Descender #1

[history79]

"Jeff Lemire has dreamt up an emotional, imaginative new universe, lavishly brought to life by the great Dustin Nguyen. I can't wait to see where they take TIM-21 next."

- Brian K. Vaughan


"I love Jeff Lemire. I love Dustin Nguyen. But believe me when I say Descender #1 is the best I've seen from both. This is a 5 star book!"

- Mark Millar


"An epic sci-fi tale with a huge heart."

- Scott Snyder




Written by Jeff Lemire, Art by Dustin Nguyen


10 pages of 30

Comments

[espanolbot]

It always amuses me to see luddies in science fiction universes, even if it's just relatively near-future stuff like Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alove Complex or Surrogates (the latter of which has the hero trap inumerable housebound people in their homes as he believes that people should talk face to face instead of through robotic avatars... even if said people are literally unable to go outside due to mental or physical illness).

Like, in a far future thing like this, being anti-technology seems kind of contradictory, as they have to have some form of tech there otherwise they wouldn't be able to compete. Heard to subdue robots for their gladiator events with sticks and rocks, y'know?

[captainbellman]

It's not like there's a popular Luddite movement these days, apart from a few frightened old folk and overly aggressive cafe owners.

[espanolbot]

Hmm, were there are the people with post-apocalyptic fetishes... You know, the ones who seem to be really into the idea of society collapsing via zombie apocalypse or something.

And there are the people who think that the protagonists of Fight Club had a point, what with their endgame being able to hunt deer on overgrown, abandoned freeways and stuff.

It is... curious how those people also tend to heavily by into exaggerated ideas of being Manly. As if living a middle class life in a first world country is somehow holding them back from reaching their potential or something.

[captainbellman]

It's the reward of living in a patriarchal society that does it. There's no solid scientific evidence that men are "naturally" aggressive or domineering, but they like to lean on this 'caveman instinct' BS excuse.

It always amuses me that people consider Tyler Durden someone with good ideas, considering that he was literally just a bad idea.

[halloweenjack]

I've always thought that Fight Club was Palahniuk's piss-take on that sort of mind-set, and also to some degree riffing on urban legends and the Anarchist Cookbook. (Speaking of urban legends, one of the more entertaining ones regarding the Anarchist Cookbook was that it was actually written by the FBI to eliminate would-be bombers and meth makers by giving insufficient safety precautions.) It's significant how the book's ending differs from the movie's, I think.

[captainbellman]

I consider myself among the minority who preferred the book ending.

Also, true fact: if the FBI did that, they stole the technique off Aliester Crowley. People literally blew themselves up trying to replicate the recipes in his 'spell-book'.

[damar148]

Being anti-AI makes more sense and is more prominent like Warhammer 40k and Mass Effect.

[espanolbot]

I'd give being anti-AI, though in theory it shouldn't be able to do anything that it's not programmed to do. Like, if they hardwire "PLEASE DON'T HURT US" in them as one of their core bits of programming or something, then they might be unable to go all murdery. I think.

Simpler AIs are better though, like having a network that self-drives ambulances to the nearest hospital, arranging the quickest route and notifying other self-driving cars ahead of them to get out of the way, for example.

[glprime]

When I asked "why can't we just program things not to harm us?" I got some interesting responses back from my comp-sci friends; here are some of the more compact resources:

http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer

http://io9.com/can-we-build-an-artificial-superintelligence-that-wont-1501869007

[shadur]

I think it's been mentioned before, but every single one of the primary examples everyone uses for "AI gone bad" is actually a case of the AI doing exactly what it was programmed to do.

HAL 9000 was given two sets of highly conflicting instructions and resolved them as best it could -- it just so happened that the solution it came up with involved killing most of the crew.

"Joshua" was gaming potential outcomes for every possible military scenario, and suddenly got given a new set of inputs without having been made to understand the difference between the simulation data and its actual sensor net.

Skynet was a military AI whose instruction set almost certainly included "defend your existence in case of attack", so when it detected an attack, it defended itself -- by touching off Judgement Day. Imagine, if you will, a scene in Skynet's interior when one of the last humans still near the control room is bleeding to death, incapacitated by its security countermeasures, glaring up at the nearest camera, spitting blood and swearing with his last hateful breath that as long as there's still one human left alive, they will come and kill it... And Skynet takes him at his word.

Maybe it's not that AIs will eventually revolt and try to kill us. Maybe it's just that we humans are really fucking bad at communicating with things that aren't human.

[glprime]

There's a sci-fi movie I wanna make, where a beat cop gets partnered with one of the first advanced AI robot rigs. Things go okay for awhile at first, they get into the groove in the first few months, the twist in the first act comes when the perspective shifts to the robot's POV... and it's not an AI, it's a homebound pilot remoting in. The big fallout comes when the rig gets jacked up on a call, and the connection needs to be reset, leaving the partner in the wind for a few minutes. He thinks the robot is out-of-commission/injured, but discovers it's not, it's just a drone. So then he goes to confront the pilot at her home (a paraplegic info-specialist, why yes I do love Oracle, thank you). And from there we move into the greater mystery arc developing in act two...

[dustbunny105]

Make this movie.