§ October 26th, 2005 § Filed under Uncategorized Comments Off on

I was looking through issue #41 of Marvel Premiere #41 (April 1978), featuring the one (and, until a few years ago, only) appearance of “Seeker 3000,” per a customer request to verify this was the comic he was looking for. In the process, I noticed what I thought was a pretty good idea for a sci-fi comic:


CLICK TO MAKE SPACIER

That goateed computer image is in fact the antagonist of the series, who died earlier in the issue but “lives” on as the shipboard artificial intelligence. Having your former arch-nemesis as the A.I. you have to interact with on a daily basis just to survive was, I thought, a neat concept (“Set a course for Gamma Omnicron IV, computer!” “Course set…or is it? Ah ha ha ha!”), and it’s a shame the series never went any farther than it did. I know that it’s been done elsewhere (for example, in the Red Dwarf TV series, Rimmer lives on as a shipboard hologram that pesters Lister), but it just sort of caught my fancy.

I know a Seeker 3000 mini-series came out a few years back, but I’d completely forgotten about it until I started Googling around for references to the original story. It appears, though, that they didn’t exploit the idea overly much, getting the A.I. program off the ship (and onto another) in short order.

A similar concept popped up near the end of Jim Starlin’s tenure on Dreadstar, back in its First Comics days. Dreadstar and Company are preparing to leave the galaxy, but longtime Company member Willow decides to stay behind. However, she has uploaded a copy of her personality to the shipboard computers, and thus becomes the ship’s A.I. This wasn’t an adversarial relationship like in Seeker 3000, but the implication was that, one day, Dreadstar would return to the real Willow and find her much different from the shipboard A.I. he’d grown accustomed to.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again…I’m sure this is a fetish for somebody. If someone can fetishize Roy Orbison being wrapped up in plastic clearwrap, someone can fetishize human personalities being uploaded into computers.

Additional linkage: synopses of Marvel Premiere #41 and the late-90s Seeker 3000 mini-series.

Comments are closed.