Writing practice - give me some feedback please!

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I wrote this a few days ago to practice my writing skills, but also to flesh out the backstory of my sci-fi universe. Please tell me what you think of it.

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Dad

I hope this message will reach you. Long ago, I left the world that I called home to fight for what I consider noble and to defend what was worth the sacrifice. But the Nightmare War changed it all. We have always seen for centuries our Galactic Confederation as the guardian of democracy, as the paragon of civilization. How can we still claim to be at the peak of evolution when each days entire worlds disappear, cut off from the Galactic network? That millions of innocent people are incinerated by spears of plasmas from space? When soldiers are dismembered and killed, their sacrifices, useless?

War is not hell. In hell, the innocent is spared.

During these 50 years of war, have we learned anything? Our hubris led us to believe we were invincible. Believe that our cultural hegemony alone would hold the Conclave in place. What a f*****g fairy tale. We now face the consequences of our arrogance. What good brought the Space Age, if we only filled our galaxy with war and chaos?

It is too late now. Our fleets lay in ruins, the Earth is burning and its inhabitants are dead. Admiral Dakuryn failed. The Conclave is heading towards Pangaïa. At this point, I almost hope that they win and that this wretched, corrupted planet fall in ruins. We don't deserve civilization. Not like this. I'm activating the Guillotine Project. We're taking the Conclave with us. If galactic civilization must fall, then so be it. We'll head back to the Stone Age, right in the caves our ancestors never should have left.

And then?

Then I will embark on my own journey through the Divine Beyond. It's funny; I've lived my life as an atheist and never believed in hell. Today I wish it could exist. Too many people deserve to end there, me first.

And so the last chapter of my life ends. I am dying, slowly poisoned by the ambient radiation, holed up in the bottom of a bunker on a silent, forgotten world. A whole fleet of the Conclave is gathered in orbit. They want my head. From the external cameras, I see their long vessels blocking the sun. Their legions of soldiers are storming the base. They will not have the leisure to kill me. I'm locking down the security of the bunker. It is done. Nothing will ever leave or enter this forsaken tomb. Secrets and monsters here will remain buried here for eternity, as it always should have been.

I would like to able to go back in time. Do things otherwise. Even interstellar civilizations deserve second chances. Unfortunately, living in the past is a luxury that we cannot afford anymore. We can only hope for the future.

I can see you in your garden with mom, the plants you worked so hard to make grow making this place a haven of peace and serenity. A true Eden cut off from a Galaxy ill and corrupt, only good to be left rotting. I would like to see it one more time, before... before I die. You believed that this war was chaos? Just wait after Project Guillotine is activated. I simply hope this time, you, and the rest of our family, will be spared. You don't deserve this, not after what you did.

Thanks for everything dad, and I'm sorry. Godspeed.

-Admiral Colt, planet Horus, 9/6/2836

ERROR: / /453 CONNECTION HAS NOT BEEN ESTABLISHED: / / [THE MESSAGE HAS NOT BEEN SENT]

I'd obviously need a little background on the situation, but it's well done. It would be a great ending to a book, or a climax if you're willing to drag it out.

I'll be honest, and it's just my opinion:

This characters seems kind of pretentious. I don't really feel drawn in to his hardship, he seems more preachy than reflective/introspective.

And I gotta be honest, "Galactic Confederation," seems to cliched.

But if you disagree, don't be offended, just disregard my opinion.

I could see this as the start of a story, with a little tweaking - it does set up the ideas that the character (a) thinks he is headed for the divine beyond (presumably, he expects to die), and (b ) wishes he could go back in time and do it all over. So that does set up a couple of story lines that could be developed into a book, or a longer story, anyway.

A couple of notes: the writer talks about how he started out with good feelings about going to this war, but then at one point he says something about "after fifty years," and the way that came across was that the writer had been in this war for that long... yeah, I know, men from whatever planet this is may live for hundreds of years, but this just struck me as confusing as I was reading from the start. I dunno, that just confused me as I was reading it, you might think about that...

The other thing is that at the end, the letter is signed "Admiral" somebody, but this whole letter struck me as being written by somebody who had not lived nearly long enough to be an admiral... that didn't match the feeling I got from the letter. This seems more like it's from somebody way down in the ranks. Part of that, too, is that by the time someone HAS become an Admiral, their father is probably dead and gone... an admiral might be writing to a friend from school, or to his own children or something...

Overall, if you cleaned up some of the inconsistency like that, I could see this as the start of a story that would make me want to keep reading. Is the guy a higher-up or a grunt? Is this letter something that person would write? The history of the battles, think about the timespan and make it appropriate for the character (or let us know somehow that 50 years is not a long time for this lifeform).

Your mileage may vary, but that's what I got from a first read...

I'm not a big fan of letters or journals in fiction books.

I like how the character voice came through--and a lot of personal details about the character were exposed. I like the comments about hell.

Some part of the letter still felt a bit like info-dump to me though. I prefer to get my backstory and info from a combination of action, commentary from the POV character, and dialogue. And I would prefer a lot of info to be dispersed through several pages or chapters. However, I've heard that the sci-fi genre is a little more tolerant of info-dump, so if your readers are used to it then it might not be a problem.

Overall, I think you are doing a good job of allowing the characters voice to come through, and I think that's the key to writing engaging stories.

I agree with Charles that the writer didn't sound like he was that old or that he'd been in war for 30 years. I guess I expect him to be a little more hardened and jaded by that point.