| | Admirable work; I enjoyed the theme of the story, that benevolence among friends and value-exchange in the form of gifts are indeed characteristics that reinforce one's own self-interest and advance one's happiness.
Thank you, Mr. Stolyarov. I had written this on Christmas Eve of 2003. I couldn't sleep, I was bored, and I decided to drag out my laptop and do a bit of writing. I wanted a holiday story that didn't reek of altruism, one that captured my belief that Christmas should be about celebrating one's life and friendship.
My observations thus far suggest a blend of a contemporary setting and fantasy elements.
I wouldn't call the year 2112 contemporary (or 2101, when "First Solstice" takes place), but you're very close.
* References to Ayn Rand, Aristotle, New York University, and the Ranger Training Corps seem to suggest that the world of this story is derived from (or chronologically follows) the real world.
* But other passages, concerning, for example, the man-eating lizard, earning gold for its defeat, and the Nursemaids of Reason suggest a parallel world which is only alluded to in dialogue but not given direct explication in the given story.
Actually, the truth about my created world is that it's set in one of our world's possible futures. One in which tribal/religious conflicts grew ever worse until all-out war broke out in the year 2045, a war that raged until 2056. The best and most rational people fled to the experimental city Asgard at the South Pole, a city built with nanotechnology as a template for cities on other planets: an enclave of humanity in an inimical environment. They hid while the rest of humanity destroyed itself with biochemical weapons and the occasional nuke.
Fortunately, Asgard remained untouched by the war and when it ended the survivors began to gradually reclaim the Earth. By 2090, human society had risen from the ashes and a stable foundation was laid to re-settle the world.
Of course, Rand would probably disagree with my including a reference to her in my work, but she's dead and can't complain. The fact that people still read her and discuss her work 20 years after her death seems reason enough to include her.
Glimpsing through your descriptions of your book-length projects, I see that setting the story in the fantasy world was indeed your intention. But the characters also seem to lead "this-worldly" lives (as evidenced by Morgan's playing a guitar and participating in a music group, though one which aims to produce more rational works than typically encountered in today's culture).
Actually, I've always thought of Starbreaker as more of a soft science-fiction tale than outright fantasy. After all, people in my "fantasy" world can live at least 150 years, artificial intelligences interact with human beings as equals, and you can catch a maglev train from New York to London that skims over the Atlantic Ocean and takes you to Victoria Station from Grand Central in three hours.
In fantasy, explanations aren't given for anything out of the ordinary the author chooses to include. You're to assume that "it's magic" and either suspend disbelief or not. I, on the other hand, will try to explain everything. I might have demons in my story, but they are not supernatural. They have limits and operate by physical principles knowable by man. For example, a demon's body is composed of plasma contained by an electromagnetic field that acts as a "skin". If this skin is sufficiently disrupted, the demon's substance disperses and it dies.
Given references to the Nursemaids of Reason, an organization that (for what I know) has not yet had time to develop in our era, I would guess that the chronological setting of the story is somewhere in the near future. Am I correct to infer this?
As I said, Starbreaker takes place in the year 2112. I suppose that's close enough to the "near future", eh?
If it is your intention to reveal the setting gradually through multiple short stories and the novel that you are currently working on, this may be a useful means of establishing suspense for the reader and a motivation to discover more about the world you have depicted. Right now, I am quite curious myself. Is this in fact what you plan to do?
Yes, I'll be revealing the setting in the context of my characters' actions and their interactions with each other. I'll only give details of the setting when it's necessary to give context to the characters' actions. For example: most people use swords instead of guns. Why? The gunmakers have agreed to sell their wares at an extremely high price and require the purchase and installation of monitoring equipment. The equipment also helps the gun-owner with targetting, but everything the owner sees is recorded while he has the gun in his hand. Hence, most people avoid using guns for privacy reasons.
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