I have a couple appearances to announce:
I will be up at Plattsburgh, NY this weekend for the big 1812 Bicentennial Celebration, September 8th and 9th, tabling with with Mike Peterson and with booklets and talking to re-enactors and educators. I’ll have some Spacetrawler and Dee there if you want to stop by, although I might not have them on display. The booklets we’re focusing on are illustrated serial stories written by Mike Peterson and illustrated by myself. If interested in buying or peeping at them online, they are available as zines.
And I will ALSO be tabling and paneling in the D.C. area September 21-13 as a guest at InterventionCon. Last year I was there and had a great time and really enjoyed it. It is geeky and friendly and has a really great guest list of people with time and space to meet each one.
Ummmm…If they’re traveling at slicker then greased dark speed, shouldn’t the star fields out the windows look different?
Those are not star fields, they’re curtains.
Don’t tell Yuri she and Dusty have a common ancestor.
Those are computer generated holographic representations of what the star fields WOULD look like if the observer were in normal space. Either that or they just hacked the Micro$oft Starfield screen saver.
War Pig,
A hard SF fan myself, I’ve always found it deeply problematic to force consistency with real physics on made up technology. My advice is to dream up a rationale and then just read and enjoy the cool story. Muzhik gave us a pretty good one. Perhaps all the windows don’t show the outside during greased dark transit; they just give us CG of where the actual stars would be.
However having said this, the fact that the humans and Eebs share a common ancestor is both troublesome and very intriguing. We have extensive evidence that humans are deeply and very strongly related to all the apes and monkeys of Earth. 7 or 8 million years ago chimps, bonobos and humans were all one species of now extinct ape. And before that that ape diverged from other simians. The fossil and genetic records are very clear on this point.
So the mystery is, how come of the humans of Chris’ story haven’t found fossils of proto-Eebs in Africa or Asia?
And if proto-humans were introduced to Earth 10 million years ago as an exotic species, we’d definitely notice that in the fossil record and by genetic comparisons. Humans would be very unlike all the rest of life on Earth.
So here is my theory, at some point 10 or so million years ago, aliens came to our world, came to Africa, and began extensive and radical bio-engineering to that ancient, extinct ape, perhaps as attempt to generate a species with psychic powers. Once the proto-Eebs were developed, the alien bio-engineers took all this creature to populate the Eeb homeworld. This would give us Eebs but it would also prevent any evidence from being left in Earth’s fossil record of proto-Eebs.
There are probably other ways to solve the contradiction as well.
While the above science-fiction might be interesting, we’re all related to Adam so yes, Yuri and Dusty are related. Probably not in the context of the story, since I assume it uses a theoretical evolutionary base, but the above post was making illogical connections as well.
The idea of a biological, that is Y chromosonal, Adam and a mitochondrial Eve, who existed at radically different times also makes this interesting. Especially given the fact that Humans don’t have a whole lot of genetic variety given that several thousand years ago there was a very limited population of us. Perhaps as little as 5000, or so the estimates go. Perhaps the Eebs will explain this genetic bottleneck?
Yeah, beware of the Creationist Troll 😛
An for the stars, perhaps they stand still for the moment. Maintenace , reparations or something like that.
Technically “shared ancestor” could just mean some horny proto-eebs came to earth and got busy…
well, i suspect the eebs ‘modified’ their appearance and altered their evolutionary pathway, rather than humans having changed. Why did they choose to look like little round blobs? Well… they are kinda cute, right? Or maybe they just enlarged their stomachs and livers to the maximum size to hold and process more beer.
The stars aren’t moving because our heroes are at “the keep” which is a space station (it can move at greased dark-light speed, but it doesn’t if it’s not going anywhere).
In the last panel I had phrased it “related to” meaning “second cousins” or something, breaking from the other phrasing in the strip of “having common ancestry” in which I was talking about evolution. So yes, go back enough and Dusty and Yuri ARE related, but that wasn’t what I meant. But I totally see that reading of it. So, now I’m wondering if I should give that part a re-write. Hrm.
And the second Earth-derived “alien” species are those dinosaur things in the Delta Quadrant.
@Christopher, just swap “related” with “second cousins” (write real small to fit it in) and everything will be cool.
@Corpore Metal, I provided the perfect common ancestor back on 07/10/2012: The Lemur! Far enough back to provide a solid common ancestry without the hassle of looking like an Uncle’s Monkey, yet wacky enough to really get into beer-drinking mayhem.
@Christopher Nah, Coyoty is just being a jerk. :p It’s clear from context.
“We’re the same species, but we’re not related” isn’t a contradiction in regular language.
Everyone,
Well, I definitely didn’t mean to overthink it–just found it intriguing is all. I’m entirely willing to just sit back and accept whatever neat, and I’m sure very funny, answers Chris provides us in the story. And yes, I totally got the sense of the joke in the last panel–you don’t have to re-write anything, Chris, please don’t worry about it!
(And Transitions, sorry, but I’m not raising to the bait.)
Actually, from a purely immunological sense it would probably (Yes, probably, because it’s not like extensive tests have been carried out in this field already.) be easier to transplant a piece of brain matter than those ears. The brain itself is not only protected by the blood-brain barrier which blocks most gamma globulins and leukocytes, but contains its own nice immunosuppressant package, which consists of the same receptors our lymphocytes use to selfdestruct in case of overcrowding. It is literally the hardest place to trigger an inflammatory reaction in the entire body.
So if you can get kitty ears there’s really no reason you can’t get an eeb brain piece as well, the fact that it actually WORKS however hammers the point home, we are definitely dealing with similar genetic material here.
If the hypothetical chronology is correct and humans appeared about 250,000 to 200,000 years ago (and not earlier) and the first move out of Africa was about 100,000 years ago. Remember around 75,000 to 70,000 years ago on the island of Sumatra a super volcano (caldera) exploded leaving a lake 60 miles long, 20 miles wide and a mile deep) covered the planet in debris that killed off most life including humans everywhere except Africa where an average of 6,000 individuals survive the holocaust. Then 50,000 years ago they spread out again after things become more normal. Which explains why we are much closer genetically than previously thought. And it doesn’t rule out a previous human civilization that had reached technological heights we have reached if not higher would be wiped out and very little would survive.
However in relation to the idea of the present homo sapient sapient are gene engineered. Some say it was done by the residents from a parallel earth they call Ibiru. Where the dinosaurs never died out. They could have also constructed the Eeps for their own purposes before they had to leave our continuum.
Darnet, meant to say “Eebs” not “Eeps.”
There are some animals even more closely related than humans.
Cheetahs are all so closely relates that organ and tissue transplants among them can be done with no rejection problems. Theory is that some time in the past something happened that killed off all but one closely related group and all current cheetahs are their descendants.
They must be very resistant to genetic defects from inbreeding.
As for Rikshaw Boans’ odd leg arrangement, could be he’s some type of dipygus like Josephene Myrtle Bicknell (nee Corbin). http://www.phreeque.com/myrtle_corbin.html
I still think the level of “relativeness” between Eebs and Humans is more on the level of starting from the same primordial soup rather than proto-eeb and homo-erectus or some such. Otherwise, as humans are fully integrated into Earth biome, then Eebs would be the off-shoot. However, as Eebs are presumably integrated into their home biome, that would mean either it is an artifact (if a recent development) or was naturally evolved with a common connection in the very distant past.