Escape Artists

Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on January 11, 2013, 01:39:00 PM

Title: EP378: Scout
Post by: eytanz on January 11, 2013, 01:39:00 PM
EP378: Scout (http://escapepod.org/2013/01/10/ep378-scout/)

By Bud Sparhawk (http://www.budsparhawk.com/)

Read by Corson Bremer (http://corsonbremer.com/)

---

(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif) Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP378_Scout.mp3)
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: matweller on January 11, 2013, 02:54:08 PM
The story's up now too. Sorry, I wanted to get the podcast in the feed ASAP so people turning on their podcatchers in the morning would get it, but I didn't have the story until just now. This should be the last time this is an issue for a while. Thanks for your patience!
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Cutter McKay on January 11, 2013, 10:19:35 PM
I really enjoyed this one. It was descriptive, interesting, and exciting. The aliens were decidedly alien, which is good, though it's annoying that we don't get to find out what it all meant. I like the idea of Falcon being little more than single drone among many, programmed to still believe he's somehow human. It was a bit of a nasty twist at the end.

Something occurred to me after listening that I see as a major flaw in the humans' plan. So they send out this scout to gather desperately needed information about the aliens, even to the sacrifice of its own existence. When that one becomes compromised, they simply send out a new one. They apparently don't bother to inform the new scout about its previous iterations, allowing it to believe it's still an individual. However, with no previous information, what is going to keep the new scout from acquiring the exact same information as the last one? The scout in this story got info on the ships, the sand, and the crystal thingies. With the same mind, chances are very high that the new scout is going to acquire the exact same info, which the humans already have. Unless I'm missing something, I think it's to the humans' detriment that they keep the new scouts in the dark about the old ones and the info already gathered.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: CorsonB on January 12, 2013, 09:26:17 AM
Hi folks,

I just want to personally thank Bud Sparhawk for his help and insights for my interpretation of his story.  He's a great writer and I was privileged to be offered the reading of his story.  I hope I did it justice in his eyes (ears   ;)  ) and in those of all the Escape Pod fans.

I hope to be with you all soon for a new adventure.

Best to all,

Corson Bremer
Voice Actor
 
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Scattercat on January 12, 2013, 06:03:06 PM
Cutter, I, personally, would have assumed that they tell each scout "what we already know" and don't get much into the details of how they know it.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Bdoomed on January 13, 2013, 04:40:30 AM
Not sure if I'm getting it right, but did the transmitters not work at all? I might have just missed it (attention deviated a few times during the story, that's what happens when you drive!), but I got the impression that the ship never got any info from the scout.  That could be why they didn't bother telling the scout anything, they thought he just failed outright, gathered no data, and died.
I remember they were complaining that the lights weren't blinking.  Am I right on this?
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Cutter McKay on January 13, 2013, 06:31:43 AM
Not sure if I'm getting it right, but did the transmitters not work at all? I might have just missed it (attention deviated a few times during the story, that's what happens when you drive!), but I got the impression that the ship never got any info from the scout.  That could be why they didn't bother telling the scout anything, they thought he just failed outright, gathered no data, and died.
I remember they were complaining that the lights weren't blinking.  Am I right on this?

I was under the impression that they did receive the data, but that the story just cut away right before the transmission came in because we, the reader, already knew what the transmission said. I could be wrong.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ElectricPaladin on January 13, 2013, 07:17:43 AM
I loved this one. It was a great example of realistic, psychological, and thoughtful science fiction. I was particularly struck by the skill with which the author explicated Falcon's situation and the realities of the war, gradually introducing us to the way human and shardy technology worked, so that when the big reveal came, it was a horrible not-surprise. The only thing that exceeded the explication was the pacing, which was totally perfect. The fact that the reading was spot on didn't hurt, either.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Bdoomed on January 13, 2013, 08:57:42 AM
Not sure if I'm getting it right, but did the transmitters not work at all? I might have just missed it (attention deviated a few times during the story, that's what happens when you drive!), but I got the impression that the ship never got any info from the scout.  That could be why they didn't bother telling the scout anything, they thought he just failed outright, gathered no data, and died.
I remember they were complaining that the lights weren't blinking.  Am I right on this?

I was under the impression that they did receive the data, but that the story just cut away right before the transmission came in because we, the reader, already knew what the transmission said. I could be wrong.

See I assumed that at first, but then they start up the other clone with the idea that this one might do what the other one failed at doing.  The way it was put led me to believe that they never received anything at all, and they considered Falcon's scouting to have been a total failure.


I should mention that I thoroughly enjoyed this story.  The reading was fantastic too!
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Dem on January 13, 2013, 02:38:43 PM
Sorry folks, I thought this was a grim piece of writing with so many inconsistencies of tense and phrasing that it just looked plain sloppy. The ending was a predictable cop-out whereby naive bits of Falcon are repeatedly despatched to investigate the aliens (armed, one assumes, with anonymised data from previous iterations) so that the aliens themselves never have to be elaborated. Did I hear that this has been published elsewhere? Was another draft used maybe?
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: eytanz on January 13, 2013, 03:07:53 PM
I just noticed that the intro, while mentioning that this story is one in a sequence of stories about the same conflict, fails to point out that the first story in the sequence, Bright Red Star (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1227.0), was previously released as an Escape Pod episode (#136).
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Peter Tupper on January 13, 2013, 06:37:34 PM
The aliens were well-described, but the story telegraphed its ending pretty early on. The generic "happy Christmas" memories were a dead giveaway.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Rhio2k on January 13, 2013, 06:46:58 PM
I just noticed that the intro, while mentioning that this story is one in a sequence of stories about the same conflict, fails to point out that the first story in the sequence, Bright Red Star (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1227.0), was previously released as an Escape Pod episode (#136).

Yeah, I noticed that when I heard the aliens' species name. Good to see a sequel after such a long time. The ending of the first story was...grim. Still listening to this one.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ElectricPaladin on January 14, 2013, 12:25:03 AM
The aliens were well-described, but the story telegraphed its ending pretty early on. The generic "happy Christmas" memories were a dead giveaway.

I actually didn't think they were supposed to be generic. I thought the idea was that there had once been a real Falcon, and those were his real memories, but the Captain was the only one who still cared to think of the scout-things as any remnant of the real Falcon.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Anthelion on January 14, 2013, 12:29:38 AM
The aliens were well-described, but the story telegraphed its ending pretty early on. The generic "happy Christmas" memories were a dead giveaway.

I agree, it was pretty transparent. I liked the core idea as a whole, but it didn't feel like anything fresh  or original.
Voice job well done.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on January 14, 2013, 10:22:41 AM
Whooh. Where do I begin?
How about at the end, or rather, after the end.
After it was all over, I got to thinking. See, the whole time we weren't sure what exactly Falcon was. But then, at the end, we discovered that he (yes, he. I was very attentive to this, and most of the time Falcon was referred to in third-person, except at the end, when it was he.) was just a very clever AI.
See, my train of thought went like this: At first I thought he was a cyborg, dead flesh replaced with cybernetic enhancements a-la Robocop. But that leaves a few details out. Remember, Robocop ate baby food to keep his organics running. As far as I could tell, his organics were his brain, facial flesh, and probably the lungs, heart and intestines required to supply those with nutrients and oxygen. But in our story, we only hear mentions of batteries. No organic power source. And then, at the end, the story begins anew at the same spot. So clearly he was programmed into a fully cybernetic device.
Therefore, I concluded that Falcon was the digital imprint of a human being. That is actually pretty clever, and solves the whole AI problem in a brilliant stroke. We don't need to program a super-smart computer capable of thinking for itself and reaching decisions and conclusions, we have human brain images.
But, and here is where it breaks down, why do we need a mostly dead person to begin with? It sounded like they reconstructed him like Robocop, but that clearly is not what happened. They seem to have discarded his organic body.
So, if the whole deal is just a person's mind in a robot, why do we need the mostly dead guy? Why not perfectly healthy, and awfully clever and well-trained people, who volunteer their minds for this with no danger to themselves? Just copy the mind onto a USB, plug into the robot turtle and go.
Then, there is the whole deal with the author trying to get us to feel all all-this-has-happened-before-and-will-happen-again. But that can't be true, because at the end Falcon was discovered, and self-destructed. Success of his mission depended on the element of surprise. Without it he would not be able to collect valuable data. But now the Tripods know that he was there, and the next mission will be a guaranteed failure.
So that trope broke.

On the other hand, the story was very engaging. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to it and was entirely caught up in it. The mystery of a hostile alien species whose technology is sufficiently different from ours to look like magic. The tension of the mission, and the fact that even though the story was told in first-person, there was no guarantee that the mission would succeed.
It was only after the fact that I began to realize that the plot was so full of holes that you could use it to scrub a space ship.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on January 14, 2013, 10:24:39 AM
I just noticed that the intro, while mentioning that this story is one in a sequence of stories about the same conflict, fails to point out that the first story in the sequence, Bright Red Star (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1227.0), was previously released as an Escape Pod episode (#136).
Broken link in that forum post.
The episode can be found here: http://escapepod.org/2007/12/14/ep136-bright-red-star/
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Scumpup on January 14, 2013, 12:35:56 PM
The aliens were intensely interesting to me.  The robot turtle that thought it was human, much less so.

Quote
But, and here is where it breaks down, why do we need a mostly dead person to begin with?
Hatred was one of the robot turtle's prime motivators.  Not just any old hatred, either, but advanced hatred.  Perhaps to get the kind of hatred that makes hurting the enemy more important than anything, including self-preservation, you need imprints from a mind that has suffered in the most ghastly ways at enemy hands.  I completely agree, btw, that the Falcon scouts were completely robotic and controlled by an AI copied from Falcon the (late) Space Marine.

Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on January 14, 2013, 01:50:51 PM
The aliens were intensely interesting to me.  The robot turtle that thought it was human, much less so.

Quote
But, and here is where it breaks down, why do we need a mostly dead person to begin with?
Hatred was one of the robot turtle's prime motivators.  Not just any old hatred, either, but advanced hatred.  Perhaps to get the kind of hatred that makes hurting the enemy more important than anything, including self-preservation, you need imprints from a mind that has suffered in the most ghastly ways at enemy hands.  I completely agree, btw, that the Falcon scouts were completely robotic and controlled by an AI copied from Falcon the (late) Space Marine.
Geez, I can't believe you blew the chance for a perfectly good Billy Crystal (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9tAKLTktY0) quote. :P

Putting that aside, hatred is a nice motivator, I agree. But I don't think you need it. A scientist who has spent his or her entire life seeking new information, probing the universe, would jump at the chance to have their brain copied into a robot. And that scientific drive of curiosity and getting good results would be a far better motivator than hatred. It would be a much more focused and driven robot.

Also, now that you mention that hatred, it was borne of the fact that the aliens turned human beings into slugs to suck their minds. "If they’d had throats and lungs they’d be screaming in pain."
Why is that any different from what the humans did to Falcon? In fact, one line that made the connection for me was: "Falcon might have been screaming in pain the whole time, but nobody heard because most of the lower face was gone and the exposed vocal chords were charred nubs."
Sounds awfully familiar, no?
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Scumpup on January 14, 2013, 02:28:47 PM

Putting that aside, hatred is a nice motivator, I agree. But I don't think you need it. A scientist who has spent his or her entire life seeking new information, probing the universe, would jump at the chance to have their brain copied into a robot. And that scientific drive of curiosity and getting good results would be a far better motivator than hatred. It would be a much more focused and driven robot.

Also, now that you mention that hatred, it was borne of the fact that the aliens turned human beings into slugs to suck their minds. "If they’d had throats and lungs they’d be screaming in pain."
Why is that any different from what the humans did to Falcon? In fact, one line that made the connection for me was: "Falcon might have been screaming in pain the whole time, but nobody heard because most of the lower face was gone and the exposed vocal chords were charred nubs."
Sounds awfully familiar, no?

The problem with using the type of scientist you describe is that such folks often have moral qualms about killing and funny ideas about the value of sentient life and what we and the aliens could learn from each other that would get in the way of the mission.   The mission is about gathering information for the purpose of utterly destroying an enemy, after all.  Somebody who already has a military mind-set and who also has a deep-seated personal desire to see the enemy destroyed is a better candidate.
Yes, it did sound familiar.  I just chalked it up as a typical ham fisted science fiction attempt at saying Something Profound About The Nature Of War and moved on.  I've seen it too many times in too many stories by too many different authors for it to be deeply moving now.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Scumpup on January 14, 2013, 02:35:23 PM
One of the reasons I, perhaps, wasn't as affected by this story as I might have been is that Falcon reminded me much too vividly of Bert the Turtle of "Duck and Cover" fame.
Quote
    There was a turtle by the name of Bert
    and Bert the turtle was very alert;
    when danger threatened him he never got hurt
    he knew just what to do...
    He'd duck! [gasp]
    And cover!
    Duck! [gasp]
    And cover! (male) He did what we all must learn to do
    (male) You (female) And you (male) And you (deeper male) And you!'
    [bang, gasp] Duck, and cover!'
I kept getting mental flashes of the action in the story done in b&w animation of the same style as 1950's PSA's.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ElectricPaladin on January 14, 2013, 02:36:18 PM
Also, now that you mention that hatred, it was borne of the fact that the aliens turned human beings into slugs to suck their minds.

"If they’d had throats and lungs they’d be screaming in pain."

Why is that any different from what the humans did to Falcon? In fact, one line that made the connection for me was: "Falcon might have been screaming in pain the whole time, but nobody heard because most of the lower face was gone and the exposed vocal chords were charred nubs."

Why, yes, Max e. I believe that was intentional.

Why did they use a human's brain-image to make their scout-turtle?

1) Because they hated the enemy. Hatred is a powerful motivator, and it can blind you to easier solutions. They hated the enemy, and they wanted their machine to do it, too, because it made them comfortable, it made them happy, it reflected their hatred in the wider world in a way that was satsifying.

2) Complex AIs may not be possible in this setting. They certainly aren't possible for the shardies, who had to reduce humans to slugs to predict their actions. An AI running a genetic algorithm could have started predicting humans in a similar amount of time. We still don't know if real self-aware AI is possible - ok, we're pretty sure that it is, but we can't do it yet - but maybe in this world, it isn't possible, or if it is, the humans don't have the technology yet. What they can do, however, is take a human brain-image, pare it back to the important parts, and use that.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ElectricPaladin on January 14, 2013, 02:38:43 PM
ALSO, while I'm at it, to brainstorm some reasons Falcon had to die:

1) The procedure to produce a human brain-scan is invasive and killed him.

2) They tested the procedure on wounded soldiers (who could be spared from the fighting because, well, they wouldn't be doing any fighting ever again), and Falcon just happened to die shortly thereafter.

3) Falcon was wounded, and volunteered for this duty, and happened to die later unrelatedly, but the scout's memories didn't go that far back.

Remember - we don't know how Falcon died. We know the captain is sad about his death, but we don't know how or when it happened. We assumed it had to do with his being injured, because the captain was mulling about it, but I don't believe he ever says as much. We also assume that it has to do with becoming a scout, but that is not clearly said - the captain never says as much, and the scout is an unreliable narrator.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Scattercat on January 14, 2013, 02:58:45 PM
Also, in addition to hatred being a powerful motivator, if you are a cursed man-machine with no functioning body parts to speak of and whose life is a constant torment, you're a lot less likely to ruin your mission with the slightest ounce of self-preservation instinct.  A mind that thought of itself as a living, sentient being inside of an undying metal shell is going to have a very different attitude toward, for instance, burning out the last of its batteries to send one tiny piece of additional, potentially useless data back to base.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ElectricPaladin on January 14, 2013, 03:09:25 PM
Also, in addition to hatred being a powerful motivator, if you are a cursed man-machine with no functioning body parts to speak of...

"Cursed Man-Machine" was the name of my highschool band.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: FlatPepsi on January 15, 2013, 05:30:52 PM
This went a different direction than I expected.

For most of the story, I saw Falcon as an organic being augmented with technology.  The Shardies I expected to see as an inorganic, circuity based lifeform, augmented with organic technology.

In that view, both sides are arriving at the same end from different angles.  Both were then guilt of the exact same crimes - except perhaps the human side asked for voulenteers first. We know not of the Shardies side (join or die?).

The endless cycle of drones remined me of the movie Moon.

All told, I enjoyed this.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Max e^{i pi} on January 15, 2013, 05:49:54 PM
The endless cycle of drones remined me of the movie Moon.
Me too, only I forgot what the name of the movie was. :\
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Unblinking on January 18, 2013, 03:13:35 PM
I enjoyed this one, it kept up the tension all the way to the end, though I didn't totally understand whether his messages weren't being received or what was happening there.

I do wish that it had been told in straightforward chronological order instead of this flashback/flashforward/back/forward--I'm really sick of that structure.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: InfiniteMonkey on January 18, 2013, 08:36:57 PM
My own brain-meat was functioning very well, so I had to listen to this twice.

What struck me, more than the eternal round of drones, was the fact that the humans seem to have adopted the same methods as the enemy. Sure, they weren't altering people to "understand humanity", but it sounds a lot like torturing human bodies. At least in the beginning. Though that might just have been medical procedures. But on a deeper level, they are turning people into something that's Not People.....

And very glad to hear Alasdair is enjoying Mass Effect....
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: FireTurtle on January 19, 2013, 01:27:26 AM
For me this was a tasty morsel of sci-fi nostalgia. I loved the imagery of the military turtle-man-soldier-drone going mano a mano with the great silicon entity. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but neither is most fan fiction, but it doesn't make a paean to an old friend less sweet. Oh great interplanetary science fiction with your creepy implacable foes and die-hard augmented warriors, I salute your tropey awesomeness.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Corcoran on January 20, 2013, 07:08:50 PM
Great, A Follow-Up-Story to "Shards". I was thrilled up to his death, was surprised by the twist in the stoty afterwards. I am too much hoping for Happy-Ends, but sometimes it´s good not to get what you want....
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: FeloniusMonk on January 20, 2013, 10:02:40 PM
I didn't get into this story as much as I would have like - I found Falcon a little bit thin as a character.
On the other hand I'm fascinated by the Shardies and really want to know more about what they are and what they're doing.

I actually appreciated the ending, complete with the allusion that the human commanders treated their wounded exactley the same way the Shardies treated prisoners. Made me thing of Haldeman's forever war and the inevitability of becoming what you fight against, grim but enjoyable.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Gamercow on January 24, 2013, 03:13:35 PM
This one missed the mark for me.  There were certainly moments of tension, but I wasn't that interested all the way through.  Maybe I was just comparing this story to "Shutdown", which was more poignant, succinct, and better paced. 
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Devoted135 on January 24, 2013, 08:29:00 PM
I just noticed that the intro, while mentioning that this story is one in a sequence of stories about the same conflict, fails to point out that the first story in the sequence, Bright Red Star (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=1227.0), was previously released as an Escape Pod episode (#136).

Bright Red Star is a story that still sticks out in my memory, and so I knew this must be the same universe as soon as the aliens were referred to as Shardies. Sadly, I feel this story pales in comparison to the former, though that was setting the bar quite high. I would highly recommend going back to give the original story a listen if you haven't already heard it.

The end of this story was especially chilling for me, and explains why all the techs kept insisting on calling Falcon "it" rather than "him." It really made me reflect on the tension between doing "all that is necessary" to win, and not becoming the very thing you are fighting. Personally, I wonder if I'd rather lose the war then cross a line that you can never come back from.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Devoted135 on January 24, 2013, 08:29:37 PM
The endless cycle of drones remined me of the movie Moon.
Me too, only I forgot what the name of the movie was. :\

That was a seriously unsettling movie!
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: CryptoMe on January 30, 2013, 05:42:10 AM
This one was a miss for me.

For one, it was far too similar to EP376: Shutdown (http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=6684.0) (as Gamercow mentioned). Coming as it did a scant two weeks after, it was just too similar in set up and tone (but minus the cool 12-minute death concept). As a result, I couldn't get into it. After all, hadn't I just heard this?

Also, I had the same action-in-audio problem here as I did in Shutdown. It just didn't work for me and I missed a lot of details. In fact, I missed so much that when I came to the forums and started reading the comments on Scout, I wasn't sure I had heard the same story. So, I went back and relistened. And guess what, I was still missing a lot of the details, even after a second listen!   

So, in short, this one didn't work for me.

Next week, I will look forward to more words in a different order..... :)
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: El Barto on February 10, 2013, 02:12:12 PM
Was I the only one who thought that near the end Falcon seemed to learn that the small diamonds were babies of the alien species?  This passage made me think that when he touched one, the nannies came running to protect them:

My first diamond lies within a few hundred meters, a smooth crystalline gem resting in a glassy divot.   When I view the interior in the ultraviolet bands I discover fracture planes and splinters of fibers.  In Infrared there’s a slight heat source near the center.  I can see no appendages as I record every aspect before I attempt a sample.

The mere touch of the crystal’s surface makes it flare a brilliant orange.   Instantly I feel the pad-pad-pad of racing feet and see a dozen tripods emerge from the forest’s edge.  Closer even than that I hear the shattering of a million dishes as the nearby carpet changes course to flow in my direction.


I enjoyed the story very much overall, though I too was confused about the apparent failing of all his data packs.  He obviously made his final transmission successfully but somehow the others didn't make it through, and his entire mission wound up being not only useless but possibly harmful in that he was presumably discovered and tortured or otherwise reverse engineered - a sequel that would not be pleasant.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: caladors on February 11, 2013, 12:49:59 PM
Perhaps it just my lack of knowledge when it comes to American accents but, to me this read made it sound to me like.
"Obama vs the evil aliens!"

Who knows there is most properly a cheap video with such a title... Most properly political too, not like a reverse Bad Dudes at all or whatever that video game was where you actually played the mayor or something but he was like a WWE wrestle.
Anyway to the actual thoughts on I remember the universe this came from but it didn't at all have the same feel to me. In the last story there was an almost visceral feel of desperation, hatred and anger. This however for all of it's talk of hating the enemy didn't come off the same way. This may be because it was a scout mission and as such 'the unit' wasn't actually out for blood, his purpose was more meaningful. It just didn't have the same impact in the last one I was just like "you're going to fry you shardy bastards" I felt for humanity for how 'we' had been wronged.

In this the, same crime (humans in jar in a ship) was what made me realize it was in the same universe but I just didn't feel the same. I am like ok so your fighting chandlers, ok? I mean if David Attenborough had of being excitedly been telling me about this in hurried breaths I would be cool alien biology 101. Instead it was the forgotten realms tour guide of science fiction. Look at this world there is Elminster and Water Deep. Ok cool I understand you have a setting and it's cool but tell me the god damn story. Ok so it's a revenge story minus the revenge part and your life is full of suck cause your machine now. I felt no emotional connection to it.

I think the problem is I should like it. I mean I love Lain and Dues Ex which are all about, what makes us human, if we don't have an arm are we human? Sure. What about a brain, ehhh little harder to answer... I love revenge stories they always have such visceral feel you can connect, these people wronged you and revenge is the only answer. I love the discovery story where you find out something horrid about 'the enemy' be that their worse than everyone says there just like us whatever. So many elements of this story I should have liked but I just felt disconnected. If that was the emotional state the author was aiming for you hit a home run.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: SF.Fangirl on February 24, 2013, 10:36:35 PM
Not sure if I'm getting it right, but did the transmitters not work at all? I might have just missed it (attention deviated a few times during the story, that's what happens when you drive!), but I got the impression that the ship never got any info from the scout.  That could be why they didn't bother telling the scout anything, they thought he just failed outright, gathered no data, and died.
I remember they were complaining that the lights weren't blinking.  Am I right on this?

I was under the impression that they did receive the data, but that the story just cut away right before the transmission came in because we, the reader, already knew what the transmission said. I could be wrong.


See I assumed that at first, but then they start up the other clone with the idea that this one might do what the other one failed at doing.  The way it was put led me to believe that they never received anything at all, and they considered Falcon's scouting to have been a total failure.


I should mention that I thoroughly enjoyed this story.  The reading was fantastic too!

This was the one big negative for me.  Were they or weren't they receiving his messages?  The impression I got was "no," until the point that they knew exactly when he terminated. Didn't that info have to come from Falcon's signal?  If they got the info, why ready another scout.  This is the one point that left me wondering, but not in a good way.  I feel like the author left something critical out (or I missed it but if so I am not the only one apparently).
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: SF.Fangirl on February 24, 2013, 10:43:50 PM
Also, now that you mention that hatred, it was borne of the fact that the aliens turned human beings into slugs to suck their minds. "If they’d had throats and lungs they’d be screaming in pain."
Why is that any different from what the humans did to Falcon? In fact, one line that made the connection for me was: "Falcon might have been screaming in pain the whole time, but nobody heard because most of the lower face was gone and the exposed vocal chords were charred nubs."
Sounds awfully familiar, no?

Saw this one coming about halfway through the story - that what the humans did to Falcon is just as bad as the aliens would do to a human.  In fact I kind of wondered if that's what had happened and Falcon was actually scouting against the the humans with perhaps his sensors or brain fooled into thinking they were his enemy.  So I wasn't completely surprised when the story looped back around with another Falcon.

I think this was kind of the point of this story - questioning if we (as the good guys) have become as bad as our hated enemy.
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: ogopogo on March 15, 2013, 01:15:31 AM
Hearing the story the first time, it seemed to me that the captain had a relationship with Falcon; the kind of relationship that would be unprofessional to have between a commanding officer and a subordinate. It wasn't until I read the comments that I changed my mind about the story.  I now think the captain and Falcon may have both marines when they knew each other and the Falcon scouts have been around long enough that the captain was able to climb the ranks from marine to captain.  Thinking about it like that it makes more sense to me why the captain was so defensive when Falcon was referred to as "it" instead of "he."
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: childoftyranny on April 11, 2013, 11:43:23 PM
Once again the end result was me wanting to know more about the aliens than caring about the people and not-people of the story, which ought to be kind of sad, but when you get into these introspective military questions it can sometimes get overwhelming.

Maybe I just missed it, but did the Shardies do anything with the silicate once they dropped it, I got that they collected the other minerals but this seems a rather perplexing method to collect materials. I was actually pondering the idea of an alien species whose goal is to redact other aliens from planets, removing colonies to return them to what they were originally during this story, which might've been more interesting to me.

This is the one where the reality of hearing Oubliette, as tounge ad cheek as it was, then Shutdown, and then this struck me as curious. This one is certainly not pro-military in the way that Shutdown could have been, since being a bio-robot or whatever is probably not most people's dream! Before I started typing this, I realize that an interesting twist would be to assume that the captain is also a human image, where his relationship to the turtle soldier is real, and continuous in a way that the human crew doesn't feel.

One thing in the story that missed me was why the aliens used the humans to begin with, I understand that once they did the aliens actions became more human, but is that desirable, is thh best way to fight humans to think like them? I know that understanding your enemy is supposed to be important, but it seems like the aliens were doing exceptionally well at just blowing humans away that it seems odd for them to suddenly need us to defeat us.

Alas, I didn't listen to quite enough stories this time to entirely fill the front comment page with my comments!
Title: Re: EP378: Scout
Post by: Agent_137 on May 29, 2013, 08:33:21 PM
Bright Red Star was the first Escape Pod story that I heard. It hooked me and I've been listening along ever since. So I was really excited to hear another story set in the same universe. It's still one of my all time favorite stories on Escape Pod (hard to beat the feel of your first time).

Scout was just as unsettling as I expected and wanted it to be. It made me relate to the protagonist and his compatriots, question their methods, and then feel a small hollow victory along with them.


I looked on Bud Sparhawk's site to find more in this universe. Looks like there are 3 others so far, besides Bright Red Star and Scout:
The Glass Box (Appeared in So It Begins, January 2009 Created July 2007 Sold: May 2008 Words: 5,000)
Cybermarine (Appears in Defending the Future, December 2010  Created: December 2009 Sold: February 2010, Words: 5,500)
Hard Choices (Appears in the BEST LAID PLANS anthology (Dark Quest Books)  Created November 2011 Sold April 2012 Words 5,200.)

p.s.
Normally I don't post because I listen to Escape Pod in order and I'm 5 months behind, but I really wanted to say thanks for this story.