Oh dear, oh dear.

Not about my book, but definitely about writing and the response it can get. If you look here you will find the story of how a parent complained that a school teacher read to her child from Orson Scott Card's classic SF book, Ender's Game. I haven't read it in a while, but rate it as an intelligent, well written book. For those who don't know, it tell the story of the battle school, which takes young kids in a future Earth and trains them for a war against an alien race, known in the book as the Buggers.
For the Brits who read, I have to point out that Card is American. For the Americans, you might want to know that that term translates as Sodomite in the UK (and maybe Australia/New Zealand, I'll have to check on that one, though.)
That wasn't the reason for the complaint, though. Apparently, the parent thought the work pornographic. It seems that the kids in the book use a few swear words. I won't argue, though I don't remember that standing out when I read it.
I would point out that the book is on a list of the 100 best books for Young Adult readers. That Card is a Mormon, so is a bit unlikely as a source of child corrupting porn. That the story, from one point of view, is all about comradeship and loyalty. The bit you might not like is that there are some murders and Ender does commit them. He doesn't know that, though. The adults who run the school keep that fact from both him and the others, as they don't want this very promising strategist to be put off, or kicked out. In the end, (I don't think this is a spoiler), Ender is tricked into fighting and completely destroying the aliens. He is led to believe it's a training exercise.
He finds out, too late, that the aliens - social insects - didn't realise that they were killing intelligent beings. They'd taken us to be like themselves and thought the creatures they could see must be just appendages of the hive queens. You don't kill hive queens - that would be barbaric - but the workers and drones they deal with as we would a termite infestation.
The writing is high quality, the characters ones that you can engage with, the story one to inspire thought. A number of people have decided that is the real reason the parent complained, as there is a very clear link that any intelligent child might make between the kids who get tricked into becoming genocidal murderers and the US army. Or any other to be honest, but this took place in America, so...
I don't know the parents, so I won't comment on that, but the idea of trying to raise your child in such a cotton-wool wrapped vaccuum strikes me as foolish. It won't protect them, it will just leave them without defenses in a world that has much worse to offer than a few swear words.
This matters to me as the father of a 12-year-old daughter and a writer who knows that the kids in my daughter's year group are already using words that they know better than to use in front of me. I think it's a part of growth, a phase that they need to go through. One of Aki's classmates once told her that you have to swear when you go into secondary. We all pooh-poohed that idea, but I'm sure that she can curse like an average 12-year-old (better than a nun, worse than a sailor) by now. They'll all play with it for a while and then grow out of it, meanwhile learning who not to get caught by.

Holding in Abeyance

Orson Scott Card, who has been known to get behind the typewriter and belt out works of SF that people (in large numbers too) were prepared to spend real money buying, once wrote a book on writing SF and Fantasy. (He called it, How to write Science Fiction and Fantasy, which is direct, but always looks to me as if it should be a subtitle. For a really good title, Lawrence Block's, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, can hardly be beaten.) One of Card's ideas about the SF reading community was that they are very good at the title of this piece.
Any work of SF worth the paper it is written on should take you to worlds that you have never encountered, 'cos they don't exist. These will, of necessity, be full of stuff that people have never met before. When you hit one of these things, the writer has two choices. One is to stop everything and explain the thing in full. The other is not to bother just yet, but to wait till there is a lull in the zapping and explain it then.
Choice two is the best thinks Orson, 'cos SF readers would always rather the writer played the advantage and let the story go on raher than blowing the whistle and bringing the fun to a halt. I'm with him on this and I'm sure most other people are too. At least, if they are SF fans. Probably if they like mysteries too. Dunno about you, but I'm pretty sure Agatha Christie wouldn't have got on that well  if she'd rushed to reassure the reader that it was the butler what did it in the first chapter.
There is a place for exposition, and SF readers tend to like being told how the flux capacitor's inability to handle chewing gum can lead to the threat of the universe exploding. Often that's all they need to be told, as it sets up the need to prevent the Garrilian terrorists from throwing gum into the capacitor. (You can have that one as the start of a story if you are desperate. Otherwise, I really wouldn't bother).
Anyway, all this leads up to the secnd part of the prologue. The first part pays off so far into the story that it isn't worth spending much time on. It's my insurance. I've told you about Gaia and that she comes in later. When she does, you'll be ready to believe I had a plan for all this. That's enough.
With McLeod and the scene on the couches, I've tried to set up something that will help the reader get into what is happening next. You know that two people, one female and young, have been joined to a computer, or something similar. You've heard the idea that books and stories are connected with this and you should have picked up on the idea that time is going to be compressed. There is also a strong hint that someone is being lied to here - that bit about the tech waiting for them to leave and then resetting the compression factor and starting the simulation. There is another hint, painted in as strongly as I can get it, that there is something going on here that isn't to anyone's plan.
Bu now I'm hoping that the story is starting to sound a little multi-layered and complex. There is what McLeod has been told is happening, which we might have an inkling for, but will have to hold in abeyance a bit. Then there is what the people who are running this simulation are really doing, which we can only guess is not what McLeod thinks it is. Then there is whatever is going on with the girl's character number being changed, which is clearly not to the plans of anyone and is very, very important.
Small wonder I say that nothing here is what it seems to be. The next post should just be the first part of Day One. More about that after I've posted it.