The Preacher Man

A lovely story...

..but if you produce a new edition, please give the credit for the incandescent light-bulb and electric light to Sir Joseph Swan, not Thomas Edison. Your point about invention preceding theory remains valid.

Complex worlds

Having a (non English) Masters degree in contemporary European literature, I am always skeptical of "erotic" stories. This fictional world and its story really got me compelled from the beginning and I kept wondering where and if I could buy a physical copy of it. The depth for it was so amazing and refreshing. Best story I read on this website. Hope you publish a (less explicit) version of it for the broad audience to enjoy. Congrats.

Fantastic SciFi

Wonderful world building. I was riveted. Please keep up the good work and consider writing main stream. This story could be easily expanded into a full novel. Thank you for sharing your efforts!

I'm glad I found this

it was worth the time to read it.

The new society was well constructed and clearly defined. It had the tone of a morality play without preaching.

The only annoying part was caused by renaming known geographic locations.

Deserves all the praise it has gotten

The story is intriguing, and the five stars I gave it is well deserved. It could easily be a published work.

It's not without flaws, though.

-- There are a fair number of grammar and punctuation errors and typos. Some jar a careful reader out of the narrative, but others are just annoying.

-- You have a fixation on local time and sun movements. Why? What does it contribute to the plot? And as another commentator wrote, do you expect your readers to keep track of old names and your new names so that we can make sense of where you're talking about when you talk about hours of sunlight? And why does that make any difference to the story line?

-- The sex is sort of just added on. Do any of the sex scenes advance the plot? Doesn't seem like it to me, and I think the first thing a commercial editor would do would be to cut all or most of them and try to use the remaining ones to advance the story.

That said, it's still an intriguing piece. I found myself scrolling past the sex scenes to get back to the narrative LOL!

Wonderful

Another wonderful fabulous heart touching story. Just love this.

OMG

This tale was an epic. Page after page of brilliance that almost has no equal. I enjoyed this story from the first word to the last. Quite simply this is amazing and spectacular and I doubt that mere words can tell how good this was.

Some critical comments to go along with the praise...

I rated this story 5 stars some time ago, and if there were more than 5 stars available I would have given it more.

But there are a couple of elements that I think make the story a bit flawed, especially if you were to turn it into a published book. (Or have you already?)

First, this seems to be an excellent mainstream science fiction novel with some gratuitous sex appended. Yes, the sex scenes are as well written as the rest, but they do little or nothing to advance the story line. They're just sort of tossed in occasionally to justify calling this an erotic story.

Sure, that's true of a lot of the stories on this site, but you obviously wanted to write more than a stroke story (full-length stroke novel?) and you succeeded. But the downside is that the sex becomes unimportant because of the strength of the core story itself. I can't remember now what I did the first time I read it but re-reading your novel, I found myself scrolling through the sex scenes to get back to the story line.

Maybe there's no cure for this without extensive reworking, but the sex would be more relevant if those scenes had something to do with the way the story developed. Something should happen as a result of the sex to avoid having those scenes seem like "now for a word from our sponsor" interruptions. (Yes, I'm exaggerating for effect LOL!)

Second, you're obviously interested in earth sciences, but you spend too much time and effort on chronicling sunrise/sunset times and the like. Again, if these things have something to do with the story, I'm not sure what it is. (I thought at first it might have something to do with prayer times, but that wasn't the case.)

The novel format you chose of course gives you the luxury of weaving more elements into the story, but neither of these two elements seems to have added much that contributed to the overall arc of the story.

Nonetheless, great job!

Better Than Anything Published

I Found this like six years ago, just used it for my Summer Reading... well... most of it, I Even got my English Prof. To read it,

I'm near the begining but this needs to be published

I'm only on chapter 4 right now but this is amazing. This totally needs to become a book. It would sell like hot cakes. I don't even like erotica but the world building and plot are so wonderful. I say this as an aspiring author. PLEASE publish this.

Absolutely Amazing

Literotica needs a larger star scale. This story deserves all the stars.

Tears

I still cry everytime I read this.
I need this print.
I'm actually going to print this out and bind it for myself.
Sorry xoxoxoxo

Interesting story ...

As a condemnation of the more primitive beliefs of Islam. As a primer on closed-cycle societies. And as an intriguing argument for polygamy. The obsession with numbers (airspeed, sunrise/sunset, calendar) with things you do understand, and your dismissal of numbers regarding other aspects of this society is a little painful, as others have noted. That, and the constant flitting about in ramjets and translating of names and locations adds about 15 pages to the story. Overall, worth reading.

Wow...

I haven't been this engrossed in a novel since my twenties! An editor from a major publisher can help you bring this to the world in print form. And the world really needs to hear this message right now.

Hmmm

I got to say, I liked the story pretty well. I think you should have let him use his little talent a bit more and made him moor human character wise. He is a pure good doer in all the ways we probably see it. Like, always. I think you can improve the believability of the story by making him more human and let him sometimes follow his lower bases. And regret it, of course.

Wow

This is an amazing story, thank you so much! Illias is an example of a man that I strive to be like. Truly inspirational and I thank you again!

Wow . so good.

I resisted reading this because , well I'm an agnostic that leans towards atheism.
I am glad I changed my mind , a very deeply thought out SciFi story that tells of a culture that seemed to be a patchwork of various cultures and religions. Very fine work.

an interesting mix

of intrigue, romance, philosophy, and pseudoscience.

with a touch of preaching thrown in.

from your story i would take it that you are from the Islam faith good job on the story ot was magnificent as a christian couldnt stop my self from reading

fantastic

so much imagination, so well written, totally captivating.

Dissapointing

A bit of criticism to balance out all the blind praise for this story.

- The attention to detail is in the entirely wrong place, several paragraphs are spent discussing geographic locations and sunsets, when it is not relevant to the story in any way. This severely hampers the pace of the story. Similarly, important moments such as the civil war are almost completely glossed over and never impact the protagonists in any way.

- After 46 pages I could not describe any of the female characters in this story. They have little to no personality beyond what skill they can bring to his super-harem. They also all like the protagonist? They serve more as a deus ex machina production line than anything important.

- On the subject of deus ex machina, it is abused heavily throughout to get the protagonist out of tough situations. He rarely faces much hardship that the reader can experience.

- The world building is immensely detailed, but ultimately wasted as many of these elements are not worked into the narrative, or serve much of a purpose. This is a front laden story, where many of these details on the structure and purpose of the ruling order are never utilized.

- There are no central antagonists beyond a vague construction implied by the world building. The antagonistic force is simply a faceless, nameless system which is never examined in any depth beyond what kind of symbol the different ranks get.

- The pacing is terrible, as I said earlier the detail paid to certain areas is strange. I don't know why I need to know the exact geographic location of our next locale, especially considering the short time spent at each one. This story is 46 pages long and I can say that nothing much happened in it beyond killing some bears and I think a temple blew up?

- This world is a strange and alien place, but the reader never sees any of it. A core component of the sci-fi fantasy genre is completely missing here.

- The protagonist himself is a strange, featureless blob who also lacks any real defining personality beyond his selfless actions and his photographic memory. He has no real motivations beyond that he's a super nice guy who is different to the rest, meaning he feels directionless, just going from one thing to the other as he climbs the ranks.

All in all, contrary to what everybody else is saying; I don't think this would get published, unless there's a large market of people who find needless detail exciting. It's impressive, a level of dedication seldom seen on Literotica, but as an actual narrative it falls flat. The characters are dull, the writing is packed with unimportant detail, and nothing interesting ever seems to happen.

Thrilled

Thank you for sharing!

I cried

I cried

Incredible compassion

Amazing concept of male compassion overcoming cruelpatriarchy. The sweet tenderness and sensuality of lovemaking with the attitude of caring for an equal. And an incredible ending. Found numeric explananations a little boring after a while. Thanks so much.

You should publish this!

Seriously, just a little editing, and some added details here in there where others have suggested, and this story would do very well on the Kindle!

I enjoyed the details of location and sun times, because it showed a thought out story and also the way of thinking that was important in that world and to Ilias.

I do agree the wives could be described more throughout the story, like Chanah's freckles!

Mind = Blown

This was one of the most beautiful stories I've ever read. Truly it was awesome.