Not all soft sci-fi on the web is created equal. Occasionally, I take a chance on a story and then review it. I am a harsh grader but, regardless of my rating, please show this author some love.

Today I am reviewing a story by HFY Battle. Minor spoiler warning.

Story overview

The galaxy’s apex predators arrive on Earth and learn not to underestimate humans especially when snow is involved.

From the outset, this story lets you know it is here to have fun. I have a soft spot for comedy writing of which this is a pretty good example.

Story idea

As ideas go, this was a good one. The author understood the Earth setting and wrote as if they had more than a passing familiarity with the culture. Full marks for a great and comedic idea.

Show vs Tell

This story uses more “tell” than is advisable. A focus on “showing” would have taken this to the next level. That said, this is comedy and sometimes the extra “tell” was justified on account of being funny. Thus this story gets a forgivable 2.5 out of 5 for show vs tell.

HFY

This story nails the HFY element. I loved the concept from start to finish. The humans were slightly too genre-aware, but again, this is a comedy. For honour writing, that sort of thing is often for the better.

Narrative causality

There were a few moments that broke my willing suspension of disbelief. The one that stands out is where the tracker looks at the footprints and somehow knows that the aliens are too reliant on their technology. I understand that this is a key moment and explains all that happens after that. I just felt that the author could have perhaps eased us into that realisation.

Otherwise, each section of the story is built on the one from before. Overall giving the story good causality with some notable weaknesses. I’ll give “The Moment Aliens Realized Humans Aren’t Prey, They’re Predators!” a respectable three out of five for narrative causality.

Worldbuilding

The opening narration does a good job of worldbuilding. It sets us up for a comical story without info-dumping. The human setting felt real and populated with well-realised characters.

However, there are a few weaknesses. None of them spoil the story because you can get away with so much when the comedy is good. That said here are a few things I felt bring the overall world-building score down somewhat.

• Aliens that use Earth measurements
• Aliens that speak perfect English
• Humans who assume aliens speak perfect English
• Similes from the alien perspective that use Earth examples
• Spotting you are being followed by the footprints in the snow – a bit of a head-scratcher

Despite my complaint about simile use, I loved the author’s alien perspective turns of phrase and am willing to forgive all of them as they made me laugh. I’m also going to partly forgive the everyone speaks English trope because I enjoyed the story.

I’m going to give this story three stars for generally doing a good job and an extra half a star for making me laugh with the worldbuilding elements.

Dialogue

Most fan-written narratives fall down on dialogue one way or another. Like many such stories, HFY Battle struggles to balance the speech with the speech description. To be fair, dialogue is not easy and this story makes a fair attempt at it.

The dialogue writing weaknesses never detract from the story even if they do make my inner editor reach for the red pen.

The usual fan-writer allergy to the word said often results in writing that is trying too hard and falls on its face. This story did not fall flat despite avoidance of the perfectly respectable, “he said”. Well done.

Overall I give this a three and a half for a pretty darn good attempt that is somewhat better than the average Internet storytelling.

Characters

HFY Battle seems to have a good grasp on character expression. Each character felt like their own person both alien and human. While there is still room to grow, I cannot fault the character presentation in this story despite a few preachy moments from the lead human. Four and a half out of five.

Visuals

This video features a lot of fairly tacky AI-generated art. I was not a fan. I understand that the author needed something to show listeners which allows me to be somewhat forgiving.

I almost skipped this story because of the bad AI art. Weak AI art is often a sign of a poor sci-fi or HFY story. I’m glad I gave this story a chance so it gets a single star.

Subtitles

I’m guessing the subtitles were either AI-provided or typed in a great hurry. Given the types of mistakes, I’m going to assume the failure was AI.

I was no fan of all the words starting with capital letters either.

Overall, the author may wish to pass a human eye over the AI’s work prior to rendering the video.

Narration

I suspect that the narrator is AI. However, the choice of AI reader works. It does not mangle any words and sounds good to listen to.

While it lacked some of the more subtle inflexion and pacing that a human could have given the story, the narration was okay. Not perfect but okay.

I think that a human reader could have brought out a lot more of the inherent humour. There was a lot of funny that the narration did not give time to breathe. I’ll give narration a respectably average two and a half out of five.

Things I didn’t like

In this section, we start with five stars and deduct one for each thing I didn’t like (or half if it has some redeeming quality). I shall focus only on the story as I have complained about the visuals already. As this is just me complaining, feel free to skip to the next section where I offer praise for things I loved.

The humans feel a bit preachy at times. I understand this is a short HFY and you have to get the background in but this felt a touch clumsy. I’m taking half a star away for this because the genre kind of demands this sometimes.

Abuse of “very”. Very is a word that is very weak. Or to self example, a counter-point very is a cripplingly weak word that undermines an otherwise good sentence in most cases.

A half star for each of the two times I was thrown out of the story by what I call stopping points. A stopping point is a moment that makes you stop and remember that you are listening to or reading a story. This is when a reader might put down the story and go and do something else. We don’t want that. Both stopping points are mentioned elsewhere.

For those keeping score a home, this brings us to a passing grade of exactly average.

Things I loved

Spoilers – this story managed more than five things I loved and so gets maximum marks.

• …and the other 20% failing to live up to their own hype
• … slightly aggressive space algae with good PR – Brilliant
• …weather that would make a polar bear wear mittens
• …had all the climate variation of a warm bath
• Threat level: Yes

Things to consider in future stories

My takeaway thing to learn from here is the word “very”. This is rarely the right word for most things even if it is sometimes a good choice for humour reasons. Sometimes use of “very” indicates that the writer could have found a stronger word but tried to enhance their current one with a weak adverb. Other times, “very” undermines the word it is there to enhance. 99% of the time you don’t want this word at all.

No score for this section. I’m just taking the time to highlight something in what I hope is a helpful way.

Denouement

Let’s talk endings.

Many Internet stories struggle to come to an end. I was glad to discover that this story handled the denouement quite well. The author used it to get in a few more jokes which I fully appreciated.

Overall, a satisfying ending despite the preachy human bit.

Final score

Speaking of endings, we have reached the end of this review. The final score is the mean average of all the other scores.

The sum of scores was 42 over 13 elements for 3.23 as the final score. I’m going to round that up to 3.5 because I found the story amusing and it made me chuckle.

“The Moment Aliens Realized Humans Aren’t Prey, They’re Predators!” by HFY Battle lands an above-average human rating for a story that was fun to listen to despite some weak AI stuff.