Starslip Crisis
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Starslip Crisis | |
|---|---|
 The Starship Fuseli |
|
| Author(s) | Kristofer Straub |
| Website | http://www.starslipcrisis.com |
| Update schedule | Updating every Weekday |
| Launch date | May 23, 2005 [1] |
| Genre | Sci-fi, Comedy |
Starslip Crisis (formerly Starshift Crisis) is a daily independent webcomic written and drawn by Kristofer Straub, also the creator of Checkerboard Nightmare. Starslip Crisis is part of the webcomics cooperation collective Blank Label Comics. In the beginning it ran under the name "Starshift Crisis," but it was changed due to a potential copyright infringement.
Starslip Crisis is set in the year 3441, aboard the starship IDS Fuseli, named after painter Henry Fuseli. The Fuseli is a former luxury warship which has been converted into the only museum starship in existence.
The Fuseli travels from system to system with its exhibits, and the comic details the adventures of the ship's crew.
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[edit] Awards
Starslip Crisis was nominated for five Web Cartoonists' Choice Awards in 2006: Outstanding Newcomer, Outstanding Black and White Art, Outstanding Use of Flash, Outstanding Web Design, and Outstanding Science Fiction Comic (which it won).
Kristofer Straub was also nominated in 2006 for Outstanding Writer in the WCCAs.
[edit] Main characters
- Memnon Vanderbeam (41) is the curator of the Fuseli. He is fussy, tea-drinking and very fond of art. He is also the acting captain of the ship.
- Cutter Edgewise (27) is the pilot of the Fuseli. He is a former space-pirate, who has turned over a new leaf and is currently under contract to the Terran Interculture Directorate.
- Mr. Jinx is a Cirbozoid, who serves as Operations Assistant on the Fuseli. He has a seemingly impossible physiology, and produces several odd chemicals. For instance, he can issue an incapacitating vapor from his musk nozzles, secretes Ritalin in his carapace, and has anaesthetic saliva. As a cirbozoid, Mr. Jinx is incapable of comprehending art.
- A2-Z is the ship's AI. Formerly a bargain site mascot, who survived Dotcom Crash II, A2-Z has been adapted to serve as the interface for the ship computer, but he still has a tendency to spout spam.
[edit] The future
In 3441, Earth (referred to by its Latin name Terra) exists under a new system of government known as a critocracy. Its internal structure is unknown. The government's major visible entity is the Terran Interculture Directorate, whose members have been surgically altered into mind-reading, hovering monoliths. The Directorate controls and mediates all aspects of Terran culture, including flow of culture in- and outbound from Terra. It is a precious commodity, as most other species want to be like Terrans. The Directorate funds the starship museum Fuseli as one of its primary liaisons to other worlds.
Mankind is part of a loose confederation of friendly planets known as the Consortium. The Consortium is defended by the Astry, which, like most things, is primarily Terran-operated.
[edit] The starslip drive
The starslip drive is the only practical way of traveling the immense distances between the stars. It is an energyless, instantaneous form of cross-universe transit. It uses a "trick" of the Many-Worlds Law, first postulated (as theory) in 1957. The starslip drive has its current location, and is given a destination. It scans all parallel universes for one in which the ship is already at its destination. It then further scans all parallel universes matching that description for further parallels, like proper crew compliment, cargo, etc. Once a near-matching ship is located, the starslip drive performs a matter swap, or starslip, exchanging the ship with its parallel universe counterpart. If the ship and its counterpart are identical to the atom, mass-energy is conserved and the drive uses zero energy.
The ship is now in a parallel universe, almost identical to its home universe, except it is now at its destination. But the less thorough the initial scan, the more sloppy the starslip gets. A 99.9999999% correct scan takes days.
Any minor differences between universes are accepted as the only drawback to starslip drive use.
[edit] The Crisis
As of May 23, 2006, the storyline "Unparalleled" signaled the start of the actual Crisis that has been hinted at since the start of the comic. The Fuseli has jumped into a universe that is very different from the original and with each jump the differences become more severe. Aside from the political implications of changing facts, Vanderbeam is now faced with the death of his main love interest, Jovia, in an event he'd thwarted in his own universe.
