X. Ho Yen's Author Newsletter, 02 September 2019
Greetings Dear Subscribers to X.HoYen's Author Newsletter, working to get MINIMUM SAFE DISTANCE properly published!
02 Sep 2019 (last one was sent 11 Aug 2019)
MSD Status
I need your help with something. This is not marketing busywork to "stay engaged" with the (prospective) audience, it's a genuine request for assistance/perspective.
The querying process is a long road. There are many, many agents to try.
But I've begun to get the sense that my query, my description of MSD, gives agents the wrong idea. I worked on it long and hard, and revised it many times. Now I'm thinking maybe it still isn't good enough.
Sci fi still has a reputation to overcome, and hard sci fi even more so. The general assumption is that hard sci fi is written by technical types (like me) who just want to show off their knowledge and skimp on the human elements of the story (UNlike me). I wonder if maybe my original query is failing to overcome such prejudices.
So I've begun to re-think it with that in mind. Would you be interested in weighing in on my proposed re-write? Does it sound better than the one on my web site, more about the human stuff and yet still full of sci fi goodness?
Here's my proposed revision. With the above concern in mind, do please consider letting me know if you think it's better or worse than the original:
In the twenty-second century, autistic Laurence of the Canadian Space Agency, her would-be murderer, Matt, a broken and violent zealot from the former US, and others around the world and in orbit squirm under the weight of relentless forces of nature. Laurence spends her life learning to cope with her autistic brain. Abused Matt goes down a rabbit hole of violence and hate. Then things get difficult.
A cosmological cataclysm will destroy this entire region of the universe. Two high-nanotech “SelfMade” beings have been observing Earth from the Moon on their migration to minimum safe distance. When they learn that the cataclysm will happen much sooner than originally expected, they fight over the moral course of action—try an untested procedure that could save the solar system, or definitely don't because it could trigger a similar cataclysm.
Their battle spills onto Earth, already ravaged by climate change and overpopulation. The SelfMade wrestle and scheme as governments try to destroy them. They weaponize and polarize humanity by technologically enhancing certain humans susceptible to controllable narratives, creating Enhanced Inheriteds. Millions weep as the EIs rampage.
Drawn into the conflict, Laurence and Matt must reach minimum safe distance from human nature itself—their own, and in the form of the EIs. Chased into the wilds, they struggle to decide the fate of the solar system, distill the meaning of sentience, and discover the value of their own lives.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.
Other Writings
The Australian Writers' Centre put out a challenge on 29 August: write a story that uses EXACTLY 29 words, begins and ends with the SAME word, and includes the names of at least TWO countries in it.
This was my entry:
"Moonlight over Nicaragua propelled their hearts. Moonlight over Mexico sped them along. Then in the land of the free, the home of the brave, they wished again for moonlight."
I'm proud of that one. We'll see if they like it.
On another topic, I recently finished reading Malka Older's "Infomocracy". It was pretty good. Anyone who can make election fraud and political machinations compelling gets kudos from me. But I just want to say - I personally think MSD is at least as good a novel. It's just that MSD is more literary than commercial. I play with structure, time, and point of view a bit, mostly in the first half of the book, in order to get under the reader's skin about what the SelfMade are, and what personhood/sentience means. That makes MSD somewhat challenging. But art should be challenging!
Standard stuff
Please do share the URL with fellow sci fi fans, especially anyone who enjoyed The Martian or is enjoying The Expanse. Surely Minimum Safe Distance would appeal to the same audience.
Thanks for your support,
XHY
https://XHoYenAuthor.com
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