I like the concept, but it was a little confusing to be honest. I interpreted the wonderful world as the future, and was very confused about the travel between the worlds (still am). Are they different planets? Is it time travel? Dimensional travel?
Due to this, the literal hearing of screams was also unclear, dulling the final twist (which I like!)
Lastly, I felt odd with the last two paragraphs. I find them quite moralizing, and I’d find the piece stronger without them. I think that’s a big challenge with this whole contest: to teach a lesson and motivate, while respecting the reader’s own capacity to draw lessons and motivation from a story. Personally, I prefer endings that do less teaching, and instead let people ponder the story. Fewer people will reach the conclusion that we want them to reach, but the ones that do will be more motivated and have at least some capacity to think for themselves.
Dimensional travel, in my head, but this is allegory, the details are intentionally unspecified. I worked on making the literalness more plausible without outright lying to the reader, but it’s a hard needle to thread.
The conclusion is not as strong as I’d like, but illusion of transparency is real, so I’m leery of completely removing the didactic quality. It’s much subtler than the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant already, and that one works well (though I think it would be better if it was less of an anvil-drop).
I like the concept, but it was a little confusing to be honest. I interpreted the wonderful world as the future, and was very confused about the travel between the worlds (still am). Are they different planets? Is it time travel? Dimensional travel?
Due to this, the literal hearing of screams was also unclear, dulling the final twist (which I like!)
Lastly, I felt odd with the last two paragraphs. I find them quite moralizing, and I’d find the piece stronger without them. I think that’s a big challenge with this whole contest: to teach a lesson and motivate, while respecting the reader’s own capacity to draw lessons and motivation from a story. Personally, I prefer endings that do less teaching, and instead let people ponder the story. Fewer people will reach the conclusion that we want them to reach, but the ones that do will be more motivated and have at least some capacity to think for themselves.
Dimensional travel, in my head, but this is allegory, the details are intentionally unspecified. I worked on making the literalness more plausible without outright lying to the reader, but it’s a hard needle to thread.
The conclusion is not as strong as I’d like, but illusion of transparency is real, so I’m leery of completely removing the didactic quality. It’s much subtler than the Fable of the Dragon Tyrant already, and that one works well (though I think it would be better if it was less of an anvil-drop).