I've only just started skimming this article and I'm oddly transfixed.
I've read just enough to understand that it's an attempt to bring a great number of various sci-fi and comics narratives into one universe, but I'm left with the simple question:
WHY?
I mean, sure, fun as hell. As a fan-boy way to kill time, I'm in awe. I'm co-designing a superhero-based RPG, but this is impressive! I suppose my question
WHY?
has more to do with critical application or analysis of the effort. Does the impulse to unify different sci-fi worlds, in fan-fic for example, represent the fact that all of these worlds do, in a very real way, interact in our own heads, thus we want to bring that conceptual interaction to 'literal' interaction within the narrative? Would that impulse demonstrate a desire to project the personal and subjective sense of the narrative into a falsley objective form?
Or perhaps in the midst of one of the most changeable of all genres, sci-fi/fantasy, we want to find some kind of monologous narrative, a single thread that ties it all together, thus saving us the trouble of having to move between and within worlds that are totally different and ideologically divergent.
Or perhaps, again, instead of an effort to unify a narrative within the singular mind (in this case, dual minds) of the fan/reader, this article actually represents a counter-intuitively democratic desire to bring all narratives into play with each other, to include everyone as opposed to pairing down to the personal preference?
I have no idea, but I'm fascinated.
Posted by orion at May 2, 2006 8:54 PM