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I like your idea of it snowing for the first time at the Panama Canal. It's more interesting when the reader experiences something new along with the MC. Better than flashbacks or telling.

Your reference to hydroponic farms reminded me of a thought I had earlier. It should be possible to stack these farms as high as you want to go, with the only limiting factors being how much solar energy is needed to power the farms and the source of the nutrients. That would make food production a "manageable" problem. It comes down to humans deciding to dedicate the right number of resources to the problem. In fact, I think it would be easier to feed the world under those conditions than it is today. The source of the nutrients is the part I'm unclear about. Perhaps one of you can blow a hole in my logic to keep mankind from solving this problem too easily in the 24th century. :-)

Thank you. Now, I've got it. Did I miss this explanation in the book so far? Sometimes I can't see the forest for trees with all of my nitting. If it's not there yet, I highly recommend putting in the first chapter. As I mentioned, the sea storm would be a great place for such reflection. It wouldn't take more than a few paragraphs (pretty much what you just posted for me) and would help ground the story.

Your call.
Dirk

I am among those who appreciate your feedback, Mike. You've already impacted my story in important ways.

I'll reread the chapter later today to refresh my memory, but my first thought about the canal is that they would try icebreakers to attempt to free up the canal. If that's not possible for some reason, then, aside from the problems Tom has already mentioned would be some increase in shipping costs for goods that have to travel around the southern tip of South America, unless everything is solar-powered by then (probably). Also, more danger travelling that route since the winds down there can be severe. If planes are also solar powered, then the canal becomes less relevant, since good can be shipped via Fedex. :-)

My biggest question is how the world came to be frozen over. I think a reader would really like an answer to that to be able settle into a good sci-fi story.

My other question was where the world is growing food if it's close to freezing over. There would be massive wars around the world fighting over scarce food-growing land. Most the human race should be dead or dying. Come to think of it, if the Panama Canal freezes over, then even the Equator (one of the warmest places on Earth) has frozen over, so most of the rest of the world, both north and south, would have frozen over as well, including most freshwater lakes and rivers.

Even if the Equator is still warm enough for food growth, then everything will be clearcut for farmland, unless food growth moves underground. The scale of engineering for the latter would be astounding, although I use it on one of the worlds in my own book. It's doable in my case, because I don't have billions to feed, just millions. For underground food growth, here, too, I suggest solar power instead of oil to power the hydroponics, since oil reserves are probably gone by the 24th century.

Given all that, you may want to leave the Panama Canal clear of ice, to allow for food growth on land around the Equator.

I did quite a bit of research for terraforming worlds, since I have about 60 inhabited planets so far in my galaxy. It turns out, the vast majority of Earth's oxygen came from microorganisms in the oceans (farting oxygen). So, to really terraform a planet, life should already have a long-established foothold on your prospective planets (hundreds of millions of years, if not billions; I don't recall the exact number). You also need a way to rapidly grow organisms for soil formation, since natural soil formation on Earth takes 1000 years per inch (doublecheck me on that one too). Obviously, if microscopic life already exists, then you risk all humans and human food crops being unable to survive on those planets. My book is more space opera than sci-fi, so I glossed over some of those problems, since that level of detail would slow my book's Star Warsian pace.

Obviously, you don't need to answer all these questions in chapter 1, but I think it would really help to give us the cause of this worldwide disaster up front, otherwise you're asking us to accept a premise without explanation. A supervolcano might be able to do it. Or, an asteroid. In the latter case, humans would probably have excellent asteroid detection and deflection technology by the 24th century, although something kicked out of the asteroid belt by Jupiter would come at us so quickly, deflection may not be possible in time.

Dirk

Verses 1-6 don't change the fact that this prayer to God is totally inappropriate, especially if it's coming from one of God's annointed kings. If the authors of the Bible had included it under a heading of how NOT to pray to God, then it would make sense.

I keep forgetting to Google first. The Bible includes over forty verses against cursing, including:

I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.

He loved to curse; let curses come upon him! He did not delight in blessing; may it be far from him! He clothed himself with cursing as his coat; may it soak into his body like water, like oil into his bones!

Dirk

God in action. http://abcnews.go.com/US/tom-cat-brings … d=26485583

How does one submit to reviewers on Amazon?

Both Google Docs and Open Office include very good word processors, but I found that they require some manual reformatting if you want to eventually move the files to MS Word, which an editor/publisher would almost certainly require. Apparently, they don't save in exactly the same format that Word uses. No surprise, really, since they're complex files. In my case, I used only a few simple styles, but still couldn't get it to come across cleanly into Word. It wasn't a huge task but then I had only completed half of my first draft.

I don't know if Open Office has track changes and inline comments like Word, but they are invaluable eventually. I now use inline comments to flag stuff I want to revisit later, rather than interrupting my work to do immediate fixes. I use track changes to go back and forth with my editor. The last time I used Google Docs (about two years ago), it didn't have track changes or comments.

Dirk

Actually, I was the twit who stuck a large firecracker in the barrel of my brother's toy gun and held it while it went off. That really hurt! My brother probably wondered why he couldn't find his gun after that. I'll have to tell him.

Dirk