Rating: 1, Needs improvement Recommended By: SFRevu:4
An aircraft crashes in the desert on an unpopulated planet, and the passengers struggle to survive.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
The basic outline of the story is fine: a group of stranded people start eating each other. One of them discovers how to escape, but ends up being killed and eaten before he can tell them.
This is the ultimate tell-don't show story. Nearly all of it is narration, with random POV changes. It's heavily larded with fantasy science. e.g. "A laser is just a kind of vibration." They can't eat the local food because the DNA has a different helix, but the local animals can eat them with no problems.
Is it the translator's fault?
Apparently not. Shao Ping actually looked at the original Chinese story:
This is the ultimate tell-don't show story. Nearly all of it is narration, with random POV changes. It's heavily larded with fantasy science. e.g. "A laser is just a kind of vibration." They can't eat the local food because the DNA has a different helix, but the local animals can eat them with no problems.
Is it the translator's fault?
Apparently not. Shao Ping actually looked at the original Chinese story:
I just compared the beginning of both–and tbh my modern Chinese is rusty so take my opinion with a lot of salt–but while in a few places the translator is perhaps overwrought and the Chinese dialogue is smoother, he’s faithful.File770, December 8, 2015
