Humans Are Afraid Of War | HFY | A Short Sci-Fi Story 

Finally, a sci-fi story where the humans kick butt and best of all, the story has an ending. A good ending.

I like how you use multiple voices. It's very refreshing.

Nice to hear an HFY story where humans aren't just summarily wrecking everything, but actively working with a rebellion in progress.

No criticism required. This was a good story. Thank you

A good short story that should be incorporated within a book about encounters and conflicts between cultures.

Definitely one of the better sci-fi stories

I like this story because its not like other author stores that are like listening to politicians talking. After 1/2 an hour they haven't said any thing.

Finally, a story worthy of a thumbs up. I'll check out a few more of your stories, other channels are woefully lacking in consistency, continuity. Many of those think that an excessive use of adjectives and adverbs are a sign of good writing, which it is not.

More than one voice makes it easier to follow who is speaking.

"It is good that war is so terrible, else we would grow too fond of it." RE Lee.

Its really good. You made a whole galaxy come alive in 20 minutes and used only three races. Kinda interested what else is out there now :)

Hurrah! Finally, a well thought-out and entertaining yarn. Well-read and allowed me to concentrate on the narrative, rather than decipher moronic mispronounciation.

this was a good listen the black armor shaped in the image of their foe's nightmares reminded me of another series in this genre, *_The Shadows Speak_*

This story represents a situation, then tell us the backstory of it, and finish it with the consequences. A whole story, from a proper beginning to a right closure. Among the top 3 i ever heard. (There was one another story, which i enjoyed this much before, but i cannot decide, which one should deserve the first place, so i decided to be a draw. 😋)

I love this story just enough history just enough threat to make it believable 😎.

That might be the best ending for an HFY story that I can remember. Very nice twist.

Nothing to criticise. A good storyline, well presented from a "third party" viewpoint

Good story. I think there is something left for a second part. Would love to see the meeting between those to and a conclusion to the 21 systems stil left.

Great story. No criticism. None of the tired tropes.

So here’s a suggestion for a few weapons and ship designs, where you don’t have to use them or such it’s just my personal ideas and opinions and the first weapon would be A graviton torpedo where unlike most ships that utilizes plasma and high yield explosions my idea is since I’m most sci fi setting most people use things like artificial generators to prevent people from floating and so my idea is kinda borrowed from warhammer 40k gravity gun which increases the mass of a target, however like my torpedo, what happens is that it can generate a large sphere of a very powerful gravitational field which would pull anything and everything into and towards the torpedo be it ships decks, hull plating ect kinda like having a miniaturized black hole next to your ship pulling anything and everything towards it as crewmen get lifted up violently and pulled towards the walls or ceilings and if fired next to say a kinetic weapon or a hangar bay like the weapons used in Star Wars (that space battle scene in revenge of the sith) then all of those explosive canisters or arc rafts would be ripped out of their docking or holding areas resulting in a massive chain reaction or alternatively you could use an armor piercing anti graviton torpedo which does the exact same thing except it’s designed to burrow into the hulls of much larger ships and then generate a powerful positive gravitational force field which would push anything and everything outwards. Another weapon would be void weapons where, as soon as a target is his then a five inch spherical black void is emitted at which point the black sphere would disappear taking anything and everything that was inside that black orb along with it, be it armor or organic matter leaving only a massive gaping hole in the targets body. Finally whilst not a weapon but more of a ship, it follows a similar principle to say rhetorical UNSC frigates being nothing more than a massive cannon however it would be akin to turning something like the halo ODP and turning it into a ship being operated by a very small crew, relying heavily on AI and automated systems however being that it’s basically just a gun in space with some engines makes it ideal for mass deployment using the Gunboat tactics where small ships during the 1800 would be fitted with a single massive cannon and that’s about it either that or it could be operated by a single crew of about ten people

this was actually really well written

Fools always ignore sound advice, and regret their choices in the end. Arrogance always loses in the end because its decisions aren't rationally based. Its decisions are based on an angry ego that can't stand to be bested. Even in defeat, the ego never believes it can be defeated. But that belief dies with the owner of that belief, as the owner makes one last unreasonable effort to remain unbeaten. When a race doesn't heed sound advice, they deserve everything they receive. Including ceasing to exist. Stories from another nonhuman perspective is refreshing, especially when the alien is long lived.

this was a good story - and a pretty decent AI reading it (atleast i think it is a AI) - many are not good but this one was pretty good (well the best so far i think)

I love the story..... i would love to have my grandsons hear such stories. Thank you very much

Your ai might be slow but it's still highly understandable then some others.❤❤❤

No Names that start with the letter "Z". I like that 🙂 Fairly typical HFY story, but I enjoyed it. 👍

Anyone who's said that the story doesn't deserve criticism has not put forward any effort, lacks knowledge of writing/storytelling, and doesn't understand the purpose of a critique. A critique is intended to strengthen the writer and their work by attacking it again and again until it's hardened in fire. To the writer; The opening of the story demonstrates a massive flaw in your writing style that's usually identified as "show don't tell". Statements like "he liked this spot in the bar, he could see all the various races come and go" are a pretty clear example of telling me the situation. It doesn't make a bad story, but it leaves a very clinical connection to the story. A doctor writes something like "patient enters ER claiming chest pain with signs of distress and collapsed" while a writer tells "The man hobbled through the doors gripping his chest gasping for help. He struggles to move one foot in front of the other until the force of a sledge hammer strikes his chest and he collapses to the floor frenzying the triage." Both are roughly telling the same thing, but the first example leaves nothing to the imagination except perhaps a quick guess that the patient is having a heart attack. The second gives you a visual picture of a man coming through doors and gripping his chest. You're asking questions like where is he? Is there anyone around? What's happening? Those questions don't get asked when you tell, and that's the reason why you want to show instead of tell someone what's happening. You always want the reader to ask questions about the information because the more they ask, the more interest they build and that's how you suck someone into a story. Borrowing from another profession, it's all sizzle and no steak! You want to write so that the smell and the sound is what people are acquiring as they go. They see the steam and hear the juices popping as the waiter comes through the restaurant taking the longest route possible to reach the other guy's table, and then they block it as they put it down causing everyone to try looking around them. So of course, the waiter has to take 90 seconds to explain how hot the plate is and make sure it's exactly what you want. The point here is that you always want people to be uninformed and looking for information. The last thing you ever want to do is info dump backstory. If you have to info dump, you've done a bad job telling the story and I'm talking about even the smallest of info dumps. If there is information that's technical or part of lore that's kinda important to know, it's your job as a writer to create a knowledge gap character or walk them through a scene where pieces of information are shown. For instance, the movie Saving Private Ryan keeps using the term FUBAR and Oppum has no idea what that means because he's rear echelon. That's a knowledge gap and filling them in fills in the reader. On the other side you get principles like "Chekov's Gun" which is a writing principle that unless it's necessary for the story, don't mention it. So if you describe a gun hanging on the wall, at some point in the story, someone has to pull the gun off the wall and use it. Think about that and imagine a female officer trying to do an inventory check of nuclear weapons aboard a space ship while some guy is hitting on her. My last piece of constructive criticism is to focus on the tension of your story. The troupe you're using with that story about humanity is called "The Worf Effect" and it's where some nobody shows up and beats Worf's ass in a fight so obviously this nobody is nobody to mess with. However, you immediately try to portray the nobody as a shellshocked veteran afterwards. You go from a mysterious opening to a clandestine meeting with arrogant retards arguing with the guy who's advice they're seeking until they look incompetently stupid, then the tension drops to below the mysterious entrance at the beginning because even the empress looks at this guy like he's a retard because he's trying to tell a monarch that they're nothing. Does that make sense? It's like "oh man, humans are savages" which is kinda the whole HFY thing, but it's forced. I think you got confused about who the protagonist of the story was when you started talking about humanity which killed the tension instead of pushing the protagonist down to increase the tension. Fortunately, there is an easy fix, but it does involve a rewrite. I'd rework the beginning so that our protagonist is sitting down in his favorite seat with his grandson who's getting his first drink of rootbeer or whatever. Something wholesome so people can connect with the scenario, and then the waitress comes over calling him ambassador, advisor, sir, Lord or something. It prompts the story because we all know that a kid is going to ask about the time... The kid doesn't know, and he learns how the Cudraix fucked around and found out. The whole empress deal is a detraction from the story because this is a cautionary tale and not a redemption story so we don't have to worry about redeeming humanity. Let the savagery flow... Personally, I think you could come up with a decent novella if you apply the information that I've presented you with, and rewrite this story.

Agreed whilst I do enjoy most HFY stories I do kinda find them repetitive where the story keeps on getting bigger and bigger so to speak and I would love to see more fleet based stories since most HFY stories tend to fall around a single ship, but other than that loved the story.👍

I will say this, fire the AI. Ruined a lot of really great narrative.

Another entertaining story. Thank you!

Now, why can't Hollywood, etc. be this creative?

These stories inspire me to go play helldivers

That's the best hfy sci-fi stories I heard well done without that always mentioning the indomitable spirit or implications sinking in. Mixing of the words not always using them twice and especially telling the story from view of a neutral person

Had I not enjoyed the story, I would have stopped it. I fought the urge every time there was a long pause in the speech. Aside from that it was good, I enjoyed the different voices and the story

Another Earth saying "Play with fire, You get burned" 😂😂

There are a lot of these “…and then they met the humans.” stories but, this is the first that ended (that I remember hearing) with humans being remorseful of allowing our “demonic” half to rule for any period of time. The first story where humanity sought to remind itself of just how terribly we can justify ourselves to be by admitting to our own atrocities so as to prevent it from ever happening again. Kudos to the author for this.

best 21 minutes' I had today.

One of the better told stories I've listen these past few days.Thank job well done

That was a good story; thought-provoking and a good concept. 👍 ❤

The most interesting HFY story I have listened to, and one of the few that I would listen to a second time. The title suggests that it would be another humdrum story of an aggressive power underestimating humanity's military capacity to its cost. This is a humanity that has already won an intersteller war and has retreated into a shell out of horror at what we did. Most of the HFY stories have humanity go on to carve out a new fairer galaxy-wide federation without a care in the world, but this time we have a plausible human emotional response to the destruction war causes. I feel like a Victorian mudlark working the Thames estuary who has found a diamond ring in the muck.

Very good story and no criticism needed. I really enjoyed this story. Keep up the good stories coming.

That was very enjoyable. Thanks for the story.

This was one of the best!

Well done. Good story and an unexpected twist.

Great story! Keep up the good work. I no longer indulge in any form of TV and this has become my new favorite source of entertainment!

Not sure I liked the pacing of the AI voice but the story itself was wonderfully done. I like the twist at the end. Never awaken humanity’s dark side.

I really enjoy your stories. Thank you.

this was a good story the twist at the end gave me goosebumps and a predatory grin...thank you

Dig it. Really like the multiple AI voices for characters 👍

Very enjoyable and thought-provoking.

I really like this story, An excellent story, well told. Thanks

This one was very good, well done.

I actually like this story. Could you expand upon the war? That would be a good series.

Great story, functioning AI. What more can you ask for?

Great story! Thank you for sharing.

Another human legend hell have no fury

As others have stated, one of the better stories

Here, another good story that Sci-Fi Story community need. Job well done by both story writing and narration instead of letting AI handle everything and ended up with a shitshow. 👍

Enjoyed the story. Nice twist. The varied voices were a nice touch, but discordant at the junctions.

Multiple voices are appreciated. Thank you.

It was a really good story shame it's ended so quickly I liked the fact that it represented the human soul we all have a darkness and we all have a darkness and We try our very best to overcome it but there are times when overwhelms us when that darkness is needed and we learn from it and try to do better act controlling ourselves to protect the world We are not saints And time will not magically make us saints it just makes us better at control

I liked the premise quite a bit. I do feel like the perspective of this single interrogation limits the intricacies of the plot. I could see multiple mini-perspectives allowing for more a natural exposition instead of loosely explaining what happened as a consequence of the interrogation. Thanks for the story!

this has been the best story out of the 20 or 30d that if lessened to so far it kept you lessen and interested in `in the story the whole time

Nice like always

Very well done, thank you so much!! Constructive Criticism. The different voices sometimes didn't "flow" well. I know that might be the AI program learning issues. Though alot of the different names speaking then jumping back to the story felt off-putting at times. OTher than this, it was great, thank you for the story!!

Definitely one of the better text-to-speech engines. And the story wasn't bad either. Maybe a bit shorter pauses next time, but otherwise good.

I enjoyed the story and use of different voices. You just need to edit the gaps out from between the voices. One question I have, did he get the money offered for his info? I would have put in a nod to it

Thank god for the empress. She helped save our souls from more tainting from our miasma, may it continue to recede until we have atoned for those sins that haunt us.

Make more stories! Very well done. As my uncle once stated, "Entaru Adoon!"

Gesalec's story and warning went unheeded by the Emperor. The Empress heeded the warning and took the lesson to heart. The lesson: Humans are the galaxy's epitome of "F@*k Around and Find Out."

nice,,very nice....he is rich as hell and yet---still chills/relaxes at the same bar/chair

Really enjoyed this! Thank you! Look forward to what you’ll write next. ❤

That was ... a good story .

Pride goeth before the fall. Clearly these guys had no version of Sun Tsu on their world. Might have saved them their lives and empire. I do appreciate an alien who actually listens and is willing to do so without pride. Far too few amazing tacticians it seems can do that.

Mass Drivers FTW!! 😊

i enjoyed this very much thank you

Reader's note: it was a very good story. Thank you.

Excellently composed. Please create more & often. Well done! 👍

We are space orcs!

Thank you, LOVIN IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some folks just don't listen. The smart ones do.

This is one heck of a good story,so no criticism... only compliments for the well crafted story.💐👽❤️

Old style storytelling, excellent

Great story just needed to be much longer.

Well done clever plot. 10/10

The moral of the story is. Do not force your strength. Your lies on your husband, or your wife, because human revenge, brings grief and nightmares, pain and mistrust, and you die alone.,! Ming WA

nice story, well narrated

Good story, great ending, may try to use a living voice on next story?

Sounds like an exciting series could evolve from that storie😮😮

I really liked this story

Very good story and with ending, which is nice. Thank you.

A decent story if not fantastic. I basically enjoyed it. But I agree with others that the AI was subpar.

............I WANT MORE.......

It just kind of ended. It seems like a good edit would do it justice.

The story was pretty good. - - - - - Said Rodney.

One of the beat. USMC.

Empire hears of the mass genoside that happened when the race they want to invade was just starting ah it can't be that badddd 2 weeks later it indeed was that bad

Excellent story 👏🏽

Good plot twist ending.

The AI reading obviously wasn't perfect but the story is nice. I personally like the idea of multiple stories sharing the same universe but that is less of criticism and more of wishing :)