Face-Lift 1275

Guess the Plot

Mission of Terror

1. It's gonna be scary, but if it means being free once and for all of diapers, Bobby's gonna use the big people's toilet.

2. Sixteen-year-old Faye has a mother who's a spy and a father who's a chemist. Both of them are missing and Faye is the only one who seems to be looking for them. Her clues lead her to Disney World and one ride that may be her last clue: Mission of Terror. But does she have the chops to take on that rollercoaster to find her parents?

3. While fourteen-year-old Bryan trains in outer space for mankind's first interstellar colonization mission, fundamentalist terrorists launch an attack on the flagship in order to gain positive publicity for their anti-genetic engineering agenda. 

4. For Janella, it looks like junior year is going to be another loser -- until the dark new boy summons her to the life she didn't know was hers. It turns out that she's actually a spirit from the Nightmare Realm, where human nightmares are hatched and delivered into people's brains every night. Janella isn't sure she wants to go there. But dang, that boy is cute.

5. Conlynn "Corky" Smith is at a Ugandan Christian mission school for girls when terrorists attack. Can she use her martial arts training, hunting skills, and psychic connection to Jaunty the Leopard to get her and her girls to safety? Also, crazy, drunken chimps.



Original Version


Dear Evil Editor,

Fourteen-year-old Brian thinks nothing could be worse than moving just before starting high school. Then he wakes up in the hospital after a bullying incident. [There's bullying, and then there's assault with intent to kill.] [The first sentence has me thinking he hasn't moved yet. The second sentence has me wondering if the bullying happened before or after he moved (If you change "thinks" to "thought" it might help, assuming the move already happened.). The third and fourth sentences make me wonder if we're in the same book.] He learns his rare Cryosleep genetic modifications, developed for the first interstellar colonization mission, saved him from drowning. He’s stunned to learn that his mother was killed eight years ago in a bombing by fundamentalist terrorists opposed to genmods. [Then he discovers that his father is a cyborg from a planet in the Sombrero Galaxy and his siblings are super villains named Beetlegirl and Creep.] [I'm starting to think the plot about the Nightmare Realm was the real one.] [Wait, he's fourteen, his mother was killed when he was six, and he's stunned to learn this? Or is he just stunned to learn how she died? As in: He’s stunned to learn that his mother's death eight years ago was caused by fundamentalist terrorists opposed to genmods.] [Bad enough that the American infidels don't give us the respect we deserve, now they're genetically modifying themselves so they can sleep hundreds of years in space. We must destroy them all.] [Now that I've read the whole query, I'm wondering if we shouldn't just start with paragraph 2.] 

Brian has always been fascinated by the 300-year-long, 20 light-year mission and he’s happy to join it, although the anti-genmod prejudices the terrorist’s [terrorists'] propaganda has created worries him. When he learns the mission is critically short of pilots for its Dragonfly one-person support spacecraft, he and some new friends work hard to qualify for Dragonfly pilot training. Their teenage adaptability helps them do well, despite attempts of jealous older cadets to discredit them. But the terrorists, angry over the positive publicity surrounding the teenagers, attempt to kidnap and eliminate them [These teenagers are getting too much positive press; we must eliminate them.] – which they barely escape.

Their parents are worried, but the teenagers are more determined than ever, and go into space to finish their training at the starships nearing completion in the Earth-Moon L5 Lagrange point. [Even if that sentence makes sense to you, (changing "at" to "on" would help) I'd cut it off after "training" to accommodate idiots like me.] But while they’re drilling in their Dragonflies, the terrorists launch an attack to destroy the flagship. [These fundamentalist terrorists have spacecraft? Just so they can attack other spacecraft?] Brian and his friends are the only ones in a position to stop it, although the attempt could cost them their lives. But if the flagship and everyone on it are lost, it will be the end of humanity’s first attempt to reach the stars – and all their hard work and sacrifice will have been in vain. [How much hard work and sacrifice are we talking about? Their first semester of high school?]

Mission of Terror is a young adult science fiction novel with series potential, complete at 95,000 words. Its use of human genetic engineering for frozen sleep, and fundamentalist terrorist opposition to genetic engineering, are unique elements that drive much of the stories’ conflict.

Thank you for your time and consideration.


Notes

Most of this is setup. If you limit the setup to one paragraph, you'll have more room to tell us what actually happens. A paragraph similar to this:

When fourteen-year-old Brian Smith learns that Earth's first interstellar colonization mission needs Dragonfly pilots, he and some of his friends enlist. Their teenage adaptability helps them excel, and soon they go into space to complete their training with the mission starships. But fundamentalist terrorists, opposed to the genetic modifications needed for Cryosleep, will do anything to sabotage the mission--including launching an attack on the flagship.


I tend to think of terrorists opposed to genetic engineering blowing up Monsanto factories, not starships. They should be happy we're sending our genetically engineered humans off to some other planet where they can't destroy planet Earth.

Our fleet of starships being unable to squash an attack by some tree-hugging environmentalists is like (choose one):

a. The starship Enterprise being vulnerable to the Goodyear blimp

b. The Death Star being vulnerable to a puny X-wing.

Inconceivable.