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The Pillars
In the distant future, the people of Earth have built spaceships to explore the universe. The accidental discovery of a potentially habitable planet reveals the existence of two mysterious pillars, but something goes wrong while setting up an investigation. One of the orbiting ships has gone completely silent, and no one knows why. No distress beacons; no escape pods; nothing. It's as if the crew has vanished into thin air.
(This book is no longer available. It was rewritten and revised into another story, "The Pillars of Idrapha.")
(This book is no longer available. It was rewritten and revised into another story, "The Pillars of Idrapha.")
ebook
First published August 9, 2014
11 people want to read
About the author
Geoff Lichy
5 books4 followersGeoff Lichy is a graphic designer and photographer from New York's Hudson Valley. He occasionally writes short stories and is working on a few novels. As a musician Geoff has recorded and produced over 30 albums and EPs since 2006, contributing to over a dozen bands of various genres and playing multiple instruments.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 1, 2014
An easy but disappointingly dull read.
I downloaded a free copy from Smashwords.
I went into this short story feeling very excited. I expected it to create an interesting world for me to get lost in, where human space exploration goes horribly wrong. The cover and blurb caught my eye at once; I've been looking for some good science fiction to read and review for a while.
Unfortunately, The Pillars starts to drag early on. The straightforward prose does makes the story accessible to a wide range of readers, but I soon realized that it's too straightforward and often borders on outright condescending. What do I mean by condescending? Here's an example from the story itself:
“The squad spread out, eying the children cautiously, keeping their gun barrels trained toward the ground. They were young but their eyes were dead, faces vacant of emotion. Something horribly traumatic had to have happened.”
Here, the author gives some detail that effectively shows what is happening, but then immediately goes back and tells the audience something they should have guessed from the previous sentences. “Something horribly traumatic had to have happened” doesn't add enough knew information to justify the sentence's existence, and this happens multiple times in the story. It could have worked if the author had used that sentence to show something like character reactions – say, someone wincing because traumatized children is a trigger for them – but as is the sentence is unneeded and made me, as a reader, feel like I was being hand-held. The author doesn't often let the details speak for themselves.
Here's another example (a better example than the last, I think):
“Like the end of a scorpion's tail with less of a curve, the appendages looked incredibly dangerous.”
“Dangerous” is a given when one's tail resembles a scorpion. The first part of the sentence could stand alone and still give the same message.
And I wish I didn't have to repeat the old cliché of “show, don't tell”, but that really applies here as well. I really think that a good balance between telling and showing can make an author's prose very engaging, but there is no such balance in this short story. And it creates an even bigger problem: there is no proper buildup, and thus no true impact of the actual horror scenes. Minimal character and setting descriptions are acceptable in a short story like this, but The Pillars completely lacks defining traits and imagery that would make any of the characters or settings memorable. The character dialogue does feel natural and believable, but that was the only thing that impressed me about this story.
Also, I came away from the story feeling that there were too many characters and no real personality to any of them. That, and the plot ends up creating more questions than it answers (especially about the Pillars themselves, though I may just need to re-read). It ends on an unsatisfying note as well; the story just kind of stops without giving me the horror I was looking for, not to mention a truly effective climax. As much as I wanted to like it, I cannot honestly recommend The Pillars to anyone. Though I found no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors (as is common with self-published books), the prose and plot never reach their full potential, making for a very bland reading experience. For what it's worth, I do see potential in this author, though. I believe that with some practice in world-building and character development, he could turn out some truly engaging science fiction. They may be poorly executed, but his ideas remain solid and worthy of a better rewrite.
I downloaded a free copy from Smashwords.
I went into this short story feeling very excited. I expected it to create an interesting world for me to get lost in, where human space exploration goes horribly wrong. The cover and blurb caught my eye at once; I've been looking for some good science fiction to read and review for a while.
Unfortunately, The Pillars starts to drag early on. The straightforward prose does makes the story accessible to a wide range of readers, but I soon realized that it's too straightforward and often borders on outright condescending. What do I mean by condescending? Here's an example from the story itself:
“The squad spread out, eying the children cautiously, keeping their gun barrels trained toward the ground. They were young but their eyes were dead, faces vacant of emotion. Something horribly traumatic had to have happened.”
Here, the author gives some detail that effectively shows what is happening, but then immediately goes back and tells the audience something they should have guessed from the previous sentences. “Something horribly traumatic had to have happened” doesn't add enough knew information to justify the sentence's existence, and this happens multiple times in the story. It could have worked if the author had used that sentence to show something like character reactions – say, someone wincing because traumatized children is a trigger for them – but as is the sentence is unneeded and made me, as a reader, feel like I was being hand-held. The author doesn't often let the details speak for themselves.
Here's another example (a better example than the last, I think):
“Like the end of a scorpion's tail with less of a curve, the appendages looked incredibly dangerous.”
“Dangerous” is a given when one's tail resembles a scorpion. The first part of the sentence could stand alone and still give the same message.
And I wish I didn't have to repeat the old cliché of “show, don't tell”, but that really applies here as well. I really think that a good balance between telling and showing can make an author's prose very engaging, but there is no such balance in this short story. And it creates an even bigger problem: there is no proper buildup, and thus no true impact of the actual horror scenes. Minimal character and setting descriptions are acceptable in a short story like this, but The Pillars completely lacks defining traits and imagery that would make any of the characters or settings memorable. The character dialogue does feel natural and believable, but that was the only thing that impressed me about this story.
Also, I came away from the story feeling that there were too many characters and no real personality to any of them. That, and the plot ends up creating more questions than it answers (especially about the Pillars themselves, though I may just need to re-read). It ends on an unsatisfying note as well; the story just kind of stops without giving me the horror I was looking for, not to mention a truly effective climax. As much as I wanted to like it, I cannot honestly recommend The Pillars to anyone. Though I found no spelling, grammar, or punctuation errors (as is common with self-published books), the prose and plot never reach their full potential, making for a very bland reading experience. For what it's worth, I do see potential in this author, though. I believe that with some practice in world-building and character development, he could turn out some truly engaging science fiction. They may be poorly executed, but his ideas remain solid and worthy of a better rewrite.
Displaying 1 of 1 review