from the whatever-it-takes…even-if-it's-fun dept.
Senior Associate PatSalsbury writes "Alan Moore, a long-time (and fantastic) writer of comics and graphic novels, and Dan Jurgens recently co-wrote a story ("Tom Strong", #7) set in the year 2050, where nanotech was part of the daily world…I think comics are an excellent way of reaching youth…" So do we. Read More for Pat's full post. To better understand this communication format, Foresight chairman Eric Drexler highly recommends the appropriately-named book Understanding Comics. Senior Associate PatSalsbury writes "Alan Moore, a long-time (and fantastic) writer of comics and graphic novels, and Dan Jurgens recently co-wrote a story ("Tom Strong", #7) set in the year 2050, where nanotech was part of the daily world for the citizens of "Millennium City". It wasn't the main focus of the story, but rather the backdrop in which this section took place. Of particular note was a fight scene in which a girl used utility fog (even calling it such by name, and directing it to do her bidding and reformulate itself several times based upon voice commands), and also mention of how the superstructures of the city were "constantly shifting and self-regenerating nanotech materials." (i.e. – Even though it was done in still-panels, they were drawn in such a way to convey the idea that the buildings were shifting and changing their shape while the people were interacting in the story.)
It's certainly not the most technical assessment of nanotech, but we've already got gobs of that. 🙂 Rather, this was a fun and rather surprising place to see it, and I think a rather interesting vector with which to bring the meme of nano to youth, who might not be perusing the scientific journals. Certainly, the presentation indicated at least some familiarity of the concepts and possibilities, but then, I'd expect that from Alan and Dan.
I think comics are an excellent way of reaching youth and presenting "far out and fantastic" notions to an audience that is already clearly receptive to such ideas as living in space, genetic engineering, futuristic materials science and technology, life extension, etc. Might be worth exploring how we could utilize this vector to reach more young people… Certainly a topic open to discussion.
If you want to see the cover art, you can look here.
And you can pick up the issue at your local comics shop. Have fun! :-)"
