Survival Tactics is a short story written by Al Sevcik and Irving Novick, about the sole survivor of a mission to a planet that meets disaster. I won't spoil the plot itself, but suffice to say the title of this short story is a touch misleading. I knew this getting into the short story, having read the reviews for this work on Amazon before downloading it. Still, the title lends itself to thinking the short story is about the technical issues surrounding survival, not a short story revolving around one man's feeble attempts at strategy in order to survive. I suggest these authors think more seriously about their titles before publication, lest they run into similar issues in the future.
Like "The Mountain and the City", the writing style of this work is sophomoric. However, "Survival Tactics" runs into the opposite issue. The authors abuse metaphor near constantly with horrible results. These metaphors distract the reader with "Da Fuq?" moments, as the reader tries to figure out how these things made it to print. At no point should vines hanging from trees be described as being "like the tentacles of some monstrous tree-bound octopus". That's just bad writing.
As this is a short story, the main character's background and history is not well fleshed out. This is to be expected and isn't an issue per se, but the information given doesn't lend itself to making me like the character. The main character is a 30 year old man-child that struggles for survival on the aptly named "Waiamea". Why me? Ho hum.
At any rate, regardless of my personal take on the main character the story itself is fine and fast moving. I was pulled into the story despite how technically badly it was written, and I felt moderately satisfied by the, albeit abrupt, conclusion. I'd give this story about a 5.5 to a 6 on my scale. It's not.. terrible, but the technical issues and poor choice in character in my opinion forces me to say it's barely above the range of adequacy. The saving grace of this short-story is the tempo of the story and the writer's ability to draw the reader in. Without these two traits, the bad writing and poor title choice would have placed this story much lower on my scale.
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