On Tue, 3 Sep 1996, Richard Lawson wrote:
: That didn't hurt so much as the negative comments from people like Zen
: and Sebastian, whose opinions I deeply respect.
Very sorry. But as you said: You're a better fanfic writer for
it. :)
: One of my mistakes, as I said in an email to Zen, is that I
: underestimated the depth of knowledge of my readership and overestimated
: how much they'd be willing to forgive. I was hoping everyone would put
: on their "Star Trek" blinders when reading my fanfic. Alas that I was
: wrong.
Errhem! I don't even put on my "Star Trek Blinders" to watch _Star
Trek_. You just forgot that half of us are computer geeks, and
most of us are science fiction fans. And almost *all* of us
(excluding the Shampoo fans, of course) are reasonably intelligent
beings.
<Whap bap bam!> Ouch! Stoppit! OK, I'll take back the last
sentence.
*Not* almost all of us are reasonably intelligent beings.
OW! Ouch! Sorreee!
: I want your comments. At the same time, I'm hoping to avoid deep
: analysis of the science or the effects of the viruses that I've
: postulated. My main interest is that they're plausible enough (even if
: unlikely) so that they don't detract from the rest of the story.
I think you managed that in this draft. In the first draft, you
just assumed that we would believe that in the future this is
possible. This time around, you showed, that even then, it is an
astonishing thing and baffling to scientists.
Sebastian