, then if life develops on some other planets, then there technological progress would be parallet too.

So it is possible that within next 100 - 10000 years we make contect with aliens.

Good story. Would be interesting how you develop it.