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Bad Space comics (spoilers)

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thorny:
Edited by Jitter on June 1st 2023: this is the discussion about Bad Space, https://www.badspacecomics.com/

I cut the discussion on Bad Space out of the Comic of the Month thread as was agreed. It opens at a slightly random point, Thorny is responding to note stating the oldest stories are at the bottom of the page in Bad Space. As the stories seem ro be unrelated, it doesn’t really matter much.



Ah. I'm reading them backwards.

thegreyarea:
Well, I just read "Swarm"! Thanks for the suggestion, @Jitter ! I really liked it!

Spoiler for Swarm:
Spoiler: showThis, like the story dmeck mentions, bumps in one of the most common explanations for the Fermi Paradox: Humans are just too bad to be contacted... or swallowed.  :)

And I fully agree that those can be better enjoyed (like most foods, or planets) if eaten with moderation.

So I'll let the next story for tomoroow. ;)

Keep Looking:
I've really enjoyed reading some of the Bad Space comics - they're very... quiet comics in some sense (short, often contemplative) but also can go some really interesting and horrifying places that make me curious to click on each one.

thegreyarea:
Yes, I agree with you, Keep. :)

So today I read "Ozymandias". Interesting story.

Spoiler for the story:
Spoiler: showI guess that besides the "It's horrible to die in space" part, the author point is a reflection over the insignificance of humans, their (often subjective) struggles and their perception of time, when facing the vastness of the Universe, a bit in the line of Carl Sagan's "pale blue dot" speech. One could argue that such humbling thoughts have little practical effect on our lives. On the other hand I believe any humbling exercise that helps people see things with a broader perspective is useful.

thegreyarea:
Today I read "Ghosts". I liked it, particularly the drawings.

Spoiler for the story:
Spoiler: showI really like the part of removing paradoxes from the equation. It's one of the most irritating parts of any time travel story. The alternative is, usually, the Multiverse, where every time you travel in time generates a whole new universe (or you simply get transferred to another already existing universe out of an infinite number).
The question is that it makes the whole travel quite pointless, except to you. A person that died is still dead in your original Universe. Only you can experience the change, because to all the others things are just what they always were.

That ghost hypothesis also solves another question: What happens to the atoms that occupy the space where the time traveller materializes? A big ball of thermonuclear fire is one possible answer...  O_O

The last part, realizing "We are all ghosts now" takes us, I believe, carries us to a curious paradox: The present, on one hand, doesn't exists, always slipping into the future. On the other hand there's only the present. The past is gone, the future doesn't exists yet. I'm sure some philosopher already dived into those deep questions, but right know I'm to tired to check...
Anyway, we may be all ghosts now, but that's all the reality we have.
:)

Last thought: Almost all time travel stories* chose to keep the travelers anchored at their spacial reference, which is very practical in terms of storytelling, but really not guaranteed. Since earth, the sun and the whole galaxy are moving (at mindblowing speeds) a short time jump would put our traveller very far away. I remeber someone refering that when that asteroid hit earth, killing most dinossaurs, our planet was almost on the other side of the Milky Way...

* there was a story, whose name and author I don't recall, that uses the time-space displacement. I remember they have a mouse on a cage and they use their time travelling device on it for less than a second, and the animal show up outside the cage, and a bit over the table...   

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