SHELEG@SRI-AI.ARPA (10/04/85)
From: SHELEG@SRI-AI.ARPA **** flame **** For reasons I do NOT understand, it takes at least a week for me to receive sf-lovers messages (a fact I find strangely appropriate for an SF bboard) and even longer to send them (Perhaps a long time going out and then a long time coming back?). And before anyone asks -- no, I don't live on Neptune. Even given this lag time, I'm going to try and reply, or rather to add to, the note about the story in Omni where the Soviets repeatedly kill prisioners. **** spoiler **** The point to the Omni story was the same as every story -- The conflict and it's resolution. The story evolves like this: We start with an internal conflict. How is the main character going to react to the torture? The corrupt and hypocritical Soviet government is too inflexible and omnipresent to really be involved. This fact is what helps the story go. When in the past has there been no where to run? (I mean at a global level) When have the rebels had no place to flee? This may also be a reference to the U.S.A and the (nasty) U.S.S.R. taking the rest of the world down with them should their egos flair. Anyway, at this point the situation looks hopeless. The soviet system controls the entire world, and our intrepid hero has been imprisoned and is being murdered continually until he becomes a "good" citizen. **** FLAME **** At this point in the story, I wish I could force everyone to put the magazine down until they think of their own ending which brings everything into focus, ties up all the loose ends, is plausible, is drawn from principles inherent in the story, and is even happy (or at least hopeful). When you give up in total frustration, pick the magazine back up and see how good the author really is. **** Spoiler **** After a while our hero becomes immune to murder (so to speak). And when asked to apologize for his past deeds, (motivated by being murdered a bunch of times) he coldly and boldly tells an audience that the Soviet government is as nasty as it really is. Now our nasties are really in a state. People are starting to listen to our hero and murdering him has become both expensive and ineffective. They finally decide to do something they rarely do. They put him on a space craft and send him toward a planet that might be habitable. AHA! Now the rebels have some place to flee. Now they have a place to mass and build an army. By not dealing with our hero they have in fact sealed their own doom. The reader is left with the feeling that the nasty Soviets will one day be destroyed, that all is right with the world, and that God is in his Heaven. I love good fiction, -Bob -------