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I've been away for a while. When the rejection slips pile up, I find my thoughts turning to other things. But I finished a short story today and wondered if anyone would like to read and critique it. Here's the first thirteen.
The first word spoken by an alien to a human was “goodbye”. John Cartwright had been assigned, by lot, the job of listening to the Very Large Array on opening day. It wasn’t that big a deal. Nobody expected success the moment the array came on-line and, in any case, people all over the world would be listening in for the first few hours. Still, John felt a degree of excitement as, on his large computer screen, he watched the clock in Houston sweep past 3:20 AM. The Very Large Array was in the asteroid belt, and so technically John was not the first person to hear the message from space – dozens of scientists in the asteroids had heard it hours ago. Lois and the children were asleep upstairs.
The first line's a good hook, but I found much of what followed in apparent conflict with the second line, about John being assigned the job of listening. With so many other people listening too it's hard to imagine what John's task is. Minor point also: was 3:20 the moment it was switched on? The switch to Lois and the children is rather abrupt and seems disconnected with what went before.
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