Readers of Greg Egan’s phenomenal work, Diaspora will be aware of the concept of a Gleisner Robot; a humanoid mind (it is reasonable to say there are no humans in this story, only the descendants of humans) occupying a mechanical body.  Similarly, there are Citizens - computer-based humanoid minds that inhabit virtual worlds (polises).  It is possible for Citizens to inhabit the shells of Gleisner Robots and for the minds of Gleisner Robots to enter polises; although they generally don’t.

I’ve thoughts about these concepts at length since encountering them because they fit in well with my own world view.  I’ve produced stories that include characters very similar to Citizens and worlds very similar to Polises before (see The Final Report of James Graham for one such example), and I’ve joked with Jennifer about planning to order a robotic body as soon as they are available, as well as how I plan to cheat death by uploading my brain onto the Internet.  Egan’s work therefore struck quite a chord with me and it’s nice to be able to reference that here in Nob Mouse.

Jenny was wondering if we were going to see more of this Virtual Franky in the future.  I don’t actually plan ahead when it comes to Nob Mouse so your guess is as good as mine.  Survey says: maybe.

This is the twentieth strip in Series Three, which seems pretty cool in my mind.  The odd thing is, however, that I’ve still not managed to produce as many Series Three strips as there were episodes in Pie Noon.  It is going to take some time to match the length of that behemoth; which occupied my comic-drawing time for over a year, thanks to so many delays in the scriptwriting process meaning it took much longer than planned to actually complete.  Still, it’s over now and I’m happy with the result.

I hope you’re happy to.  Feel free to say so if you’re not.  I won’t cry, much.

I’m continuing the run of series three strips produced by myself and Jennifer Kirk this week, as I am still working hard at NaNoWriMo.  At the time of writing this (Saturday 08 November, after having just finished producing both of this week’s strips) I’m somewhat behind schedule on NaNo but that was to be expected since I basically took just over a day off to get work done on Nob Mouse.  I’ll catch up, I’m sure of it.

For those of you who were wondering, I am planning another Christmas special this year.  I’m considering making Halloween and Christmas two causes for annual ‘event’ strips, both of which are likely to be in the Series Two style.  Work on writing and sketching the Christmas episodes (currently planned as a three-parter but perhaps stretching to five parts if the story requires it) is already underway and I’m rather pleased with the story so far.  Given the nature of the strip, you can expect to see it running daily from Monday 22 December until it finishes.  Watch this space for more details!

Monday’s comic will be another Series Three episode because I’m finding a lot of my time is currently being usurped by NaNoWriMo.  You can track my current efforts online by visiting my Author Profile.  There’s an extract of the novel available through that link, too.  I hope you enjoy it but feel free not to if you’d prefer.