Quote:Bob mentioned, in another thread, that in Doug's homeworld, sentience is so loosely defined that last week's Chinese food has a decent chance at getting basic rights. Coming from a bacground like this, his outrage at something as advanced as a boomer being denied those rights would be akin to a modern-day doctor experiencing first-hand the state-of-the-art surgical techniques of the Dark Ages... a sort of enraged "How can anyone put up with this?!????!!!!" combined with a desire to change it. Throw in some people telling him that "leeches and exorsism are the only way to handle the flu" and you have the makings of exactly what happened in the story.
Why does Doug seem to be self-righteous, high-handed, preachy, and arrogant? It might be in his character, his main job on his homeworld was to go out and completely destroy certain people or groups of people with complete athority. It might be because the entities who control past, present, and future say obscurely that the boomers were enslaved and that if Doug wanted to ever have the CHANCE of going home he was to free them. Or it might be because Doug comes from a world where AI, sentient machines are normal and that somewhere stated in the written chapters he says that he has friends who are AI. Seeing a world where all AI are enslaved would probably piss him off as much as me seeing a world where all the women in the world are similary enslaved like these boomers are.
Is Doug preachy? A bit.
Is Doug right? Partly.
Are the Sabers evil? No.
Are their action not the best choice? You can ask that about anything you care to name and never be satisfied.
Is the scene exagerated? It's a fictional story, not a historical account. You might as well ask the same thing about The Odyssey. I think that, within the reality of the story, everyone's actions are consistent and in character, which is really all that matters. It's certainly a damn sight better than most fanfics out there, and even some published works I've had the misfortune to read...
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.