Reviewstack: The Cosmonaut by Stefan Baciu

An Open Critique

This is a critique of The Cosmonaut part 4 by

Stefan Baciu

I just wrote a piece about how we don’t need critiques. It’s the article presented in full on the cover page of Literary Salon Magazine #1, of which this critique is a part. I think that counts as hypocrisy or hubris. Mostly hubris.

I offer or agree to do these when the emotional reaction is just right. It’s a perfect storm of love and loathing, but I see the promise in the story and the writer—and I believe it can become something worth risking a critique over.

To Stefan’s credit, when I offered to do this, I told him he should turn me down, and he didn’t. I said these tend to be painful, and the last writer was tempted to unpublish the story that same night. By the next morning, the world was okay again, but for a while, it was nothing but gloom. You don’t want this.

Stefan said he did. So here we are.

Heaven help us.

Read the story, and then come back here. Or just read the story and forget this entirely.

Stefan Baciu

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This article is part of Literary Salon, issue #1. Click on the link to check out the rest of the issue, which will continue as a work-in-progress until May, 21st 2025.

The Cosmonaut part 4 by Stefan Baciu

Let’s start with what I’ve already told Stefan. The story begins in the wrong place. It’s close, and there are only three paragraphs to lose, which isn’t bad. This is the beginning:

Decades he spent in this house of the dead, decades that turn into moments in his memory, the first of all his faculties that he abandons as he begins to pray. The Hermit scratches his beard, that long white snake slithering on the ground as he stands up praying on the cool sand facing the unforgiving sunrise asking for mercy from his unknowable all-loving Lord, the ruined entrance of the tomb behind him he prostrates falling and rising like the eagles that stride through the sky.

The writing has a Cormac-McCarthy level of disdain for the comma, but this captures my attention and imagination. It’s good.

What I didn’t know at this point, is there’s a Princes Bride quality to the story—a story told within the story—and Baciu is capturing the flavor of a certain kind of book. Maybe the first three paragraphs with all its preface-style world-building is appropriate for the kind of book he’s conjuring for us. Maybe the language captures the imagined author, but I’m reminded of my rule of warning when it comes to parody.

I’ve seen writers parody boring writing, and it doesn’t come across as parody. Just boring.

When we are attempting these kinds of narrative tricks, the fundamentals don’t change. It doesn’t matter what the source we’re imitating did. We’re still committed to rewarding the reader for the investment of their time, and that means that we begin the story with the story, not a quick history of the world. Without a character of interest in a promising situation, none of that information matters.

The first job of the writer is to make us care, and this is where I begin to care. I love that “first” sentence. I’m intrigued by the character.

Personally, I’ve decided it’s dangerous to use designations like “the Hermit,” but in this case, I’ve cut everything but two paragraphs of the story-within-the-story before we get to the “real” characters. It can work.

The transition is lovely because the contrast is so deliciously high, and I have learned to serve before the throne of contrast. It’s the key to keeping your reader’s attention.

“Very interesting tale, old man, as always, you’ve surpassed yourself,” said Mr. Zaharia, taking the oars into his hand after he noticed that the sun started to set.

One of my weaknesses as a writer is delight in the nonlinear, but on a line level, even I have to admit the reader’s mind gives itself to our story through linear progression.

taking the oars into his hand after he noticed that the sun started to set.

We can dump the speech tag, and have Mr. Zaharia notice the setting sun and take up the oars. The more the mind has to piece together meaning on a line level, the more we suspect there’s something wrong with the writing. The sentence is grammatically correct. It flows, and everything it says is clear. Yet, the order of events—

Why should it matter? I agree. I wish it didn’t. Have your read my novella Warp & Woof? It embraces a nonlinear narrative like a lover and then gets arrested for indecent exposure. I wish it didn’t matter.

But just as we’re being introduced to this new setting, we’re told the story backwards and don’t know the sun setting until the end. By the time we’re invited to picture it, it’s time to move on. We no longer see the setting, but we’re told that’s why he picked up the oars.

It’s a more mundane construction, but sometimes that’s what’s required to communicate the story. Invest in clarity and the image and then contrast it with linguistic flourish in the right places. Instead of tripping over your prose, your readers will think you’re a genius.

Still lingering on this small paragraph, look for the unnecessary phrase. Our words should carry weight. If he’s taking up the oars, our readers aren’t imagining he’s doing so with his teeth. If he is, tell us that. Avoid overtly stating what’s already implied.

Also, if we were to keep the line as it is, we’d still need to correct the construction.

taking the oars into his hand after he noticed that the sun started to set.

We’re in past tense, and this contiunued use of a simple past tense fails to communicate either past or present action.

We can go with past action:

he noticed the sun had started to set.

Or we can go present:

he noticed the sun starting to set.

But the current construction is lost in time.

“Can you read some more?” asked Mara, almost jumping from her seat beside Mihai.

“It’s getting late, Princess Bolkonsky. We'd best be docking soon, or else the park administration will make us sleep on the boat,” said Mr. Zaharia as he started to row.

“Grandpa Zaharia, you know I don’t know who you’re talking about. Please stop calling me that,” said Mara with a playful pout.

“Them’s the rules, dear. You get to call me Grandpa, even though I ain’t related to you, and I get to call you Princess Bolkonsky. And why haven’t you read War and Peace yet?” asked Mr. Zaharia, starting to row. Mihai was with the Hermit and the Messenger, eyes glued to the yellow pages on which his unscipherable handwriting was laid as neatly as he could.

If we’ve dumped the speech tag in the first paragraph, Mara’s tag construction isn’t repetitive. It’s far too easy to fall into a speech-tag, gerunding pattern.

Mr. Zaharia starts to row twice here. Cut the action on the first and cut the speech tag on the second.

The final sentence fails to end properly. It would work if we added “manage” at the end. Alternatively, “as nearly as possible.” Better yet, remove the passive verb construction. “…on which he’d laid his unscipherable handwriting as neatly as he could.”

The rest of the dialogue simply needs variation in the speech tags and action, otherwise it’s a lovely little scene.

As we transition back to the story they’re telling, I love the switch in tenses. The first problem is still the tags and accompanying actions. With only two speakers, some of these quotes can hang unadorned.

The second?

The Messenger grits his teeth as he tries to hide his amazement at the Hermit’s discernment—for a sonowar must have only a handful of feelings and show none.

In the opening section, we went from the preface-like material (which we’ve cut) to a focus on the Hermit and the arrival of the Messenger. The reading stops, and when it picks up again, the scene is being told from the Messenger’s point of view. There’s nothing here to make a transition like that work, and because the introduction of the Hermit is the most powerful image thus far, we don’t want to lose it to focus on the Messenger.

Does the scene work if we move it to the Hermit’s POV? I think we can lose the Messenger’s thoughts and be just fine.

The final problem with the section is ironic. It ends with tagless speech, but the Messenger’s last statements were broken into two paragraphs with their own tags and actions. (That’s a problem. The mind anticipates the new paragraph is a new speaker.) We then get a paragraph in the Messenger’s mind, and then the only unadorned speech, yet…and this time, I can’t be sure who’s speaking.

Then we move to another layer of story within a story within a story, reaching Inception-level complexities, and I love it.

My first piece of advice for this section is the break that ends it. Your nonfiction can survive being interrupted with reminders to subscribe. Fiction cannot. I’m not sure if it’s really a break, and when we land on the other side, I don’t know who’s speaking or where we are. Confusion is deadly in fiction.

But we’re not there yet.

Brigg was still absorbed in his manuscript, dusting off some sand that the Messenger had scattered with his oil-bike. He studied the dark etchings left by the new typewriter on the fine white paper, like a wizard poring over runes of eldritch knowledge.

I love surreal imagery, but the reader is still trying to understand where we are and what’s going on. The sand imagery is more confusion.

The speech again. We need variation. If the readers anticipate the construction of our setences, they’re bored and we’re doomed.

We return to the story:

“I came to ask for your counsel, but I am willing to leave with your head if you keep offending the honor of the Padahar.” His fist was clenched—and so was his heart.

We’re cutting back, only to lead with a pronoun, and we’ve changed POVs again into something more external and godlike, capable of knowing the Messenger’s heart was closed. Then we return to the Messenger’s point of view.

The conversation here is why I wanted to critique this story. It caught my attention, but we need to pull it out of the character’s head. Make the character’s talk real. Consider keeping it in the Hermit’s POV. Work on that speech tag / action variation.

This also brings us back to what the in-story author was saying. Give us some action at the end of the section—not violence, as that wouldn’t be appropiate for the framing. The Hermit already has Christ-like allusions. You could have him write in the sand as he speaks. If he’s a magician, he could conjure a flower out of the lifeless dune as a metaphorical backdrop to his words.

This is your chapter’s climactic moment. Keep it focused. You’re going in multiple directions, throwing in the burning of students, and the reader doesn’t know what’s important. The Hermit’s final words are about the young dying for the ideas of the old, but he’s not talking about the sonawars being murdered if they catch a cold. Or is he? It felt like he’s referring to war, but there’s not much certainty here. Focus and bring clarity to the point all this had led up to.

That point needs to reflect back on the details you brought up in the section with the author. What stands out in my mind are the mention of the Nazis, the talk about the difficulty in capturing our intent in art, and the author’s love of the pulps from his youth. Now within the fantasy world, they’re at war. There’s your connection to the Nazis. The Messenger mindset could be emphasized to capture the pulp’s worship of action and violence, and if we give the POV to the Hermit, we could see his struggle to impart truth to the Messenger, the intent being lost on the closed mind of the Messenger.

I strongly suggest a focus on the imagination of the Hermit, because that’s your most obvious, overarching theme in all the layers of the story. It’s a tale about the conflict between creativity and violence and what our minds can birth in a place of peace. Everything you’ve been setting up needs to resonate here. This isn’t the time to throw in something entirely new.

“I want to know what happens next,” Mara said, as she saw her father pull into the parkway with his brand-new Dacia 1310. She knew he wouldn’t get out of the car for anything—just honk—because Mr. Zaharia made him uneasy. The air was grey with dusk, and the seagulls circled Casa Scânteii like the vultures of Planet Ephraim. Lenin’s statue watched over them like the Hermit watched the vastness of the desert.

The imagery from the story blending into the previous section didn’t work, but it works beautifully here. I love the final twist in the identity of the old man, and we end with a focus, once again, on imagination and art (storytelling).

This story has so much that’s good in it, and it has the potential for more. Best of all, it’s trying to say something. Actually, it’s trying to say a little too much. Focus, and it will be powerful.

Before I end this, allow me to say that in the brief time we’re with Mr. Zaharia and Mara, I really enjoy their interaction and the greater world it suggests. They are delightful.

—Thaddeus Thomas