I'd suggest skipping the first paragraph, because all it says is that your setting is somewhere on a planet. That would leave you starting with:

"[A] strange house atop a platform with wheels[. It] rolls steadily across the plains, churning and hissing as the mechanisms that power it whir.
A figure sits inside the house, resting in an armchair. He is old, but the life is still vibrant in his eyes, and he is still strong."

Now I am curious to find out why this man is running around an empty landscape in a wheeled house.

Present tense is tough to write, and I find it a bit off-putting. Are you sure you can't use past tense?

NitPicks:
- "strange" doesn't tell me anything except that this house is not the usual type of vehicle for this world. How is it strange? It's not a strong word to use up front.
- "figure" is also very generic. You have a chance to choose a more descriptive word.

That's enough for now. Keep at it! I want to see where you're going with this.

Even prologues have to work as mini-stories. By taking a cinematic approach, an easy thing to do, you keep the reader out. Prologues that work, for me at least, connect me with someone. I'll suspend disbelief and trust (if the writing is good enough) that the mini-story will link to the rest of it at some point. But if you are just using the prologue to give us a history lesson, you probably want to cut it.

The first 13 jump a lot too. First we have the setting. Then there's the strange house, then a zoom into the house and the man. If he's the important character, show this through his eyes. Get inside his head. Then, I'll be compelled to read more. Right now I'm wondering who is telling me "life is still vibrant in his eyes and he is still strong."

This second attempt is much better than the last one.
Here are some things I picked up:

"To tell the truth, he is not welcome in many places."

It is a little too dramatic voice and it is unnecessary. When I first started writing, it was a bad habit of mine to write with an overly dramatic voice. I found out that the simple, plain facts are more powerful than the eloquent voice.

This idea is good, but should be a thought of the character. The 'narrator' is simply telling the story, picking out certain facts and ideas by the characters actions or thoughts, by the events he chooses to tell about or emphasis, or by drawing attention to certain aspects of the scene.

So, you can drop phrases like 'to tell the truth'. It is good when putting your ideas together, but not for a finished work. The sentence will do just fine without it

"He realizes that he may be the last one, the only one left who has any tie to an older world, something that has been left behind."

The idea is good, but must be rephrased, combined, or summarized. Perhaps -He knows that he is a fossil of the past in a world that no longer welcomes his ideals.

Something like that. I think that it is good, with a very good idea behind it, and would edit more, except I'm knew to this whole thing too. I hope my ideas have been some help.

All the books say one should avoid present tense unless you know what you're doing. One reason for using present tense, as I understand it, is to lend immediacy to action. This story appears to be evolving quite slowly so, do you really need present tense? If it's just to separate the prologue from the story, a line break or chapter break would do it.

The opening is intriguing, but needs work as the others have said.

One thing bothers me. The first revision seems to suggest a world that's inside-out, the planet being the inside of a sphere which surrounds its sun. If that's the case, it's entirely lost in the second version and could be something of a hook. (I imagine you'll know that Niven did something similar with Ringworld. That doesn't mean don't do it, but do expect comparisons.)

The first version suffers from some superfluous adjectives like "miraculous"--it wasn't, it was gravity that held it in place according to the narrator--and "strange"--in what way strange?

In the second revision, the narrator appears to know much but tells little, and thus fails to draw this reader in. Who is the figure? Which city? What divides the world? Why can't he take sides? What does he feel and know that the others don't? To set a few questions in the opening is fine, but to provide only questions and nobody to identify with doesn't work, at least, not for me--why should I care about some unspecific questions?

If the world is the inside of a sphere, and the MC is a traveller from another planet (that's my theory on the basis of the first two revisions) then I'm intrigued by the concept, but not yet drawn in by the opening.

Edited to add: BTW a cinematic-style opening might be okay. Clive Cussler does them often and I think they serve well to establish a scene. But then, I'd probably like you to zoom close into the character's POV.

Hope this helps,
Pat

The fact that the planet is inside-out is revealed around line 16 in the second version, which isn't posted here. I know of Niven's Ringworld; mine is not a ring, however, but a full sphere. Totally enclosed.

I wanted it to be a bit vague. I move off of this character for awhile onto the real main character; I just wanted this to sort of point the way, to let readers know that there are other things at work and to let them know that everything is going somewhere. The narrator does know more than is explained, but it gets revealed along the way.

That's my defense for doing things the way I am. If you all still think it needs more work, please let me know, and thanks for the help.

Perhaps you know this, but I think it's common for new writers to reveal things a little at a time in the belief that this adds tension to the story. It doesn't. Tension comes from the reader identifying with the MC's worries and concerns, wondering about things the MC too doesn't know. When the narrator chooses to make us wait for information, for no obvious reason, we lose faith in the narrator.

It is indeed vague, and therefore sets an expectation that the story too will be vague.

quote:

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The fact that the planet is inside-out is revealed around line 16 in the second version, which isn't posted here. I know of Niven's Ringworld; mine is not a ring, however, but a full sphere. Totally enclosed.

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I have some major plausibilty issues with this situation.

A Dyson sphere works (theoretically, of course) because it encloses a solar system, but it still has some major problems.

http://tinyurl.com/knrgb

Your inside-out planet strikes me as completely unfeasible.

Anyway. Would any of you be willing to read through the first few pages? I'd like to get opinions on how the introduction works in context with the beginning.

If it wasn't an actual star that would reduce some of the problems, it could be some sort of ultra-bright fluorescence...or magic!

You're still left with gravity problems.

Also the mass of the shell (if it was a planet) would want to crash together together (to form a normal planet) and so you would something to stop that from happening. External collisions by comets etc. in its early history would have made its long term survival nil. The earth suffered a serious bombardment for 0.2 billion years called the Late Heavy Bombardment.

I can't picture how something as large as a planet can end up as a hollowed out shell, and this to have happened naturally. It doesn't compute, Spock.

I think possibly you should go with an artifical world for this. (made by an extinct race, if necessary--then they don't need to know all the why's and wherefore's)) That is if you plan to sell the story as hard sci-fi.

If the environment was completely artificial like a hollowed out asteroid you can solve some of these problems.

Light source: artificial, heat exchange mechanism to remove some of the generated heat if there is some.

Gravity: Spin the asteroid; centrifugal forces would create a gravity equivalent (but not gravity).

With regard your actual opening; it isn't a story opening; it's scene notes to a director.

Write the scene from a defined POV. If you can't do that, then start somewhere else.

I wouldn't read on, not because of the inside-out planet problems, but because of how the intro is written.

[This message has been edited by skadder (edited November 09, 2008).]

I think it's important to understand the nature of the story before taking the science apart too much; the most improbable science can be believable if its story is told with passion and verve. I'll read it if you like, and if you can wait a week or so for a response.