It's a sci-fi story. Big galaxy-wide war that is quite massive in scale, but really doesn't affect much of the interstellar population . . . just on the fronts of the war is there much disruption of lifestyle. Our hero who has some . . . shall we say 'special talents' . . . and her semi-telepathic partner are working for the underdogs in the war. They've infiltrated a space station deep in enemy territory, have successfully avoided notice to this point, but have been caught in the process of stealing the information they've come for. At the beginning of the story, several things happen.

1 - our hero's partner dies. Very traumatic. possibly.
2 - Her transportation off the space-station she's on becomes suddenly unavailable and she's forced to hide rather than flee.
3 - She is assisted by a 20-ish year old boy who happens to have some "special talents" as well.
4 - They escape, she recruits him willingly to her cause, then gets snookered into taking him on as an apprentice . . . very much against her will.

At this point I can't decide which direction to go, and have decided I should turn to my 'audience' for their input. What of the following options sounds least/most intriguing to you, and why.

- Hero and apprentice go on dangerous mission. Mission goes wrong similarly to the beginning of the story where our hero's partner died. Hero reacts bravely but stupidly, trying to avoid the same outcome, and dies, though her apprentice completes the mission.

- Mission completes successfully, but only because our hero dies in a golorious act of self-sacrifice, aided by her new apprentice, who survives.

- Mission completes successfully, but only because the new apprentice makes a choice which kills the hero when she makes several reckless, dumb, though brave choices of her own that put everything in jeopardy.

- Mission completely successfully, despite the fact that the hero's newfound apprentice tries to deliberately sabotage it.

- Mission fails horribly because of the fact that the hero's newfound apprentice deliberately sabotages it. (Apprentice can either die or be rewarded, depending on what mood I'm in when I write it.)

- (This next one is the one I'm leaning toward) The mission is a glorious success. Our hero, however, dies in an act of glorious self-sacrifice. Her apprentice who she trusts to trigger the chain of events which lead to her death, escapes with the box/info/person they were trying to steal, and sends his mentor to her martyrdom in perfect form, as the plan dictated. Unfortunately, our apprentice is not really on our hero's side, being a double agent, and is rewarded handsomely for thwarting our hero's plans in the end.

- See above, except for our hero figures out before the end that her apprentice is a double agent and manages to take him with her when she dies.

- (Toying with this one, too) Our HERO is the double agent, who keeps 'accidentally' slipping up, getting her equally 'special' partners killed in such a way as to avoid casting suspicion on herself. Her new apprentice figures this out just before she kills him, too. She toys with extreme feelings of guilt, then proceeds to recruit her next 'partner', who we can only assume will meet the same fate.

- See above, except the new apprentice figures out what she's doing and kills her first. He may or may not live at the end, depending on my mood when I write it.

Anyway . . . that's a bunch of suggestions, and I'm sure every one of them's been done before in some way, shape, or form, but assuming they're well executed, which one would leave you feeling the most satisfied, disgusted in a good way, or disgusted in a bad way at the end?

Thoughts? Reactions? Advice? Mockery? Confusion? Irritation? AHA!s? Offers of advance money? Threats of violence?

Anybody?

-Nate

What do the 'underdogs' feel the war is about? For instance; War between the States=>States Rights and 'Our peculiar Institutions (i.e. Slavery and Slavery), WWI=>'We all have no idea why we're really fighting, so our soldiers deliberately fight so as to avoid hurting the other dumb bastards in the opposing trenches' (i.e. Diplomatic and Strategic Failure), WWII=>Nazis and...you know, usually there isn't that much fundamental disagreement on why the war is being fought, even when (as in WWI) it is being fought for no good reason at all. The disagreement is over which side is right, not what the disagreement is over.

Anyway, this is very important to the characters. Why people are fighting has a lot to do with how they fight, particularly when you get into double agents and so forth. Also, how is it that there is a 'front' at all in an interstellar war? For instance, if interstellar travel is dependent on using spatial wormholes or something like that, then it would make sense that the defenders have a pretty big advantage. But if you have hyperdrives instead.... This isn't as directly important to the characterization, but it does affect how complex infiltration/exfiltration is going to be, which is going to be a major portion of your story (depending on which it is, I mean).

If it is the in/exfiltration that is the major bar, then that moves the action and the sorts of special abilities that are useful to the in/exfiltration scenes. If in/exfiltration is not very difficult, then everyone (not just the main characters) has to live with intrusive security measures on an hourly and minutely basis. Since this can affect how committed each side is to the fight and how they actually fight (in practical terms--meaning the tactics employed), it has a major impact on which scenarios are going to be plausible/possible/interesting.

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- (Toying with this one, too) Our HERO is the double agent, who keeps 'accidentally' slipping up, getting her equally 'special' partners killed in such a way as to avoid casting suspicion on herself. Her new apprentice figures this out just before she kills him, too. She toys with extreme feelings of guilt, then proceeds to recruit her next 'partner', who we can only assume will meet the same fate.

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If you do that one, just don't pull the old switcheroo on us. The last time I read a book where the POV character turned out to be somebody else entirely, I nearly tossed it across the room. Alas, it was a library book. It was in first person as well. Ack.

Good thoughts, though, Survivor. Though I had already pondered most of them, I haven't been as conscious of some of those choices as I will eventually have to be.

I'm just looking for a bit o' direction.

Oh, and pickled . . . not going to just pull the switch there if I do that one. Is one of the reasons I'm not wanting to do it, is because it's so hard to set up, so hard to drop the hints without giving it away. Especially when the double agent is your POV character. I can think of a few ways I might pull that off, but it'll be hard. The trick is when the story's over, have the reader saying "DUH! Why didn't I see that the first time. Here's all the clues. *smack self on head*"

If I can't do that, i won't.

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts.

-Nate

Besides, the idea is lame in and of itself:

"There we were, trapped! But in a fortuitous twist of fate, it turned out that I was actually a secret agent!"

See how stupid that sounds?

Anyway, trust old Survivor, here. He's only trying to help. I, on the other hand, having hardly any free time, am only here to pick the obviously bad ones off your list.

Actually, I had a constructive idea. How about this: the hero - larger than life - is a double agent, and the story is told from the point of view of the apprentice. He slowly figures out over the course of a few weeks that the hero isn't who he thinks she is, and barely manages to avoid another "accident" because he's clued in. Then, before he can arrange a safe confrontation, the story hits climax and the hero dies in a glorious act of self-sacrifice.

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Anyway, I'm seriously asking the questions here.

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!!

Holy cow. I haven't seen anybody seriously ask a question of me since . . . well, since I started lurking around Ornery. *rolls eyes* Over there it's 90% rhetorical questions. Well, then, to give you some real answers . . .

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What is the defining point of the conflict?

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Well, right now, the defining point of the conflict is simply fighting oppression. Bit vague? I thought so. Here's the scenario I had envisioned.

There are two races, humans and an as yet incompletely defined alien race. (WAIT! Hold off on those rolling eyes and hear me out.) The aliens are relatively far advanced, technologically speaking, and have developed an expansive, complex society of their own. After making initial contact with humans, they began to trade, both resources and information, but most profitably, technology. Those aliens in charge put a plan in place, whereby they dangle the 'carrot' of technology in front of the humans, slowly getting them to accept a subservient role in the galaxy, while they themselves live off the fruits of human labor. Humans, short-sighted as always, have neglected to see how they are being taken advantage of, convinced that eventually, if they trade for enough technology, they'll be able to fight they way out of any 'momentarily' disadvantageous position.

The war begins when people, both alien and human, finally take a stand against this rather insidious plan. Many aliens with consciences of their own decide they don't like the idea of taking advantage of a less developed race, and set about assisting the initially rather small group of humans who begin to fight against not only the alien oppressors, but their own government who are so willingly allowing themselves to be duped. Naturally, the alien 'oppressors' assist the human government who now finds themselves under attack by these 'rebels'.

I'm still trying to find a way to condense that into a SIMPLE explanation, but there's really no way. Basically, it's a war against the machinations of an oppressive tyrant. Unfortunately, those who see those machinations as undesirable are in the vast minority.

Succinct enough? I know. It's not SUPER well developed, though it I have pondered for a while. Anyway, that's what this conflict is about.

Anyway, this leads to the potential for a lot of complex motivations with regard to why people are fighting for which side. By mixing issues of ideals with issues of race you create a lot of different warring potentials within separate individuals, allowing for a variety of characterizations/plot twists. I'm POSITIVE I can find a good story in there, even if it's not this one.

Anyway, on to the next question.

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Also, how is it that there is a 'front' at all in an interstellar war?

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Well, it doesn't make sense if you have wormholes or something like that. The way it stands is that interstellar travel, while very fast, occurs at a limited speed. You can only travel so far, so fast, and while you're travelling, you can be detected. Therefore battles can only be carried to locations with a certain distance of one's own base of operations. That limits the conflict to an finite area until one can establish a NEW base of operations closer to enemy territory. That's what I meant by 'the front'.

Infiltration of each other's territory is not going to be terribly common, though it will be far from impossible given the indistinct nature of the participants in this conflict. Security measures will be in place, but not overly intrusive. The idea of the 'mainstream' forces (for lack of a better term) is to convince their respective societies that nothing's really wrong and that a 'subversive' group is just on a bit of a political power trip. Therefore, while they can beef up security a bit in strategic areas, they aren't in a completely militaristic mode. Anyway . . . kind of rambling. I think that answers most of the points you brought up, Survivor.

Now . . . to Pickle . . . Trust me, I understand completely what you were saying about feeling cheated, and I agree with you. Did you ever see the movie 'Primal Fear'? I had one of those moments with that movie. The final plot twist comes in the final 30 seconds and it turns the WHOLE movie on its head. I was so pissed off at the end, I couldn't see straight.

Then I read the book. The BOOK actually pulls it off well. You get to the end of it and you go . . . CRAP! I SHOULD have guessed that, why didn't I? That's a VERY different reaction than "What the hell was THAT?" If I wrote a story like that, I would go for the latter reaction. I would want people to say "Damn, I SHOULD have seen that coming, why didn't I?" If I can't provoke that reaction, I don't want to write it. And I surely won't be writing it from a first person viewpoint. That DEFINITELY wouldn't work. You have to actually lie to the reader that way. If you just use a deep-penetration 3rd person, you can 'observe' your hero's thoughts and lead the reader to some hasty and incorrect conclusions, while still giving them all the information. Many authors do this quite often and it works very well. But it's not always easy to do.

As for your idea . . . I like it. Gonna have to ponder that. I like the whole 'redemption' concept. It almost always makes for a good story with high emotional stakes. If I get nothing else from this thread, that one idea's worth it.

Anyway . . . that's more thoughts. Forgive rambling and poor grammar.

-Nate

Couple of clarifying questions. First, what is the nature of this 'subservient role' and what types of technology are these aliens trading in? Are the two connected (for instance, the technology is a form of neural enhancement/power source/robotic worker in which the aliens have incorperated a remote control device)?

Have the aliens taken any steps to insure that the humans don't actually know the entire plan (for instance, the humans know that the new power source can be turned off by remote, what they don't know is that the radiation from the reactors makes them dependent on a recreational drug supplied by the aliens, without which any humans previously exposed to the radiation will die/go crazy/become sterile)? To what extent has deliberate penetration and manipulation of the human government played a role in making sure that the alien plan succeeds?

Last, if the aliens really have such a comparatively advanced level of technology, why not just conquer/interdict/exterminate humanity? Do they have a philosophy that requires them to show compassion on less advanced races, yet are afraid of the aggressive impulses of humans? Do we actually have something they truly need? Are they just stupidly arrogant enough to risk everything for very little gain?

As for the interstellar tactical model, I was saying earlier that wormholes would work for a defense because they create a bottleneck situation, you can just sit on top of the wormhole exit and blast the crap out of anything that comes through. Blockading a three dimensional region is geometrically more difficult (with a linear blockade, you only ever need enough force to stop the attacker one on one, with a two dimensional blockade, you need essentially that amount times a constant times the radius at which you need to stop them, with a three dimensional blockade the force is multiplied by the square of the radius times the constant--the constant here is determined by the geometry of the protected points). When you're talking about interstellar ships moving faster than the speed of light (you are using FTL here, right?), a three dimensional blockade is simply impossible--no matter how easily and instantly you can detect the attacker he'll get past you unless you outnumber him millions to one...and that only evens the odds, it doesn't come close to making you secure. Even worse, even if you do manage to engage the enemy, he can always just slip away faster than the speed of light if the odds aren't in his favor (unless you engage him somewhere that FTL isn't possible, and why would he be there if he's trying to get past you?).

What you seem to be saying is that this isn't much of a problem since the ships have limited range or can only travel in straight lines or something like that....

Anyway, there are two things that seem inevitable consequences of this. First off, infiltration will be easy, but any local authority would know about the infiltration. This means that while security measures don't have to be general, they will be in effect wherever our infiltrators show up.

Second, and far more important, the war is over information that one side is trying to hold close and that the other is trying to reveal. No humans (except a very tiny minority indeed) are going to be on the side of the alien masterminds. Thus the masterminds must control the media and information supplied to the human governments very carefully, while the dissidents have only to get their message out. Any acts of sabotage, such as they are, must be designed solely with the intention of demonstrating the truth of the assertions being made by the dissidents. For instance, it would do no good to blow up a reactor, the thing to do would be to use the alien remote to turn it off, thus showing that the aliens could do this at any time. But prior to any overt demonstration, there would need to be a dissemination of information about the actual agenda of the aliens.

This is the weak point of the alien masterminds' plan, since if humans have enough accurate information about what is really going on, they will not cooperate. Therefore they will have to exert enormous control over the media. They would envy Hitler's task in keeping the 'final solution' a secret--Hitler had the advantage that he was only planning to exterminate a small minority of the population, about which the rest of Germany (and indeed, the rest of Europe) did not particularly care.

This is just if you are casting the alien masterminds as being the actual bad guys here. If they are not, then they can rely on honest and open discourse to defend their position and actions. The question becomes murky if the poison is a very subtle one indeed (which is why it is important to know just how the aliens are planning to make humans subservient). If, for example, the great mass of humanity will simply benefit in every way from the association--becoming wealthier, more knowledgable, and more free--but the aliens will always have the final say in matters of interstellar government...how is that tyranny?

Anyway, in the scenario as you have presented it, there is no plausible reason for the hero or anyone she recruited to be a double agent unless the masterminds have already caught her. There is also no apparent reason that death would be a likely or even possible outcome of any mission failure, unless by suicide (or euthanasia) to avoid compromising information on the resistance in the event of capture. Unless you are going to posit that the new kid was a double agent even before she recruited him (and this is possible, I suppose) there is simply no reason for him to betray her. Furthermore, there is no reason that the masterminds would leave any double agents free to hide anything about what they were currently doing, which means that every story in which either turns out to be a double agent must of necessity end in utter defeat (think 1984--utter defeat).

There would also seem to be very little reason to steal information/technology/persons from human collaborators, since the masterminds would be actively seeking to avoid putting such materials where it might enlighten their dupes.

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First, what is the nature of this 'subservient role' and what types of technology are these aliens trading in? Are the two connected (for instance, the technology is a form of neural enhancement/power source/robotic worker in which the aliens have incorperated a remote control device)?

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Still up in the air. I didn't want anything quite as direct as aliens trading specific technology which they control.

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Have the aliens taken any steps to insure that the humans don't actually know the entire plan? . . . To what extent has deliberate penetration and manipulation of the human government played a role in making sure that the alien plan succeeds?

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The entire plan is based on the deception of the human government. In fact, the success of the whole plan is based on the tendency of us humans to accept easy falsehoods over hard truths. Especially when provided with a ready-made rationalization for the falsehoods, and no significant benefit to the hard truths. Again, still working on the exact nature of this plan/dynamic, but it seems such a universal truth to me that there has to be SOME way to bring it about plausibly.

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Last, if the aliens really have such a comparatively advanced level of technology, why not just conquer/interdict/exterminate humanity?

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Well, to be honest, I didn't see them being FAR advanced from humanity . . . that wouldn't make much sense. I guess what I pictured is that they have one or two significant areas whey they outstrip humans in terms of technology, but they are otherwise on a fairly even level with them. Thus the need for deception rather than outright conquest. If a direct conquest would deplete the resources of your empire to the point where it would simply collapse upon itself, you have to resort to other methods if you want to be the dominating power in the universe.

Besides which, I kind of envisioned humanity having expanded to the point where an outright conquest would be an incredibly drawn-out affair, even if there was only minimal resistance. So instead, they give a sort of show of force. "Look at our technology . . . we COULD wipe you out if we wanted to, but hey . . . we're nice guys." So the nice guys proceed to sap the little guys' resources to the point where they couldn't fight back if they WANTED to.

That was kind of what I had in mind.

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When you're talking about interstellar ships moving faster than the speed of light . . . a three dimensional blockade is simply impossible

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This is true. But why do you need a blockade? Of what possible use is it for a ship to be simply sailing around in enemy territory for no good reason? It wouldn't do you any good unless you manage to land on an enemy planet or station, or board an enemy ship. Yes, there's surveillance you can do from far away, but that's not the kind of thing I'm talking about. An enemy can easily stop you from landing on a planet or a space station as long as they know you're there. And if they've been tracking you for the last two hundred thousand light years, you're probably going to have a hard time landing anywhere undetected.

See, the whole idea of a blockade is dumb anyway. Even in two dimensions it takes a much larger blockading force to pull it off, even WITH the help of terrain features. There's not much terrain in space and even if there was it's an idiotic endeavor. So you don't defend an entire plane which defines "your territory", you focus your forces on defending certain strategic targets. After all . . . what good does it to an enemy to be able to slip between the planet you control? He can't blockade you, as you've pointed out. If he's out of weapons range, he can't hit you either. And if he wants to infiltrate you, he's gotta find a way to land on your planet.

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Thus the masterminds must control the media and information supplied to the human governments very carefully, while the dissidents have only to get their message out.

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True enough. Which is exactly what's happening in my story. It's much easier to keep a small group of dissidents from spreading "the truth" if your falsehood is far more profitable and much easier to accept.

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Any acts of sabotage, such as they are, must be designed solely with the intention of demonstrating the truth of the assertions being made by the dissidents.

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True enough. And it must be a large enough demonstration, either in terms of quantity or quality, to make the easy lie suddenly harder to deal with than the hard truth.

This is a psychological war. One that's going to be very tough to win.

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They would envy Hitler's task in keeping the 'final solution' a secret.

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I'm not sure there is a 'final solution'. The idea is not to exterminate, but to subjugate. If you can make somebody's existence comfortable enough, even though they're being exploited, what worries do you have. You'll continue to get stronger and stronger, you just have to ensure that they do so at a much slower rate. At some point they'll be UNABLE to resist, and will be FORCED to accept your superiority. This story is about a plan to bring exactly that situation about.

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The question becomes murky if the poison is a very subtle one indeed.

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Exactly. And that subtle poision will be just potent enough to make the alien masterminds the bad guys. At least that was how I envisioned it.

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which is why it is important to know just how the aliens are planning to make humans subservient

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Exactly. Which is why at this point I'm only playing with a short story idea instead of actually writing one . . . or worse, writing a novel. I can clarify my picture of this world without having to know ALL the specifics at this point. I'll kind of let the discovery process evolve slowly.

Anyway, skipping over the double agent thing . . . I'm not planning on doing that unless a plausible storyline suggests itself. I would like to try it if I can, but that's not my best idea by a long shot. Besides, it really doesn't fit the character I have in mind.

And to avoid re-quoting the last two paragraphs you posted, I heartily agree. The only exception I see to the whole pointlessness of stealing from the human collaborators would be that the HUMANS are the ones doing most of the fighting against the resistance. (why would the aliens waste their resources?) Therefore, any important strategic information which would help in a defense would reside primarily with the humans. This is more the scenario I have been envisioning, rather than a great theft of the 'smoking gun' piece of evidence that will end the whole thing.

*ponders for a moment*

WHEW!

Lots of thinking. At least you're making me do that. I think I'm almost there. Just missing one or two important pieces.

-Nate

Once you reach a stellar system that includes planets and moons and so forth, you can shut off your detectable FTL drive and motor around by any number of stealthy and darn near impossible to detect in-system drive types. Also, any planet has a pretty constant barrage of in-falling material, so actually getting a re-entry vector that lets you land undetected on the planet is not a great hardship, unless the defenders spend an inordinate amount tracking and eliminating every single pebble that approaches their planet. Not only that, but if the resources of the system are being exploited, then you have commercial assets spread all over the place which can be compromised and used as infiltration vectors. Therefore the defender must blockade the outer limit of the stellar system, you cannot rely on planetary defenses unless you want to give up on the rest of the system, which means giving up on a huge amount of wealth and constantly going to great expense blowing the crap out of tiny inbound rocks (thousands of times a day).

It is no good to assert that a defender can do this easily, because that is simply not true. Sure, blockades are dumb, but they are sometimes the only course of action that can work.

Anyway, enough of that. Rule one of Interstellar Tactics is that it is easier to attack a fixed point than to defend it, but that's not common knowledge to your readers.

The more important question is one I have already asked, if the great mass of humanity will simply benefit in every way from the association--becoming wealthier, more knowledgable, and more free--but the aliens will always have the final say in matters of interstellar government...how is that tyranny?

Unless the aliens are planning to actually sterilize/lobotomize/exterminate all or most individual humans, there doesn't seem to be a significant downside to being subjegated here, particularly since the alternative would be for humans to be subjegated to a warlike empire dedicated to the overthrow of the existing galactic empire. There appears to me nothing noble or good about simple jingoism, that humans should be ruled by humans even if this means that they have noticably less freedom and personal dignity.

Thus it is critical that the aliens are planning some form of specific harm to a large number of actual humans, not just the largely theoretical and abstract harm of dominating our government, apparently and to all outward appearances for our own good.

I'm not sure that the aliens as you describe them have any clear motive for infringing on the individual rights favored by individual humans, so long as they don't try to set up a competing empire. And without such infringement, it is by no means clear why it is good for there to be a human empire at war with the existing empire.

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Okay, I'm going to jump all over you now about the blockade thing.

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And at this point I'll bow out of the debate, because I think it's a matter of speculative opinion either way. Now I will play my "because I want it that way" card which trumps everything.

Seriously, though. You make good points, and if I were designing a system that were going to detect and destroy enemy spy ships, I'd start seriously re-thinking the whole endeavor.

However, the concept is not quite so implausible to me that I can't believe it would exist SOMEDAY. Given the pace of increase in computer processing power, and the pace of technological advance, who's to say we wouldn't be able to track incredible numbers of objects both threatening and not sometime in the future . . . say three or four hundred years. Even a thousand. It's not so improbable that sci-fi audiences will just roll their eyes and quit reading. After all, most of them believe FTL drives could exist without much evidence at all to support the idea. (There's an actual theory or two at this point, but until we can control gravity, we're stuck with c. ) As long as it doesn't shatter people's belief in the story, I don't see how it could hurt to much to just say "this is how it is."

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if the great mass of humanity will simply benefit in every way from the association--becoming wealthier, more knowledgable, and more free--but the aliens will always have the final say in matters of interstellar government...how is that tyranny?

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A fair question, and exactly one of the dilemmas I plan to bring up. It's the same question "The Matrix" raised, though "the brothers" have done a much less satisfactory job of dealing with that issue that I had hoped for.

Seriously . . . what's wrong with the Matrix? People live their lives normally without any visible interference, it just happens to be all virtual. They are still creating, loving, experiencing, thinking, feeling. What exactly is so wrong with the machines giving people a relatively happy virtual existence in exchange for their own relatively happy existence. It seems to be a fair trade and nobody's getting hurt.

Personally, I don't think there is a difference, and yet NOBODY who watches that movie has a hard time believing the machines are the enemy.

This is my own stab at that same question. If nobody's getting hurt, does it really matter that one group has all the power over another?

So, while I'm going to send you an emphatic , Survivor, at the same time, I do appreciate your input and thoughts. They have helped me clarify my own thinking and gotten me focused on the actual weak spots in my story, which is exactly what I was hoping for, and made me draw the line where I just need to say "this is what I, as the author, choose to have my world be." Whether I'll manage to successfully fix the weak spots or not remains to be seen, but I can make a good stab at it now. And for that, I thank you very much.