This is a short commentary on a narration written by one of my classmates, Juancho Valera.
Juancho’s story is about Hermes 6677, the 6,677th machine designed by humans to explore Earth-like planets. It is a self-replicating drone with physical and functional properties that are very similar to a virus. The main mission of all the Hermes drones is to find planets or moons which could be a substitute for the already dying Earth of human beings. Hermes 6677 died in a nearby moon that’s a size of a Jupiter-like planet. It died whilst carrying its mission which in his later note, ended as an information used by humans to find another home.
This story is in line with the world building activity we did in our class. We were divided into groups in which we created our own world and came up with different imaginative ideas and suggestions. We were asked to make stories about the worlds we created.
I’m going to make some suggestions and a little tweaking in Juancho’s work:
First, taking a quick glance at his story, your eyes can be easily glued to the first page because of the big chunk of text written on it. It’s as if it’s going to take forever once you read it. The problem with having big chunks of texts is that when you take your eyes off it for even just a second, you won’t be able to read the continuation unless you find the last word you read easy. In line with this, I suggested that he separate different groups of ideas in that big paragraph.
Second, the use of “earth like” should be Earth-like because Earth is a proper noun and when you use “like” to denote something which looks like that something, you should use a hyphen, same with Jupiter-like and feline-like.
Third, the line “Hermes 6677 was the 6677th drone to be created.” should be moved to an earlier paragraph as a part of the description with the object. And he should also use the comma sign in the “6677” to denote the thousands place even though it is understood as six thousand six hundred seventy seven.
Fourth, the “laser PISTOL” should be used as laser pistol all through out. At one point he wrote “..laser fire.”
Last, the last paragraph in his narration is quite off for me. I feel there should be something written before it so that the second to the last paragraph really is connected to the last paragraph.
Aside from these, I think the last two lines in his narration is a good way of ending the story. This is what he wrote (read this as if you were a drone):
“Planet capable of supporting life detected. Prepare for invasion.”
The OC 