'it's a self-replicating war robot designed to annex worlds'
Quote from Angie the Engineer in Planetary/The Authority: Ruling The World (Ellis/Jimenez, copyright Wildstorm 2000). The Authority – you may or may not be aware – are superheroes with a govt mandate to intervene in any & all crises involving alien super-science.
What you might guess is this is all geeksville – they pick-up the current pop-science, download it off the web & it goes in their latest bit of futuristic fantasy story-line. Yeah but there’s something else you might say – the Authority are the good guys & the self-replicating robots are the bad guys. It’s made blatantly obvious – in this & others of the Wildstorm universe – that the Authority & others aren’t techno-creations, they’re normal human beings who by some accident are imbued with fantastical powers.
All their moral human faculties are present & correct (or often incorrect). This makes for good storytelling, interesting characters, but it also makes them responsible for their actions & trustworthy. That’s not to say the Earth-spanning Authority don’t come in for their share of suspicion from irritable natives – again it makes good storytelling. In any case, with the globe facing nightmarish alien science you’ve gotta put your trust somewhere, right?
So, basically, this isn’t just geeksville. It puts humans in control of technology & under threat from runaway alien technology.
Bookmark this on Delicious
Tags: superheroes, transients
February 7, 2010 at 12:22 pm |
[...] glamtek - ‘Sky Captain’ sorta stuff. Basically it’s spiffing stuff (see ‘geeksville inc.’) Dan Dare would be proud type thing but it’s just technology, the world & our control of [...]