It’s time for Writing Battle! Again!

Alas, I can say nothing about my story until after the peer-based judging has concluded.

So, suffice it to say, I wrote a 250-word short story and turned it into the contest. Yay! Results are due in a month. We’ll see what we do!

2024.08.27

Well, the contest is nearly over, and the stories on Writing Battle can now be shared!

My speculative sci-fi story, Sēng of Titan, takes place in the distant future, where Man has populated the solar system.

Starfall Junction is a human settlement on Titan, Saturn’s moon.

Thousands of years prior, the Precursors populated Titan and terraformed the moon to support human life. But when the climate regulators break down, the ancient technology is a mystery, and nobody understands how to fix it. Unmanaged, temperatures climb and threaten to kill all of the townsfolk.

Suddenly, a robot monk appears — Precursor design — and insists it can help restore the local weather patterns.

However, the antagonist, Rex Thorne, doubts the robot's capabilities and distrusts Precursor technology, reminding the townsfolk that Precursor tech’s what got everyone into this mess in the first place.

And in the end, it takes the courage and imagination of a young boy to set things right.

My prompts for the contest were Sci-Fi Western, Monk, and Flute. There were 401 stories submitted in the genre, and I’m in a cohort with 50 other stories. Huge competition.

My piece plays off some old tropes to shortcut the imagination.

• I start with a Chinese monk using martial arts to defend himself in a Western setting. Fans of the Kung Fu television show should immediately feel at home.

• Speaking of TV shows, it is also a slight nod to fans of Firefly, who might like their SciFi Space-Opera-Westerns with Chinese cultural overtones. I wish I had more space to explore that in this contest, but I didn’t. :)

• I use dialogue to convince the reader we’re in a Western setting, opting for words and phrasing that reinforce stereotypical mannerisms.

• Role stereotypes are conveyed through names like Doc Hayes and Rex Thorne.

• With the monument, Sēng meditates before a pond stocked with koi, reflecting on ornamental ponds in China and serving as a shortcut to show abundance. There’s so much water now we fill up ponds with fish.

I allude in the story to the fact that the Chinese were the Precursors who terraformed Titan, and the monk was built to serve as “roving technical support” — a failsafe for correcting localized weather patterns through frequency activation with a dizi (a Chinese flute). I try to move through two points in time quickly to show what was and what became of Starfall Junction after the monk’s intervention.

I try to touch on several themes:

• Hope and Resilience: The townsfolk of Starfall Junction cling to hope despite their dire circumstances, finding solace and strength in the robot monk's ability to bring rain and renewal.

• Harmony with Nature: The robot monk's use of a bamboo flute to harmonize elements and control weather emphasizes living in balance with nature, even through advanced technology, preserving Chinese “Precursor” culture and tradition.

• Legacy and Memory: The story explores legacy through the robot monk's lasting impact on the town as Eli passes down the tale to his granddaughter, ensuring that the memory of the monk's deeds endures.

• Resistance to Tech: Rex Thorne’s resistance is common in today’s society, fearing tech (or change) from what might come from experimenting with technology, even when all other avenues have been exhausted.

When I received the prompts, I wanted to write an “epic” sci-fi story in 250 words. The bold, simple title riffs on the history of science fiction, like “John Carter of Mars.”

I wanted to offer more than a slice of time in a saloon—revisiting where I felt others in the competition might go. Instead, I wanted to paint a picture of a history that happened before and a legacy that remains even after the reader finishes the story.

The story is drenched in old and new; forgive the pun. My descriptions of the robot (even its name, Sēng, meaning ‘Buddhist Monk’) use vocabulary to represent ancient things and traditional ideas in Chinese culture. In contrast, I juxtapose that against modern ideas like nanotechnology and network multiplier effects. The robot uses frequency harmonics from its flute to “speak” with dormant nanoparticles, which then — networked — communicate to trillions of other nanoparticles to “churn” the local atmosphere. In theory, all it’d take is a single command issued by the robot’s flute to signal a chain reaction to change the local weather pattern. I imagined the lonely robot — or maybe a fleet of robot monks — walking the moon’s surface to meet up with other townships that experienced similar hardships.

Like good sci-fi, I wanted to explore concepts relevant to today, such as the resistance to change/tech, the harmony with nature even when not on Earth (a very Buddhist concept), and the human propensity for inspiring imagination and courage … when Eli steps in front of a loaded gun to protect the robot.

Titan is an exciting setting because it’s the second-largest moon in our solar system, has liquids, and is the only moon with an atmosphere. You wouldn’t want to live there today, but a terraformed environment is certainly possible. Locked in a geosynchronous orbit with Saturn, Titan’s 16-day “days” and 16-day “nights” were something I wanted to explore in the piece but couldn’t cram in.

I hope it does well!

We’ll see … you never know with Writing Battle!

2024.09.06

Ugh! Out of the gate, my story did terribly! My worst ever. Only two wins out of six contests …

… effectively killing the story. I fear I did something massively wrong in this piece and will have to reevaluate what I submit in the future to Writing Battle. My minimalist style did not win the day! Sigh … a learning opportunity, I suppose.

The 4th round was kinder to me, winning both duels and giving me 4 points total, but reaching the finals at this point is a mathematic impossibility.

And in round 5, only one duel out of two.

Harsh! It's my worst-performing Writing Battle to date. I look forward to the feedback, but I can only presume my Chinese Western didn’t resonate with people. Goodness.

Well, maybe better results next time!
R