cks you designed to be ~exotic~ or whatever, and those rabid jerks at Disney can only grit their teeth now!Project Sunflower, my thoughts · 9:56pm May 8th, 2015
Another notch regarding fandom classics under my belt, and I thought I'd share my thoughts.
It is the year 2038, and the Earth is slowly being consumed by a space-borne monstrosity dubbed the Black Tide, which is using nanotechnology to remake the planet into something hideously alien.
Erin Olsen works for Project Harmonics, humanity's last-ditch effort to find a new world before the Tide can wipe them out. But when that world is found, and it turns out to be occupied, Erin will need to find the courage to face the unknown in order to save the inhabitants of both worlds.
[Adventure] [Human] [Teen] 242,202 words-
[Celestia] [Luna] [OC] [Mane Six]
And not much to say other than that even with the stories already sky-high reputation I was actually pleasantly surprised. Even without the pony content it would be a good light sci-fi story, and it was a pleasure to read.
I was really surprised by what an easy and light read it was, though. Took me about 2-3 days, and that was not something I expected from the 242,202 words count. Not often you see a story that well paced, and it was a neat bonus I didn't expect.
Minor spoiler: I also liked how there were no true villains, but many antagonists. Even the Black Tide itself is 'just' basically a Von Neumann probe doing what it was designed for without any true malice; if by aliens that seem not posses much in the way of what we'd recognize as ethics regarding safeties on their shiny toys.
Terrifying in it's own right, sure, but rather refreshingly straight-forward at the same time.
Honestly, the only real complaint —yes, singular— I have about this story is that I'd preferred a bit more hard science in it beyond:
Still, that's rather minor.
Oh, and related: I thought Erin/Sunflower felt a bit under-powered considering what was done to her. Having her body re-sculptured by processionals (if granted, that had to guess quite a few things) AND filled with cybernetics... Resulting in somepony barely on the level of RD and Applejack?
Granted, those two are rather far on the end of the pony bell-curve, but still. You don't see that level of body modification even in sci-fi that often, and not going further than the story did felt like a missed opportunity.
That is literally the only bad thing I have to say about the main character, though. Erin/Sunflower is simply a charmingly friendly, honest and courageous woman whose adventure was an outright pleasure to read about.
Highly recommended. Might even be a new all-time favorite of mine. 
Oh, and I haven't gotten around to the sequel or spin-off quite yet, so no spoilers about either in the comments, please. SA tag because of similar themes/generas.
Stop abusing the tag feature.
I follow you already, I read SA already... I will change one of those if you keep doing it.
And it will change absolutely nothing!
You might feel a bit let down by the sequel. Personally I think the main story is just off to a slow start, we still get lots of charming Erin.
yeah pretty good read i agree
and i gotta say i Really like the crossover story a very mary christmas with erin quiet funny
also agree that it could have used mor hard sicence but not everyone have your didictaion to reasrh that here as i have noticed
just gotta love this site.
Thank you for this recommendation! I have read the first chapter and it's interesting enough to make me continue. May I ask how in the heck did you find this?
You also have my continued support for Sufficiently Advanced.
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[Sorry bud. He's working on Darkhorse, so its going to be a bit before this gets up and running again.]
I do love Project Sunflower. The main 'villain' is an incredibly sympathetic transequine, who feels like the awesome main character of his own story. The pacing makes it a joy to read. The tension and slow build as we wait to see if Erin will be discovered is fantastic, along with Erin getting more and more uncomfortable with her role as a spy.
The only real flaw is that the plot at the very beginning makes no sense. Why would you send an untrained intern of questionable loyalty on the incredibly important spy mission, where getting caught or saying the wrong thing could literally doom all of humanity to horrific death by black tide? Sure it all worked out, but you'd better be willing to suspend a mountain of disbelief. Seriously, wouldn't it have made more sense to send a soldier or astronaut with a good service record who had been crippled, and would be willing to risk experimental surgery to regain function and serve humanity?
The only thing that I didn't like about it was that the destruction of the Black Tide felt like a cop out. The fact that they just 'magic'd' it gone was annoying.
Read it, was OK. Not awesomely terrific, just OK, but it's an achievement itself.
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Praise IPU!
3055710
I'm sorry you feel that way, but I have to say I think this post is perfectly on-topic regarding tags.
SA is about a group of scientist, mainly cyborgs made to look like ponies who through advanced science end up in Equestria, and have to deal with the political fallout from that.
Project: Sunflower is about a young woman that is turned into a cyborg pony and travel to Equestria through advanced science, and has to deal with the political fallout once she's found out.
With that much overlap I frankly thought it fitting.
But fine, next time I write something like this, I'll skip tagging it.
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Think I saw Sunflower the first time over at Equestria Daily, actually. Been sitting on my 'to read' page for ages, though.
If you only care for the cream de la cream that's actually a good place to keep an eye on. Every now and then you see some rather blatant 'the hot stuff of the moment that my friend made' but on the whole ED keeps
infuriatinglyhigh standards on what stories they'll recommend.Otherwise the groups are a good place to peak around in. They (usually) don't have nearly the same bar of entry as ED —for good and ill, but since they all revolve around a certain theme it's easier to find what you're actually feeling like reading as well.
Oh, and if you're will is strong enough to resist the siren song of the rest of the site, TVTropes has a really excellent fan-fiction recommendation page system.
Hope that helped.
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I actually thought that made quite a bit of sense... eventually.
Given how mild the scientist disappointment at the number of volunteers and how elated they got at Erin actually going for it, in hindsight it appeared quite clear to me that they had asked a whole bunch of more 'traditional' high-risk volunteers but the hate and outright revulsion for anything associated with The Black Tide was simply that strong.
Still, I do agree that at least one or two more volunteers given the stakes would have made more sense.
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I actually thought the idea of introducing a vector the Elements could actually recognizance and thus purify was rather brilliant; giving a rational in-universe explanation why try one failed, but try two would be successful without downgrading the power of such a major artifact.
Why a mass of nanomachines with faulty programming posses psychic freaking powers, on the other hand... That bit just went way, way beyond the 'sufficiently advanced tech' excuse for me, personally.
I never mentioned this since I figured you must have already read it, but have you tried Outside the Reaching Sky yet? It's the first story to come to mind when I think of transequinism. It is a sequel, though it stands alone fairly well and is better than its prequel (though I did like the prequel nonetheless.)
Incidentally, I hope you're over your cold.
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I've got it on my 'to read' list thanks to recommendation, but I haven't gotten around to it yet thanks to that whole sequel thing.
Have to admit, that sounds really interesting though.
For the record my personal one when it comes to that theme is The Monster Bellow. A bit dark, but a fascinating and quite heartbreaking look into how far a pony might go to become special.
Highly recommend it if you haven't heard about it yet.
Not quite, sadly. Most stubborn darn cold I've ever had.
Still, it's mostly down to a slight cough and being slightly scatterbrained right now, so I'm slowly starting to write again. Thanks for asking.
3057737 I've read The Monster Below, and while I enjoyed much of the beginning, a sense of dissatisfaction with it began to grow more and more pronounced as I neared the end, to the point I don't even remember the end, even though I remember the beginning clearly. I'm hard pressed to tell you the cause, though I think it related to the main character holding an idiot ball one too many times.
Whenever I think of Cyber ponies though, I first think of Rainbow Dash from Outside the Reaching Sky and her discussion with Twilight about cybernetic limb replacement and the psychological trauma of losing a cutie mark.
Anyway, I do recommend reading its prequel The Dread Chitin first, but if you are on the fence about it the quality jumps for the sequel OtRS.
In fact OtRS is my favorite rendition of Rainbow Dash in any fic.
I thought the reason she (Erin) ended up on par with the regular ponies is because of magic? They had the biology needed to use it, and it boosted them to match the "mundane" cyber enhanced Erin? That was my understanding anyway.
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Yeah, exactly.
I just thought it rather annoying that somebody that had their body re-sculpted down to individual muscle strands and tendons, and filled with cybernetics barely measured up to a farmer and a weather-tech.
Chosen ones also, yeah, but still.
Then again, that was the 1.0 version and it was rather blatantly teased that Erin/Sunflower will have all that and magic in the sequel, so fingers crossed for that.
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You cannot tag a story unless the blog is specifically about the story itself.
3058759 Actually, she don't have cybernetics in sequel. And Earth pony magic just don't work, and have less stamina than her human body had. She's working out every day, though, we'll see how well it's goes.
3297310
Yeah, I've caught up now.
Still, faux alicorn hood isn't something to sneeze at, even so. And part of her work is to act as a 'beta-tester' for humans learning magic that way, so still nifty stuff even if that guess of mine was completely off.