Talk:The Fermi Paradox/@comment-26054278-20151230025709

I will say that this story was interesting, but unfortunately, I thought it was kind of lacking in any real impact. That's a bit of a problem when your story is about the end of humanity as we know it.

I will admit that a lot of is written well, but I feel like the ending, and whole story for that matter, was very predictable. The latter segments are definitely a slog to get through as a result of the predictability and way things are restated over and over, but I'll address that in a moment.

There are a couple grammatical errors here and there (We were alone, beings who were meant to change the universe, see that this was ours to take over and call our own.), but otherwise, the writing here is quality work. It can't quite save the story from feeling like a tiresome retread in that second half, but it definitely does help. In the hands of a much less competent writer, this story would have completely crashed and burned, so I applaud the author for nearly salvaging this pasta.

While that sluggish second-half is a problem, I think the biggest is that we do know the message, and the story does no twist on it. We know that the story is going to talk about the last human on Earth finding peace and dying while we are told about the flaws of humanity because that's what all these types of stories do. We don't focus on maybe developing the character of Samuel so we can feel an emotional impact at the end (might have still not been very original, but it would have been something), we only focus on humanity trying to stay alive and how Samuel found peace as the last human. The fact that humanity is alone in the universe was hammered in and made obvious throughout the story so many times that the final sentence delivers no actual impact on anything, making this story just randomly stop dead in it's tracks. It feels like it should have led to something and then never did.

I want to like this story because I think it is written beautifully, but with the tired message and the lack of any sort of impact or originality, I can't give this story anything higher than a 4.5/10. I really enjoy your stories (yes, Project WILD will be reviewed soon, and quite positively I believe), but this one didn't do much for me. Click here for more critiques.