Quote:
Originally Posted by Katsunami
Comments on Planting the Flag, 1.0
The story in itself is fine, but I think it could be expanded, as I am left with some questions after reading it 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Graham
I'll start with thoughts on the character names. Did anyone else find them confusing?
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[...etc...]
You're all too fast for me. I still haven't read Katsunami's story yet. It's awkward to try and track each point after getting so far behind, so I'll just try to cover it without point-by-point quoting.
Spoiler:
As long as the fact that each of the protagonists is an android remains clear from the start (and I think it is), then I think the best approach for names/designations is to use names or job-titles for the more-human ones, and designations for the less-human ones. While I didn't mind AND-E, it does make the reader wonder why it's KEN-E. If you don't mind mixing roles and genders a bit you could consider something like AND-G (Angie/Android Geologist), and AND-E (Andie/Android Engineer).
I was having trouble with the Mate being so formal at the start, but once the Captain appears it became more obvious that she was intentionally (and fairly consistently) formal. It wasn't really obvious to me why she should be (if the captain was not), whereas it was obvious AND-E should be. (I can understand why you chose to make this distinction, but it's not necessarily logical - which is a worry when we're talking about androids
.)
I didn't have a problem with not seeing AND-E's arm repaired. We were told it had to happen, I just assumed it had happened in the break before we see AND-E playing with the camera (maybe you need to get rid of "before you arrived") - after all he was powered down long enough to get a face he didn't know about.
I had no issue with the more-human vs less-human appearance. To me it seemed apparent that this was about how they appeared to humans back home, not about appearance to any lifeforms on the planet. It was, perhaps, a little unclear just how many humans back on Earth knew that the Captain and Mate were actually androids despite their appearance - though I'm not sure just how important that is. What people see can often be more important that what they know (have read or been told) - or any I too cynical?.
Timeframe wasn't an issue - except for my earlier post about the science feeling dated.
I assumed the crash probably came from prior damage, not as a result of the captain dreaming. It's a short story, I expect to have to assume quite a lot.
I had no issues with the ending and what might happen to the androids - assuming they continue to function long enough to see humans actually arrive (which was far from certain, it seemed to me). It's an interesting thing for the reader to be left to speculate about.
In contrast to Katsunami, and as I've already noted, I think the length is quite good. A short story can't hope to give all the answers, very often their purpose is to stimulate thought rather than provide complete solutions. If you start to expand the story too much I think you will need to broaden it, and then you may start to run into problems staying within 8000 words.