Review of Whistle in the Wind, by Ben
Okay Ben, so according to your note, you’re interested in a “big picture” review, so I won’t waste your time telling you how envious I am at the speed in which you can put out a smooth, well written piece. And this was certainly that.
However, I must concur with Fadz that the story falls a bit short in comparison to the tens if not hundreds of previously published works that explored essentially the same idea. I fear your plot is equally as trite as, say, orcs.
So that I’m not just rehashing what’s already been said, I’ll stick with the science portion of the equation. Unfortunately, there are flaws. Now, scientifically flawed stories litter the genre, of this there is little doubt. However, you are still required, as the author, to convince the reader of the plausibility of your science, no matter how far “out there” it may be. This is why guys like Ben Bova can populate planets like Saturn convincingly, while others try miserably to tailor life as we know it to exist in the harsh, lethal environments that exist on our neighboring planet cousins. It’s fine to say life exists on Saturn. Or could exist. But they most certainly would not be made like anything we would immediately recognize as life. And I doubt they would have tails.
You have to remember that Saturn is a gaseous planet, and only has a very small solid hot core, the rest of it is a sea of varying density, consisting of Hydrogen and helium, and less than 1% other trace gases. There is water, so life is conceivable for a hardcore science fiction enthusiast. However, as the atmosphere is dense like a liquid near the core, and gradually becomes less so the higher up you travel, and there is no solid ground to build on, any life would be free floating and relegated to a relatively thin layer of depth, somewhere between the glowing hot core below and the extreme cold of the upper atmosphere. It would also have to be able to withstand winds of up to 1,000 mph, so rather than being a solid entity, so to speak, it might develop more like a network of entities, small enough to allow the gas molecules to pass through it, or to simply ride the winds like a living kite. It wouldn’t look, feel, think, or act like anything you’ve ever seen.
If I’m going to believe your world can exist, I first need to know you understand what you’re up against.
Another issue, just off the top of my head, involves Saturn’s rings. The widely accepted theory is that the rings are the remnants of a moon that got too close and was shredded by Saturn’s gravity. It’s believed this was a--cosmically speaking--relatively recent event, only a million or so years ago. So depending upon the length of the journey (remembering that you are bound by the speed of light), the rings may not have been there when the aliens left their home. Which brings me to the whole issue of time. Depending, again, on where the aliens are from, when they look at Sol, or earth, they are looking back in time. The farther away they are the farther back in time they’re looking. Before I realized you were going the Saturn route, I thought you were using that concept to say that a race of dinosaurs was coming to earth looking for an older race that once existed on earth, a race of intelligent dinosaurs. Still trite, but more workable in 1,000 words, I think.
I hope this helped.
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