Jumping in a random point and it just happened to be this one 😳. I can see how this would have been a difficult write. It was a difficult read, but I’m guessing a necessary one.
One thing that struck me was that even though this was a single episode there was enough to make it a complete story even without having read any other chapter. Great work. Really well done.
Thanks, Jon. Really appreciate that. And it’s always interesting and reassuring to hear that it is possible to drop in on a random chapter and get something from it!
Just what to note while often in Triverse serious stuff goes down - it IS a crime procedural wrapped in SF/fantasy - this is probably the most bleak chapter of the entire story.
I know I've plunked myself down in the middle of this, but if this scene opened a novel, I would buy it. The story produced uneasy emotions and fear right away.
Thank you! This story in particular doe seem to have really connected with people in a way I didn’t quite expect — including with readers who haven’t read any previous instalments in the serial.
I was instantly gripped without having read any previous chapters.
Thrankh's POV I think was balanced very well. He didn't have too much internal dialogue, just enough for the reader to be intrigued just as much as he on where he was going and what was going to happen to him. I liked that he had a moment of 'it won't be that bad' when he thought they would be digging and transporting.
Him being careful not to step over the edge, and wondering why they were asked to get into position gave it a 'calm' pacing before the sudden end, making it hit that much harder.
Thanks for reading! I hadn’t anticipated this chapter working well as standalone, but it seems to have turned out that way. Hope you continue to enjoy Triverse, if you get round to reading more.
Wow. This is harrowing especially since I was reading about 20th century Vienna, a city with a vibrant & highly educated Jewish community, & how many of those people we shipped off to "work camps" during the regime, just before opening this chapter.
My family was not affected so Idk if I have the right to say anything but as someone who has studied a lot of history about this sort of thing on account of growing up near one of those camp sites, I think you did a good job. It's supposed to be terrible but I feel it's been written about so much that the fantasy/sci fi take is actually appreciated. Thank you!
You had to take your brain into very unpleasant places to get this chapter down.
And, as one whose brain is takes what it's reading and attempts to project forward, that meant my brain had to go into very unpleasant places as well. From the abomination of the enforced disability on koth to the inevitable ending of the chapter.
Simon, your general thrust as a writer is optimism, but, when the story requires it, you can get fucking horrifying and depressing.
No, this isn't exploitative. History does provide too many examples of this sort of disgusting behavior, going back millenia. Your most obvious influences - of course - are Nazi ghettos and execution lines of WWII, and, oh yes, the actions of the United States government in 2025.
Shame the influences aren't being drawn from history, but current events.
My only nitpick is in your author's note - "pushing the BIG STUFF back."
No, my friend, government sponsored genocide is absolutely the BIG STUFF...
Tangentially related, just before reading this I cane across another posting on a different platform about how Andor turns the "medal ceremony" at the end of the original "Star Wars" into the most unintentionally funny scene of the franchise. Andor highlights characters who make the rebellion happen, unknown, unremarked, often with self sacrifice, and the glory goes to the farm boy and truck driver who joined up yesterday...
Andor (haven't finished season 2 yet) and Rogue One both do a very good job of noting how wars are mostly fought and won by people you'll never hear about. Luke and Han get the medals, but they could only have been in the position to do what THEY did thanks to he efforts and sacrifices of thousands of others.
Doesn't mean Han and Luke don't deserve their medals, but there's an invisible support structure stretching away from them.
Rogue One captures this most perfectly in its final scene, when Vader appears and is carving through the rebel soldiers to get to the plans. There's one particular soldier who gets the plans and reaches a bulkhead door, and it's stuck. He desperately tries to get it open, to get through with the plans so he can deliver them to Princess Leia and be the hero. The man who escaped Vader, got the plans to the rebellion and destroyed the Death Star. Then there's a moment of realisation, when the soldier accepts that he's not going to get through that door, and that he's not the main character in the story. That the little data stick with the plans on is what matters. He's not going to be the big hero, and he has to pass that along to someone else. So he passes the data stick through the door, which is an incredibly simple and heroic moment - it's that soldier accepting his own death, in order to save the entire galaxy.
Despite the big action and dramatic music happening all around in that scene, it's that one simple moment that sums up the entire film.
Back to Triverse - this chaper was a hard one to write, due to its unpleasantness, but was relatively 'easy' from a getting-the-words down perspective. They just sort of tumbled out.
Jumping in a random point and it just happened to be this one 😳. I can see how this would have been a difficult write. It was a difficult read, but I’m guessing a necessary one.
One thing that struck me was that even though this was a single episode there was enough to make it a complete story even without having read any other chapter. Great work. Really well done.
Thanks, Jon. Really appreciate that. And it’s always interesting and reassuring to hear that it is possible to drop in on a random chapter and get something from it!
Just what to note while often in Triverse serious stuff goes down - it IS a crime procedural wrapped in SF/fantasy - this is probably the most bleak chapter of the entire story.
I know I've plunked myself down in the middle of this, but if this scene opened a novel, I would buy it. The story produced uneasy emotions and fear right away.
So good.
Thank you! This story in particular doe seem to have really connected with people in a way I didn’t quite expect — including with readers who haven’t read any previous instalments in the serial.
I was instantly gripped without having read any previous chapters.
Thrankh's POV I think was balanced very well. He didn't have too much internal dialogue, just enough for the reader to be intrigued just as much as he on where he was going and what was going to happen to him. I liked that he had a moment of 'it won't be that bad' when he thought they would be digging and transporting.
Him being careful not to step over the edge, and wondering why they were asked to get into position gave it a 'calm' pacing before the sudden end, making it hit that much harder.
I'll definitely be reading more!
Thanks for reading! I hadn’t anticipated this chapter working well as standalone, but it seems to have turned out that way. Hope you continue to enjoy Triverse, if you get round to reading more.
Ugh! 😢
Wow. This is harrowing especially since I was reading about 20th century Vienna, a city with a vibrant & highly educated Jewish community, & how many of those people we shipped off to "work camps" during the regime, just before opening this chapter.
My family was not affected so Idk if I have the right to say anything but as someone who has studied a lot of history about this sort of thing on account of growing up near one of those camp sites, I think you did a good job. It's supposed to be terrible but I feel it's been written about so much that the fantasy/sci fi take is actually appreciated. Thank you!
Thanks, Vanessa. You don't have to reach far to find real world examples of this sort of thing, more's the pity.
And you're right - scifi and fantasy can often reveal new perspectives on things, ever if they've already been written about and studied extensively.
You had to take your brain into very unpleasant places to get this chapter down.
And, as one whose brain is takes what it's reading and attempts to project forward, that meant my brain had to go into very unpleasant places as well. From the abomination of the enforced disability on koth to the inevitable ending of the chapter.
Simon, your general thrust as a writer is optimism, but, when the story requires it, you can get fucking horrifying and depressing.
No, this isn't exploitative. History does provide too many examples of this sort of disgusting behavior, going back millenia. Your most obvious influences - of course - are Nazi ghettos and execution lines of WWII, and, oh yes, the actions of the United States government in 2025.
Shame the influences aren't being drawn from history, but current events.
My only nitpick is in your author's note - "pushing the BIG STUFF back."
No, my friend, government sponsored genocide is absolutely the BIG STUFF...
Tangentially related, just before reading this I cane across another posting on a different platform about how Andor turns the "medal ceremony" at the end of the original "Star Wars" into the most unintentionally funny scene of the franchise. Andor highlights characters who make the rebellion happen, unknown, unremarked, often with self sacrifice, and the glory goes to the farm boy and truck driver who joined up yesterday...
Andor (haven't finished season 2 yet) and Rogue One both do a very good job of noting how wars are mostly fought and won by people you'll never hear about. Luke and Han get the medals, but they could only have been in the position to do what THEY did thanks to he efforts and sacrifices of thousands of others.
Doesn't mean Han and Luke don't deserve their medals, but there's an invisible support structure stretching away from them.
Rogue One captures this most perfectly in its final scene, when Vader appears and is carving through the rebel soldiers to get to the plans. There's one particular soldier who gets the plans and reaches a bulkhead door, and it's stuck. He desperately tries to get it open, to get through with the plans so he can deliver them to Princess Leia and be the hero. The man who escaped Vader, got the plans to the rebellion and destroyed the Death Star. Then there's a moment of realisation, when the soldier accepts that he's not going to get through that door, and that he's not the main character in the story. That the little data stick with the plans on is what matters. He's not going to be the big hero, and he has to pass that along to someone else. So he passes the data stick through the door, which is an incredibly simple and heroic moment - it's that soldier accepting his own death, in order to save the entire galaxy.
Despite the big action and dramatic music happening all around in that scene, it's that one simple moment that sums up the entire film.
Back to Triverse - this chaper was a hard one to write, due to its unpleasantness, but was relatively 'easy' from a getting-the-words down perspective. They just sort of tumbled out.
Re: the nameless soldier in Rogue One.
Such a hero I homaged him back in 2020 in the most dated video I ever threw together.
https://youtu.be/73in-U1gINI?si=RPZDi_Fpx91RcNvT