Bad Space comics (spoilers)

[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: show

This, 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: show

I 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: show

I 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... 

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...   

[Jitter]

On Ghosts

Spoiler: show

Time travel stories always give me headache if they are trying to account for the paradoxes. But there are also those that don’t care, it just works because it works. Or, sometimes, it doesn’t but happens anyway. Some of those are quite entertaining.

Have you read or seen The Time Traveler’s Wife?

[thegreyarea]

On Ghosts

Spoiler: show

Time travel stories always give me headache if they are trying to account for the paradoxes. But there are also those that don’t care, it just works because it works. Or, sometimes, it doesn’t but happens anyway. Some of those are quite entertaining.

Have you read or seen The Time Traveler’s Wife?

More about that...

Spoiler: show

I also find time-travel paradoxes deeply irritating, and the reason I promised myself not to write any story on that theme. One can set their story on any time, past or future, or even multiple times, and even make strange connections (i.e. Cloud Atlas) but all that can be done without time travel.

An exception would be stories exploring the relativistic distortion of time when you move close to the speed of light. There are some interesting ones on that, like Joe Haldeman's Forever War, or Paul Anderson's Tau Zero, or yet Christopher Nolan's movie Interstellar. But it demands some solid background work. And in those stories there's no moving backwards in time.

The Time Traveler's Wife seems interesting as a concept. I haven't read it, nor seen the movie. But I've checked the plot. I have a serious feeling that the author simply overlooked the whole paradoxes topic and wrote what she believed was best for the story.
(Which, BTW, I wouldn't call Science Fiction, because the time travel "device" - a "Genetic Alteration" - has so little of science on it that naming the cause as "Magic" would be more honest, like it happens on another story that, AFAIK*, doesn't worry much with paradoxes, Diana Gabaldon's Outlander).

But that's not necessarily a problem. A story can be very interesting, fun and/or entertaining while overlooking (or just forgetting) the scientifical foundations. That may be the case of The Time Traveler's, considering how many people seem to have enjoyed it. All that said I will put it on my TBR list.

*: I haven't finished the first book of the series, and just watched the first season, so my initial observation may be completely wrong.

[dmeck7755]

I have been going through the vignettes on the site. While some are a bit scary, they are amazingly well written.

It is interesting how much is conveyed in just 10 panels.  I really do like them

[Róisín]

Gabaldon’s Outlander is interesting. I haven’t read the whole series, but what I have read was a good tale.

[thegreyarea]

Today I read "Anzac". I'm enjoying this day-by-day activity...

Spoiler on ANZAC:

Spoiler: show

First point is a quite valid one, even if well known: The ongoing global warming and it's consequences on the climate will create serious problems and may destabilize the relations between countries that usualy work well with each other. Bigger nations may feel tempted, out of desperation, to grab resources from weaker neighbours.
I can see something like that happening between AU and NZ, or Spain and Portugal... Yet fighting among ourselves will only make things worse, so I hope people will be wiser and instead work together.

Second point is more intriguing and, I suspect, what really motivates the story: To put our civilization in perspective, seen by the eyes of the natives of those lands that our "main civilization" occupied as it spread across the world. The last frame has it all: The native people carry the memory of what was before, and after the "wave", may be able to take back their space and rebuild.
That is probably right. It's unlikely that a civilizational colapse would wipe out all humans and, as we see in SSSS, the survivors would slowly recover. Their traditions, more connected with the land and less technology dependent, might play a relevant role in the process... As long as enough people with that knowledge survive. Again, I hope we don't find out.

last thoughs: It is an interesting piece. However I feel (quite subjective, of course) that ANZAC's drawings and story, while being good, are not up to the quality level of the previous ones.

[Jitter]

On Anzac

Spoiler: show

The author lives in NZ which is obviously reflected in this story. But similar scenarios are likely to happen everywhere. In some cases the strongest more or less conquering the weaker. But here in Europe and especially in the North, I’m rather foreseeing a flood of people from any and all of the southern regions. Both from the global South, but also from the southern parts of Europe. Coming in, not so much by force but by there just being so many who have lost their country to the heat.

At the moment the Mediterranean is working as our kill zone (we are not actively sinking the boats, at least not very often, but refusing to rescue them amounts pretty much to the same thing) but when huge swathes of land will become lethal, and at this rate they will, there will be migration on scale that is orders of magnitude greater than anything history has ever seen. Most probably won’t make it, but 10 % of a billion people is still 100 000 000 people.

I hope some peaceful solutions can be found, but I’m nowhere near to being convinced.

[thegreyarea]

On Anzac

Spoiler: show

The author lives in NZ which is obviously reflected in this story. But similar scenarios are likely to happen everywhere. In some cases the strongest more or less conquering the weaker. But here in Europe and especially in the North, I’m rather foreseeing a flood of people from any and all of the southern regions. Both from the global South, but also from the southern parts of Europe. Coming in, not so much by force but by there just being so many who have lost their country to the heat.

At the moment the Mediterranean is working as our kill zone (we are not actively sinking the boats, at least not very often, but refusing to rescue them amounts pretty much to the same thing) but when huge swathes of land will become lethal, and at this rate they will, there will be migration on scale that is orders of magnitude greater than anything history has ever seen. Most probably won’t make it, but 10 % of a billion people is still 100 000 000 people.

I hope some peaceful solutions can be found, but I’m nowhere near to being convinced.

Some thoughts:

Spoiler: show

First, I hope we don't come to that point. My optimistic side still believes humankind will grow up before things turn really ugly.

Of course we will have more people migrating, and that will stress any country or region that has a milder climate. But I don't think we will see mass migrations on that scale (tenths or hundreds of millions), mostly, I'm afraid, because if we get to that point there will be no food nor logistics to keep those masses alive. But that's also something we don't want to watch.

And way before that there's a strong possibility of active boat sinking, together with border fences everywhere. Another thing we don't want to see.

Anyway I expect a steady growth in migrations from poor countries, driven by the combination of climate change, overpopulation and insecurity. It's already happening.
But there are also positive effects, like compensating demographic issues related with an older population and, if societies manage to remain open, some mutualy beneficial cultural exchange. (I'm a half-full glass pereson, remember?)

[thegreyarea]

Now I've reread "The Suit". Another intriguing take...

Thoughts on The Suit:

Spoiler: show

An horror story, definitively.

It's quite disconforting to imagine how this stranded astronaut feels as the machine inexorably tears away his body parts. Worse, there seems to be no previous warning (or available painkillers). And after all that we are left without knowledge if all that sacrifice was worth it.

But does the astronaut has any choice on that? Does he have any communication with the suit? And if he had, what would he choose? Did he make it in the end? Or the "never" means that he died before reaching a safe place? Or did he simply got insane after all that?

All that said I really like the open start (we don't know what happened before) and the open end, even if it "hurts" the readers.

It's again "dying in space may be horrible", but on steroids, because it's a slow, painfull death, but is also "how much would a person endure to survive?", supposing the astronaut had a say in that matter. If he didn't, this can also be a cautionary tale about keeping control over technology, else it may start doing unpleasant, unwanted things to us...

As someone in the comments mentioned, fans of "The Culture" series by Iain M Banks will recognize much of his short story "Descendant" on "The Suit", with some relevant differences: Descendant focus is much more on psychological issues, rather than physical ones, and there's constant communication between the user and the suit, that is a fully sentient machine and a true companion for the stranded astronaut. It also deal with other questions that I don't want to spoil... The story is part of "The State of The Art" collection of short stories, and can be easily find online.

See you for the next one, "After Life"

[dmeck7755]

The suit is one that actually bothered me somewhat. 

The story Inhospitable is like the suit in a way

Spoiler: show

Being alone like that.  There are many questions to consider.  Did he crash land on some planet and he is the only survivor? Why would he be alone?  Astronauts, i would assume would travel at least in twos.

Is he walking on a future despoiled Earth?

In the end there is only the machine...

[Jitter]

Suit definitely is on the horror end of the spectrum here


Suit and Inhospitable

Spoiler: show

For me, Inhospitable (actual title in the end To Hell and Back) makes Suit easier to take. If the teo stories happen in the same universe, as may or may not be the case, then there’s hope the brain in the suit can still be preserved and restored somehow. Particularly if the “home” is near where the story ends.

But, it is an entirely horrifying tale. What if the astronaut has no choice and the suit forcibly keeps him alive as long as possible, and beyond? What if he knows there’s no escape and the end result is the same whether he just takes off the helmet to begin with, but the suit won’t allow him? Suppose he were for example a part of an exploration party that has crashed on an inhospitable planet or moon, destroying the only ship within the 300 system area. And the waiver the crew had to sign explicitly confirms there will be no rescue missions. Or he happened to be off planet when the Enemy attacked, scorching the atmosphere and crumbling everything to dust? Or for whatever reason he knows there is no possibility whatsoever to get home, or there is no home anymore. Being forced to endure several Earth months (??) of pure agony to delay the inevitable… yeah, I hope nobody wanted to sleep tonight?

Based on the final thoughts it seems the astronaut believes there is theoretically a possibility of getting home, so perhaps we can go to bed with that idea, ok?