Forthcoming: SUPERGOD

May 20th, 2009 | Work

So there’s this series coming out in the last half of 2009 called SUPERGOD:

3463125161_3ddbf6b8f2_o

And it’s one of the odder things I’ve written, I think. Someone made the mistake of asking me for another superhero-mode comic, and I suspect maybe since I returned to that subgenre something important in my brain developed moss on it or something. Here’s a piece of my notes on the book, for a sequence in issue #2:


China began designing their own superhuman soon after, but didn’t have the tech for Megareactor Buddha’s Spine until 1990. Nominally, PRC is atheist, but the old religions never went away, and a surprising number of Chinese state scientists still think in terms of qi. The superhuman Maitreya was a subject enveloped by scanning tunnelling microscopes wired into his visual cortex, forced to meditate upon his own atomic structure until he could perceive the quantum foam of every particle of his being birthing and annihilating under the uncertainty principle. His emergence into superhumanity was heralded by the impossible light of zero point energy accessed from the spaces between virtual particles. The Chinese filled a warehouse with political prisoners and told Maitreya to kill them, to demonstrate his power over spacetime and matter. He instead fashioned them into a vast musical instrument of entrancingly beautiful tone. Then configured all the assembled soldiers and scientists into a self-supporting worm-like structure and fired them into space with/through the musical instrument, where they journeyed as a biological probe of brains linked in parallel that reported information about the solar system back to Maitreya via quantum entanglement until the structure, starting to break up, was identified as comet Shoemaker-Levy and eventually smacked into the surface of Jupiter.


46 Responses to “Forthcoming: SUPERGOD”

  1. This sounds amazing and also really fun. I am eagerly awaiting it’s publication.

  2. I haven’t had a paragraph of fiction blow my mind like this in ages! This sounds amazing.

  3. Zero point energy ROCKS!!!

  4. Freaking WHOA.

  5. wowz, a comic book series involving superheroes, quantum foam and a character called Maitreya has certainly got me intrigued. looking forward!

  6. THANK YOU.

  7. Fucking hell, Ellis. I don’t know what they put in the water where you live, but I dare say it comes under seven different schedule levels of plausible deniability. And I want some of it; the worlds in your head may be insane, but they still seem more believably inhabitable than this horrible simulacrum in which we both exist.

  8. I’ve been wanting to read this comic my entire life.

  9. I loved this. Describing the tech was almost poetic. It reminded me of the book Brainchild by David Jay Brown. If you haven’t read it, it’s well worth a glance.

  10. More books by Mr. Ellis, means less money in my pocket…

  11. Ellis, you rotten bastard. You keep stealing my money with your devilishly awesome comic books.

  12. This is why I have a standing order for all your books.

  13. I just enjoy the fact that a super-being is created but instead of a murder/death/kill rampage it uses it’s powers for art and science.

  14. Mmm…neo-Kirby. Makes me wanna reread my worn paperback copy of Zelazny’s Lord of Light. Hindi sci-fi at its very best.
    Looks very promising, Warren.

  15. YES!

  16. I support this product and/or service. Please publish it soon.

  17. Enhancile apotheosis? It sounds great.

  18. Amazing.

  19. Can I sacrifice my first born to this SuperGod?

  20. I hate living on a fixed income, but I’ll definitely find a way to pick this up when it gets published.

    It’s exactly the kind of thing I like to read of a Sunday morning whilst wrapped in a cozy robe and sipping hot chocolate.

    What?

  21. When can you and Grant Morrison start creating babies? I want the future, right now!

  22. How the hell do you draw that?

  23. 2nd half of 2009?
    Unending working nights ahoy.
    Thanks for sharing.

  24. ahhh, good ol scanning tunneling microscopy. requires ultra-high vacuum to properly achieve sub-angstrom resolution.

  25. As I sat there reading this and grinning like a loon, a small voice began to whisper…”Do you think the drugs have finally caught up to Ellis?”. Or maybe I’m just really tired. Either way, this should be fun.

  26. I am both confused and highly intriqued

  27. NICE :o)

  28. Oh boy.

    When you read Warren say something like “And it’s one of the odder things I’ve written, I think.” you know things are going to get awesome, and that paragraph from the notes really delivers.

  29. YOU MAKE ME COWER IN FEAR. THE GOOD KIND.

  30. this
    sounds
    epic
    definately buying it

  31. That paragraph just sings.

  32. I’ll have what he just had, please.

  33. This reads like the eventual outcome of a bastard world birthed through the holy womb of a Kirby God after having been violated in an excessively violent, drunken manner by a bloated Fletcher Hanks Spaceman.

    Yes, that is a compliment.

  34. Sounds way too weird -and awesome- to come via WildStorm, even Vertigo -not that these two suck, but y’know.- so I guess you’re releasing it sponsored by Avatar Press, right?

  35. Great googly-moogly. It sort of sounds like Zelazny’s “Lord of Light” meets Mazinger Z, which is just… brilliant. Once again, a story idea that is so simple that one wonders why they hadn’t already thought of it, and so potent that it is stunning that anyone had.

  36. [...] Creators | Warren Ellis provides more information on his upcoming comic Supergod: “Someone made the mistake of asking me for another superhero-mode comic, and I suspect maybe since I returned to that subgenre something important in my brain developed moss on it or something.” [Warren Ellis] [...]

  37. I’m a physicist, and I use the uncertainty principle as an explanation to my wife each time I lose the car keys. So I can’t help but find this very interesting.

    I also find it interesting that about 95% of posters on any Ellis web endeavor try so desperately to sound like him, and that includes me obviously. Fuckers.

  38. That was utter shit

  39. you generalize principles, take concepts, and create a malformed story of which you nor anyone has any understanding..your worse than grant morrison..

  40. [...] Warren Ellis’ SUPERGOD Jump to Comments via Warren Ellis [...]

  41. Future soldiers should be more like Shipwreck, Polly and all: http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/gijoe/images/thumb/1/1d/Shipwreck_RAH.jpg/250px-Shipwreck_RAH.jpg

  42. For keys and such I prefer either the explanation from the children’s novel and TV show [Finders Keepers] by Emily Rodda, where lost items have popped into an alternate universe where human scavengers pick over the mess for the good stuff, or that they’re hiding because they’re lonely and depressed: if you buy another set of miniature tip screwdrivers then the one that you already own will emerge to make friends with its new housemate. Or if not, then it doesn’t matter. Or, prosaically, the only way to find your golf ball is to do again with another ball what you did before, and watch this time, and when you bring home your new screwdrivers and think “Where shall I put these?” then you probably put them where you already put the others.

    As for SUPERGOD: uh, at some point, all those people still ended up dead, I guess. The instrument is not specified but would it belong in THE MUSEUM OF LOST KEYBOARDS? That audio describes (and represents) amongst many others a relatively conventionally constructed Russian instrument where the sound was produced by 88 political dissidents under extreme duress. Fictional, I hope. And I believe the piano is very big in China now. (But not as big as the organ made from cathedrals.)

  43. [...] Warren Ellis talking about future project Supergod: China began designing their own superhuman soon after, but didn’t have the tech for Megareactor [...]

  44. …..and that was me having a huge nerdgasm over this preview. This combines Half-Life 2 physics with Chinese politics into a most intriguing story. I can’t wait to buy this in floppies then get the inevitable hardcover. Mr. Ellis, I LOVE YOU! Oops, there I go again, excuse me whilst I reread that initial post of Warren’s and soil myself again. ^_^

  45. [...] Ellis has announced a new comic series called Supergod. He says of it “…t’s one of the odder things I’ve written, I think. Someone made [...]

  46. erm.wow.what a coincidence.i’ve seen a few links somewhere to god-related comics that are surprisingly funny.is this the heralding of bolg NEW genre of comics,GOD comics?hrnnhhh…wouldn’t be surprised.


Leave a Reply

Complete Plan B Archive

Kieron Gillen - 09 Feb 10

The whole run of Plan B magazine has been released as a single 670Mb PDF. That’s 46 issues of some of the finest music writing of the decade. And a lot of posturing pretentiousness too. It’s like two of my favourite things for the price of one. Or none, as it’s a free PDF.

If you’ve any interest in music in the 00s, or music full stop, this is a great thing to just have on file. You’ll discover a new band every time you browse it.

Hell, it’s even worth getting if you’re one of the games journalist sorts. For the first 10-20 issues or so, I was doing games stuff for it. And Quinns and Mathew Kumar too, who I bullied into contributing. Very much written for the non-gamer about games which get pretty much no coverage, we had fun trying to decode the concept of Outsider Games.

Whole thing here. Go gets!

Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.

Coilhouse - 08 Feb 10

Back around the time of Issue 03, we launched the Small Business Advertising Program to create affordable ad space for indie companies in the print version of Coilhouse. By the time Issue 04 rolled around, the number of advertisers had grown significantly – by this time, we had record labels, jewelry and clothing designers, sculptors, other magazines, web hosts, toy makers and graphic designers advertising in our pages. Click here to see them all. With editorial duties taking up more and more of our time as the weeks go by, the moment has come for us to seek help with the advertising side of running the magazine. We’re looking to hire an Ad Manager for our Small Business Advertising Program, starting with Coilhouse Magazine #05… and possibly subsequent issues.

Full details after the jump!


Read the rest of Coilhouse is Hiring! Apply Here.


Post tags: Coilhouse

Untitled Post

blissblog - 08 Feb 10

Untitled Post

blissblog - 08 Feb 10

Untitled Post

blissblog - 08 Feb 10

State of South Carolina Secretary of State Subversive Agent Form

jwz - 08 Feb 10

Check the appropriate box. Do you or your organization directly or indirectly advocate, advise, teach or practice the duty or necessity of controlling, seizing or overthrowing the government of the United States, the state of South Carolina or any political division thereof?
[ ] YES [ ] NO

If yes, please outline the fundamental beliefs. If applicable, attach a copy of the bylaws or minutes of meetings from the last year.

"Inflection Points" Presentation

Open The Future - 08 Feb 10

For those folks who are interested, here's the Slideshare version of the presentation I gave last week at the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute annual meeting. I was asked to talk about foresight thinking, as the event theme was "The Big One of 2056: What Went Right?" a look at a fictional 7.8 quake in the SF region that was handled as well as they could imagine possible.

My goal was to offer a bit of reassurance to the audience that there is some real utility to thinking about the future, and to spell out (in a cursory way) the kinds of big picture issues they should keep in mind while looking ahead forty-six years.

By and large, it was a successful talk. The post-talk questions were engaged, with little push-back, and I'm told that the overall response from the audience was quite positive.

The talk was video recorded, and I'm told will eventually be available to the public. I'll link when that happens.

CAN GIFTING ECONOMIES SCALE?

John Robb - 08 Feb 10

A gifting economy is different from a barter or market economy in that valuable items are given away to those that need them, without any quid pro quo, exchange, or payment.  Gifting economics (lots of great papers on this topic) were/are the economic heartbeat of hunter-gatherer tribal cultures, the social organization where we spent 99% of our time as homo sapiens sapiens.  Barter was, in contrast, a mechanism for economic interactions between tribes.  

This gifting economic system wasn't based on pure altruism.  It did have an enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance with the system over the longer term.  On the positive side, there was an intangible increase in the social status (using personal or societal metrics) of a tribal member that gifted an item.  On the negative, a failure to offer hospitality or gifts to those in need was considered a mortal slight that could incite violence or expulsion from the tribe.

There were also a considerable number of drivers for gifting at the tribal level.  Here are some:

  • The survival of the tribe, as a group, was more important than the survival of any individual.  However, the loss of any individual could put the tribe at risk.
  • The generation of surplus and innovation was highly uncertain.  Sharing reduced that uncertainty to manageable levels.
  • Sharing reduced internal friction that could put the tribe at risk.

Scalability

It's pretty clear that the societal drivers of tribal gifting economics and the mechanisms of enforcement didn't survive the transition to a global social system composed of billions of members.   Simply, the connections between any two individuals (outside of immediate familial relationships) are too abstract for these drivers and enforcement mechanisms to be relevant.   As a result, market based mechanisms for economic interaction have gained dominance.

However, the ongoing shift of the global market-based economy from a trade in rival goods (tangible items that invoke zero sum economics) to digital non-rival goods (items that can be copied at no expense or diminishment, endlessly) provides a window of opportunity.  It may be possible to revive gifting economics for non-rival goods to amazing beneficial effect.   Some ideas on how this could scale:

  • Automated reputation metrics that enhance social status based on contributions.
  • Mechanisms built using MMO gaming as a way to tie successful gifting to status improvement (leveling) or an ability to attract investment.
  • The creation of an inside/outside barrier that separates a gifting economy from the global economic mainstream.   Automated mutual interdependence (see my friend Bruce Sterling's absolutely brilliant story on this:  "Maneki Neko").

Latest on SNOW

Jean Snow - 08 Feb 10

Latest on SNOW

So what’s the latest on SNOW? I guess two new developments art that I added a dedicated Twitter feed, and also created a Facebook fan page. The Twitter feed is mostly just automated with new articles from the site — because some people actually prefer that over RSS feeds these days — but I do keep an eye on it, and will reply to questions and comments. The Facebook page is just another way of putting the site out there, and should be a good way of informing members of SNOW-related events as they happen.

Regular content updates have also continued over the past week, with a few new guest columns and my regular news items. Here’s a list of what you may have missed over the past few days.

Untitled Post

blissblog - 08 Feb 10