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Sapience
How It Rates
Description
A maintenance robot controller becomes obessed with a perceived "mistake" in his robot's programming.
Comments
I enjoyed this story. There are some formatting and grammar mistakes that could be tended to, but they don't take anything away. I thought the beginning was strong, going into the sounds of the song. In most stories we get told what is seen and felt but heard is less frequent. The ending turned out a little darker than I expected, but I think giving it a happy ending wouldn't have fit.
Thanks for the feed back! Editing has always been a weakness of mine. Guess I know where I need to improve.
Nice story. I enjoyed the description of the tech and your Utopian vision of the future. As the other reader pointed out, I did notice some grammatical errors, but those can be easily addressed. I think with a second draft you could really tighten this up and have a great, polished story on your hands! Good job.
I liked the overall concept of the story, but found it a bit boring. I think it was teh diologue that did it for me. It was just so-so. If you revisit the diologue, I think you could have soemthing really good. It does need a bit of editing, but not as much as I have seen from people. I wouldn't use Helvetica, but rather Times New Roman or Cambrai. Helvectia is a bit hard to read.
Thanks for the reads and the comments guys. More food for thought! No Helvetica though, huh? I thought that was a pretty safe choice!
I liked this story, it was fun and the end was surprisingly dark (my fave kind of ending). There are some grammer/spelling mistakes as others have said but that can all be cleaned up with a good edit. I actually liked the dullness of all their conversations, really sold how this so-called Utopia is pretty awful. Imagine having to be POLITE all the time? Ugh, that sounds awful! Nicely done story though, with the edits it should be pretty awesome so keep writing and good luck.
Glad you liked it! Thanks for the read.
Okay everybody, I took another shot at the editorial process and hopefully fixed all the grammatical missteps. Enjoy!
Interesting. Dave somehow reminds me of another sentient machine, HAL 9000. He's nearly as psychotic as well. The rest of your world brings up flashes of Dr. Cocteau from Demolition Man. Very nicely done.
A couple of things that bugged me:
A very smooth and enjoyable read overall!.
Good Work!
Wow. Thank you for the very specific and to the point feedback. I will definitely use this. Appreciate it!
I liked it a lot the opening was indeed strong and the prose was well done. My only complaint is the murder of Laura was a tad contrived. Thumbs up!
Thanks for the read! Maybe a little more fore-shadowing with Harvey and Laura's relationship? Something a little more sinister to set up the conclusion?
There are certainly some very good ideas here. That kind of world with forced politeness and inability to handle violence reminded me a bit of Demolition Man (as pointed out above). The detail you add such as with the levels is very good, and helps build the world. I like that you called the robot Dave, and figured it would be a nod to Kubrick. The ending does feel very contrived though. The murder doesn't fit, so yes foreshadowing that would be a good idea. They are assigned procreation mates (good concept), perhaps Harvey doesn't like being allocated someone... or feels Laura is beneath him in some way. You make nods to things such as sleep deprivation, but it needs more tension to make this end believable. Also, as much as I understand that murder is unknown in your world, would one murder have such an effect with an entire city falling into 'abject anarchy' mere moments afterwards? Unlikely. Yet that idea of Howard trying to break Dave's programming while actually Dave is breaking Howard's "programming" is very good. Tweak the ending, and you have a good story.
Yep, that was a Kubrick nod. Had to remind myself that the robot and not the human was named Dave a couple of times.
A couple of you have made similar comments about the ending. If it was just one person, I could blow it off, but the people have spoken. I need to do something with that.
Thanks for the read and the feedback. Much appreciated!
Got to love a twisted ending! The story was very 1984 and Fahrenheit 451. I think you did a great job showing this 'perfect' world and how one wrong note can take it all down. I really enjoyed reading it. The one thing I would suggest tweaking in the future is showing more of this 'utopia'. What does this city look like. How do people resolve conflict. Do the mates have sex for fun, or is everything utilitarian? Overall, you did a great job--thumbs up. ~Sam
Thanks! It's always a challenge to building a three dimensional world filled with three dimensional characters and keep it limited to short story length. Gotta kill those darlings, you know.