Monday, June 13, 2011

Comic Review: Freefall by Mark Stanley


Granted, you've never heard of it, and I haven't actually read all of it, either.

Still worth reviewing? Sure. I have nothing BUT spare time since becoming addicted to Twitter. Joke. Deadpan mode.

I recently spent an evening reading several years worth of the sci-fi webcomic Freefall, liked it fine, and thought I'd recommend it to those searching high and low for funny SF.

Freefall features (as of the last stuff I read) the mostly planet-locked crew of the not-yet-spaceworthy vessel Savage Chicken. They are the dodgy, chronically indolent merchant Captain Sam Starfall, his dogsbody robot Helix, and the new engineer (I should have saved the term dogsbody for her): an artificially created humanoid wolf called Florence. As you might imagine, the girl does all the actual work.
I'm no expert on REAL WORLD applications of artificial intelligence, or even how to use a computer beyond rudimentary nudity acquisition skills. So, if you're the sort of nerd who understands that technical stuff you'll probably get EVEN more out of this than I did.

I think my favourite gag so far was a pair of corporate stooge robots trying to find a way around the Asimov laws so that by their inaction they might get their terrible boss killed.

Wikipedia deleted Freefall's description page, citing lack of evidence that it exists. Well, it won a couple of something called the Web Cartoonists Choice awards, and the 2046th strip posted today, so, yeah, it exists. Worth checking out, too.

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