Best HFY Reddit Stories: A Second Chance 

At least they elaborated before they left.

I love the story, it has a deep emotional element that is sincere, but not to the point of melodrama. Very good work!

Hmm... late teens, early 20s, I'd imagine. Don't misunderstand my criticism - your willingness to refine your work gives you great potential. There is a large amount of indulgence in this story. Some would call it "rule of cool" - but your goals weren't to be 'cool' so much as to contain a set of specific moral and sociological points. For example, there is no life on the planet? Rather than an ecosystem in chaos, life itself is ending on this planet. Look at our own geologic history and how life has thrived. Rather than a nuanced take on ecology, we have an indulgent depiction which removes any room for exploration or debate - water has outright disappeared and gone somewhere outside a water cycle, for some reason. This allows our sympathetic aliens to have no doubt as to the scope and scale of a problem. It also sets up our ideal selves to be morally justified to travel at faster than light speeds directly into orbit and begin an immediate invasion. So righteous, dignified, and wise we are that we don't even need to explain ourselves - we can just show up and terraform a planet for a species. We don't need to study this alien planet, its ecology, etc - we can just land and do as we want because we know better. Is that really how a wise, experienced, knowledgeable humanity would operate? We can import vast amounts of machinery at will and terraform a planet at will. Is there really an emergency which justifies complete disregard for whether or not the aliens understand what is going on? There was no "end of days" looting and rioting? There's a corrupt elite but this politician is pure? I understand you are going for the idea of a group expecting doom and being given salvation - but the plot is extremely indulgent toward that end, to the extent the moral alignment and wisdom of humanity and the physics/ecology of the universe become questionable. It becomes obvious this is a story created to indulge in its point, rather than a story which develops and explores the point. Perhaps, to preserve the conflict, this could instead be framed as an investigation into the activities of some human trade centers built a few years ago - or willful efforts by diplomats to sample endangered ecological areas. There are problems, but it's not obvious to what extent it is a problem. Perhaps humans have taken the liberty to interrupt fishing efforts or are introducing highly disruptive technologies which destabilize the markets. Our politician is walking a line between his financial backers - the corrupt or dispassionate "elites", and public opinion. Certainly, oil producers would see humans offering borderline magical sources of power to be a problem - while a war with the humans is out of the question, a trade embargo to prevent people from going to these human trade facilities can be done. Are the humans deliberately trying to undermine their society? Sow chaos and discord by disrupting traditions and markets? We can alter gravity on a planetary scale and terraform an entire planet in a day... but stabilizing a biosphere which presumably gave rise to intelligent life is beyond us? This is written very blatantly as the manifest nightmares of the most extreme depictions of climate change - but "the biosphere is unstable?" This wasn't caused by that garbage patch? It's geared toward beinf allegory for current events/debates, but shies away from this at a critical moment. It doesn't have to arrive at a definite conclusion. Perhaps the planetary orbits have shifted over time and this planet is in trouble, or perhaps something about the star has changed or entered a different phase. Or perhaps it is the actions of this species which caused it. Because "the biosphere is unstable" - we don't blame our sympathetic aliens and hope they get to the stars to meet us. Writing a story allows us to borrow the powers of god and portray anything we can find words and means to achieve. It's not so much a liberty, but a responsibility to constrain ourselves from indulgence. That's my philosophy, anyway, and I hope it can help you develop further.

​@@Aim54Delta Not all Sci-Fi needs to be HARD Sci-Fi. You are merely projecting your own preferences on another writer. We only have a single perspective on this too, so all your questions are up to you, the reader, to answer. To Valtiel As a fellow writer, I can say you have real talent. Good job.

jesus christ that was long.@@Aim54Delta

@@talyn3932 Notice most of my criticism lay along behavioral/moral lines. I am someone who is young enough to remember being young and old enough to have been given significant responsibilities. My core moral criticism is that of the attitude of humanity, here. Everyone is the hero of their own story and thinks they know enough to do the things they do. If a person had the thought: "I am completely unqualified to make this kind of decision" - then they would, given the option, choose to defer or delay such a decision. Imagine being a patient at a hospital and the doctors just start doing things to you without explanation. Do you believe the doctors know best? What about the malpractice cases? Surely, there are doctors out there who you believe are wrong in their assertions. Has there never been a time in the history of humanity where standard practice was wrong? That is the fantasy of the annointed - the educated - that they can be beacons of light and superior moral actors who simply know better than others. Stories are expressions of ourselves and how we think. What we choose to indulge in is a view into our desires and ambitions. They are tools for exploring ourselves and each other. The author wants to be this humanity, obviously; a powerful force of salvation. A doctor who knows what is wrong and what to do with a patient in their final hours of desperation. An enlightened, empowered person who can't be stopped in their righting of wrongs. The flames of youth do indeed burn bright. Society has invested heavily in keeping fires from devolving into raging infernos which consume civilization. Less attention is given to the limitations and hazards of one's enlightenment.

Bayer now but yeah

""... a measure to buy you time. ... Focus your efforts now on getting into space and colonizing other worlds. ..." "... fuel, tech, equipment, and enough food to give you a chance we never had. ..." I mean the implication is that Humanity is this way, because we lost Earth to the same greed driven pollution the aliens were dying to, and humans only survived by colonizing other planets before Earth's end. In that scenario, I somehow doubt Monsanto(or other companies that prioritize greed to that extent) would be allowed to still exist.

@@Dillsfawn Then again, who do you think did the colonizing? Not any of the mom and pop stores. Charities wouldn't. Governments don't generate wealth. So........maybe a corporation(s) that wanted to explore/exploit the asteroid fields for metals or Jupiter for hydrogen.

@@krevor4095 The Heinlein future history was all about corporations doing the exploring. The Man Who Sold The Moon.

ever wondered how many millions more on earth would starve each year without companies like bayer or chemchina?

Perhaps you should do some research there’s federal egg department of agriculture paperwork from the 30s from 1965 was another major report the soils on the North American continent. Specially the United States are being depleted at any Normas rate mineral wise. It’s something like 85% down now at this moment I was at 1965. Don’t recall exactly anyway the depletion is due to artificial fertilizer that great sack of nitrogen fertilizer you use because of the bonding agents used to holding nitrogen in solid form bond to all trace minerals. So what you get is plants that look bright green in big Burger susceptible to disease and bug infestation’s that they formally were not susceptible to you also get food that you eat. It has none of the trace minerals in it that you need to be healthy. So soil depletion oh yeah, very real. Started at the turn of the last century with the introduction of nitrogen fertilizer and the elimination of natural fertilizer. Used to be the leftovers in the garden were grazed off by your live stock. Animals were used to pull your plow cultivators your seeders.

soil looses minerals with every growing cycle. you can add minerals (fertilizer) but that done long term washes lots of minerals into the ground water leading to oversturration of minerals and poisoning of the ground water. for example: in south america you had civilisations that perfected agriculture, they made perfect soil to grow plants but dooming the soil to mineral deprivation wich lead to great famines. when i see the terrace farms in south america im always thinking "and then they changed the soil every 2 years? that is pretty ineffective" and then you realise they didn't do that, thats most likely why they aren't here anymore. terrace farms work great for plants that get the nutrients from the water, gravity transports the water: very effective. terrace farms for monoculture farming is doomed to lead to ruin. its called extensive farming and will ruin any soil. now what you can do at that point is shifting cultivation by fire clearance (slash and burn agriculture) to another plot of land or replace the soil and repeat the doomed cycle. if you do that often enough you got a desert or poisoned soil. there is no arable land in nature, you either have to start with ley farming or subsistence farming to get the soil ready. growing crops in 1 place is called sedentary farming and its only possible with crop rotations and regrow cycles (letting the regular flora do its work) clearing it after a while and letting it rot on the soil, do that with multiple plots of lands in different cycles. fertilizer helps but its not a miracle drug. so: every type of farming is a loosing game but it sure is better than starving.

Also not first

Sounds rather like a story of a planet that failed to go carbon neutral, at least until it was far too late.

@@KaiHenningsen plants need carbon. Far too much reduced carbon will kill all plants. And the world to follow.

No, carbon neutral means the carbon amount is stable, this is too much carbon from pollution. You can see it by the massive garbage vortex in the ocean, plants being dead, fuel almost running out and power plant failures.