Well it was written well and had some really awesome SF going. Your use of technology was great and is one of your strong points. I take it by the use of hir and shi that these characters are chakats or another Hermaphrodite esque race. What can be a great improvement is anthropomorphic description, to reveal the animalistic portraying of the characters. Tails, ears, markings, omnopeas like growls , yips, purs, paws, pads, fur, species. Anthropomorphic description like that will help build up your furrie characters into more distinct anthro individuals and be remembered more by the reader and attached to for that matter. I mean no offence by this, and wish you the best with your future writing.

No offense is taken; on the contrary, I thank you for your thoughtful and polite critique. Describing characters, whatever the species, is one of my weak points, but I hope to get better with time. The characters are a variant of the ryhcat template, one of my creations. If you're interested in them, more information can be found at http://www.anthropodcast.com/forums.....=29&page=3. Thank you again, and I also wish you the best of luck with your writing.

Thank you, and you are welcome, I am now greatly intruged by these Rhycats that is some good racial speices development there, they even have more organs then pexeriens, but even pexeriens have hearts, very awesome.

Thank you very much for the compliments. I must confess, though, that I am unfamiliar with the pexeriens, and have been unable to find them through Google or Wikifur; what are they?

I Probably misspelled them, there Jakob Rober Kings god race from his Apocalypse series m who believe they are perfection and must evolve or destroy anything not pexerien, it doesn't help that they are almost indestructible body wise and don't require any mortal requirements and are led by a insanely smart mo fo who knows how to counter everything.

Thank you.

Like helixthefallen suggests, i'd've enjoyed more descriptions; details like Ryhcat windpipe plumbing making choking impossible and the speech idioms and body language of aliens fascinate me. (A big favourite of mine is Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, which somehow makes you feel personal empathy for giant space spiders (doesn't hurt that one of them is basically his world's Turing/Feynman...).) Anyway!

Setting it in a universe with it's own geometry and physics is intriguing, as is the idea of a low-tech space mission. Do these cats have the equivalent of electronics or is all their technology mechanical?
(The intercom could easily've been speaking tubes, the audio tape a wax cylinder; do they have (or even need) calculating machines?)

For the first half of the story i was convinced the explorers would near Ot only to discover themselves approaching Jinis from the the other side; guess i read too much into the RPG map thing at the start :p

The action was over a bit too easily, i'd have preferred more tension and clue dropping about what was going on leading up to the attack -- as it was it felt a bit "ARGH enemies! ... HAHA i won here's how i did it!"... very Golden Age vibe.
Part of the problem was that i initially thought the characters were mistaken about the State's intent in sending another craft, i thought maybe it was meant to offer backup or report home if the Ot-ers turned out to be hostile or too advanced (basically i assumed the People's Arm was bait or a decoy, the real mission was in the second ship).

Sorry for not being able to offer any good constructive advice, i'm not a writer :( it was a fun read tho, i liked hearing the right-angle's opinions on interior décor

You didn't offer any good, constructive advice? What were all of those comments, then? Even though I don't have any plans to rewrite this story, comments that point out the flaws in my writing will be useful when I'm trying to banish those flaws from my future works.
I'm just glad that someone else has read the story, and even more pleased that they liked it.

To answer your questions, it wasn't so much a low-tech space program as an alternative-tech space program. Several things I decided I didn't need to know the exact workings of (the tape system, for instance, uses something mechanically like a cassette tape, but I beyond that I'm not sure). The intercom used their equivalent of electricity, and they do have calculating machines (they're better at manual math than humans, but machines are still quite useful for complex repetitions "let's see, I need to run this three-variable function for each of these 500 data points" or second opinions "my calculations differ from the machine's; I'd better check them again").
The People's arm was both bait and a decoy; it couldn't be allowed to return home, but if they happened to get shot down by an alien superweapon or something the information would be valuable.

Again, I'm very glad you read and liked the story; thank you. Hopefully you'll like my current project, whenever I get around to finishing it.

I can criticise what i see as flaws, but i don't have any experience in eg improving one's description writing skills :(

Um, how much did the State know about Nidara's power? No matter how much one trains, going up against someone with unique abilities seems highly foolish.

Is Ryhcat blood under pressure? I guess it must be, so cuts or scrapes would force foreign material out of the wound. But doesn't that mean that injecting drugs (eg by dart) wouldn't work either?

Still, you underestimate yourself (an action with which I am not unfamiliar).

Certain individuals knew hir powers existed, but they did not know the full extent. Nidara prefers that people not find out about her powers, and while the ability to raise and motivate armies is not a common skill, possession of it does not raise the questions that, say, knocking groups of people out does. When the operatives attacked, though, she had nothing to lose.

I'm sorry? I must admit that I am utterly baffled by your question; why would their blood be pressurized? Please elaborate so that we may get to the bottom of this.

(sry, i only just noticed your reply)

I'm still trying to see all the implications of the no heart thing... it just occurred to me that since they can move blood around pretty much at whim the reflexive responses to injuries would be different:
* bloodflow stops at he edges of severe wounds, which would scab over pretty much instantly. First aid would be more concerned with keeping wounds open, so they they can be closed and healed properly (assuming ryhcats scar at all, the limb regeneration suggests not... i need to read your concept writeup again).
* minor punctures like spinters, grazes etc - blood is locally pressurised and squired out of the wound to prevent infection.
A useful response to bee stings or snake bites would, again, be to try to expel the foreign matter (the toxin), or at least move it directly to the liver or kidneys. OTOH the distributed nervous system might make them *more* susceptible to psychoactive drugs.

Going back to my earlier question about computers: because i try to think of DNA as a biological computer ideas of genetic memory made me imagine a mathematician going into a trance and emerging with proof of the four colour map theorem or something, for which a human would need a computer. Mostly though i just like the idea that the smarter someone is the less advanced their technology need be.

Another very interesting idea of yours is the non-crippling-pain thing, and implications of someone deliberately reawakening ancestral nervous system pathways. How would one normally torture a ryhcat? Threaten loved ones? I read this one story about Superhappy aliens who'd removed the ability to feel all unpleasant sensations except empathy, so the only way to inflict suffering on one would be to force them to watch you hurting someone else.

Thank you very much; you've given me some ideas that I hadn't already thought of.

Psychological torture would be the standard procedure, yes. The thing is, though, that ryhcats have no pain tolerance whatsoever, so even an injury that a human might not even notice for a while would be excruciating.

Maybe the distributed nervous system means that they can't employ the gate theory of pain control (that thing where if you sprain your ankle and dislocate your shoulder at the same time you won't even feel your ankle; also it's the reason why applying heat to an injury numbs the pain, and depressives sometimes cut or burn themselves -- a small amount of real damage suppresses the psychological pain)?

Um i'd be most grateful if you have any comments on my own creature design... sadly unlike yours it is highly derivative :(

Oh and have you seen this thing sliceofdog wants to do -- make some comics based on the scififur.net staff and members? Seems like it'd be right up your alley!

I like your design. It's quite flexible, and the ability to directly interface with computer networks is not to be sneezed at. Various aspects are derivative, but that also means that they're already tested. Ryhcats are already on their second release version, and there are several fundamental differences between the second and first (and even more between the first and the various pre-release versions).

The comics look interesting, but I wouldn't want to take a place away from someone more deserving. Do you think I should send in my information, though? I'm not sure what I'd do; perhaps the Mnemonic Service?

My original idea was slightly more creative -- a university maths department had been experimenting with using wearable computers to enhance collaboration, and soon began finishing each other's sentences and papers and acting like they thought they were all one person. It was to be a discordian comedy in the manner of Neal Stephenson's The Big U.

Most people don't like me directly interfacing with their computer networks so out of politeness i usually sit and use terminals like everyone else. OTOH my character has a constant air of being slightly distracted / absent minded due to reading MetaFilter non-stop.

I thought you could either be a telepath/diplomat or some kind of alien ambassador; i see Ryhcats as natural academics, so maybe a scholar or linguist or xenoarchaeologist on hir way to study something would work? (Really i just want to see a picture of a rhycat.)

Thank you for the ideas; what about an itinerant scholar who travels around peering at whatever particular bit of the universe is closest, saving up any good ideas shi produced by all the information swirling around until shi needs them (generally when shi needs more money to fund more expeditions)?

I, too, would very much like to see one outside my head. I'd have drawn one (well, probably more than one), but even my stick figures come out crooked.