Ignorance is a Two Way Street Excerpt

[anthorn]

You also need to remember. Different lines and different paragraphs for who ever is speaking other wise no one will read it and you will never be published

 

[The Judge]

The point of science fiction is you don't talk about white people and black people, you talk about blue aliens and green aliens. Then you can say what you want without pissing people off.

If I'm understanding it correctly, the human - the narrator - has been despatched to kill the canines, presumably in view of their genocidal habits. He appears to have been captured before accomplishing his mission and is now being lectured by a canine who is attempting to justify his species' enslavement of the other race's children by making comparisons with the situation of African slavery on Earth, something which is comprehensible to the human.

There is therefore nothing inherently wrong with what the canine is saying or the use of 'black' and 'white' people in this context. Whether it is a viable, logical argument, or even good writing, is another matter entirely.

J

 

[cvoidlibrary]

If I'm understanding it correctly, the human - the narrator - has been despatched to kill the canines, presumably in view of their genocidal habits. He appears to have been captured before accomplishing his mission and is now being lectured by a canine who is attempting to justify his species' enslavement of the other race's children by making comparisons with the situation of African slavery on Earth, something which is comprehensible to the human.

There is therefore nothing inherently wrong with what the canine is saying or the use of 'black' and 'white' people in this context. Whether it is a viable, logical argument, or even good writing, is another matter entirely.

J

Actually the canines have learned from their mistakes and co-exist with the humans. The canine is implicitly saying that it would not be right for black people to kill all of the white people and in turn it would not be right for the human to kill all of the canines.

 

[Interference]

I really enjoyed the parable nature of this piece and it kept me reading to the end, even though I knew there would be no surprises. How you unfolded the story/excerpt was enough for me. What I admired most was that it didn't over-dramatise or collapse under the weight of linguistic trickery. In fact, is sounded very much like an alien communicating with a human in terms the human would find easy to follow.

I can see it fitting beautifully into the broader story you describe.

Nice work. Laudible sentiment, I think (I didn't pick up on anything inherently racist about it, and with the context, as subsequently given, it seems apropriate to me).

Yeah, a bit of attention required as far as punctuation is concerned, but, to be fair, I barely cared as I was caught up in what was being said more than how it had been typed.

Which is not to belittle the effect of careful punctuation, nor the guidance that others have given you on this very aspect of your writing. Just, on this occasion, it didn't actually occur to me to look.

Nice job, man.