[writing] In which I owe David Levine a debt of gratitude

davidlevine is a genius. Some time back, he executed an analysis of the Mainspring world that caused me to amend the worldbuilding in Escapement to keep the clockwork universe as rational as possible (in context).

So now, a few weeks ago, at the writing retreat he had organizes, David read a draft of my short story, "Torquing Vacuum", a short in the Sunspin continuity. He gave me some crit, though mostly he agreed with beth_bernobich, whose crit I'd had clipped to the manuscript at the time.

We then drifted into a lengthy, intermittent discussion of the worldbuilding behind Sunspin. This focused on both some micro stuff (ship nomenclature) and some macro stuff (implications of my star drive technology for planetary economies, and the underlying timeline).

Damn me if he wasn't right about everything. Rethinking continues apace, but in the meantime I've noodled "Torquing Vacuum" sufficiently that it fits within the continuity revisions I'll need to make to answer David's points.

David, you make me a better writer every time we talk, I swear. I'm glad you're my friend.