Freefall (webcomic)

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Freefall
The main cast of Freefall. From left to right: Florance, Sam, Helix.
Author(s)	Mark Stanley
Website	http://freefall.purrsia.com/
Current status / schedule	Updates Monday, Wednesday, Friday
Launch date	March 30, 1998.
Genre(s)	Science Fiction/Furry

Freefall is a popular webcomic written and drawn by Mark Stanley. It is a humorous science fiction story detailing the misadventures of the spaceship Savage Chicken and its crew: Sam Starfall, a lovable, kleptomaniac, alien con artist; Helix, a childlike robot; and Florence Ambrose, a genetically engineered "Bowman's Wolf" (i.e. an anthropomorphic canine). Stanley began writing and drawing the strip as a feature for the occasional furry zine Yarf!. He began the webcomic with the intent of telling the actual story behind the characters, and the storyline began on March 30, 1998. The comic is updated three times every week. It celebrated its thousandth strip in August 2004. The strip was originally in black and white, but the first 388 strips are also available in fan-colored versions. As of April 21, 2006, the strips are colored by George Peterson.

1 Plot
2 Robots
3 Notes
4 Reception
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

The plotline focuses on the life of Florence, a hard-working and honest technical engineer, after she is stolen to work for the shady, less-than-ethical Sam. (Florence was assigned to the Savage Chicken as the result of Sam bribing a clerk.) Since the beginnings of the strip, Florence has worked to repair Sam's spaceship and actually get it flying again—while at the same time trying to keep her sanity in the wake of Sam and Helix's trouble-making. Sam's reputation as a no-good low-life is known far and wide across the curiously named colony planet "Jean", where the story takes place, even to the point where the local authorities know that if anything goes wrong in their society, Sam probably had a hand in it. Sam wears a humanoid environment suit with a goofy face, but he has hinted that his true appearance is squid-like. In early 2006 the comic named Sam's species as a "sqid."[sic]

Freefall's plot has been criticised by some as slow-moving:^{[citation needed]}as of 2008 the comic has covered only seventeen days.

[edit] Robots

Robots in the Freefall universe are sometimes programmed with the same Three Laws of Robotics that Isaac Asimov made famous in his stories, but their artificial intelligence is well developed, and they have a lot of autonomy, which helps them cope with a universe that has other sapient species besides the humans and robots from Asimov's stories. It is implied that "Three Law Robots" are not created anymore, and modern AI's have more sophisticated safeguards.

A running gag throughout the comic is the reaction of the robots when they first meet Florence. Since the Bowman's Wolf is a brand new species, the Freefall robots do not recognise her, and their first reaction is invariably to throw their arms out wide and shout "DOGGY!!!". The effect has been said to be "kinda freaky" when a lot of them do it at once. Despite this childlike behaviour (actually the result of other robots misinterpreting Helix's childlike reaction to Florence as the proper greeting ritual for her species), the Freefall robots have developed a great respect for Florence, especially after she risked her life to rescue two robots from destruction during a hurricane. Because most of the robots on "Jean" are networked together, all the robots on the planet are now aware of Florence's deeds and are eager to help her in any way they can.

The current storyline covers Florence's trip to Ecosystems Unlimited (the makers of the Bowman's Wolves) to tell them that the robots on Jean are using Dr. Bowman's architecture. Florence is currently undergoing tests.

[edit] Notes

Freefall is noted as being one of the more scientifically accurate science fiction webcomics available today. Author Stanley has stated he intends to keep the science in the comic as realistic as possible without relying on deus ex machina (or "magic") devices such as "warp drive", "artificial gravity", or "transporter beams".

An in-joke for Star Trek fans is that the Savage Chicken's registry number is 1071-CCN - the reverse of the Starship Enterprise's NCC-1701. Another running gag involved from time to time is when Florence smiles to certain people, which scares them, thinking she's snarling at them as she shows her fangs.

Another in joke reference is to the George Lucas film THX 1138. In one of the panels in "A gratuitous shower scene" when Helix is looking at Florence in the bottom right "THX 1138" appears.

In recent strips Stanley has included a robot from other sources (films, other cartoons, real life, &c) in each strip. Each such inclusion is identified in a note which is added when the following strip is released.

[edit] Reception

Freefall won a Web Cartoonist's Choice Award in the Outstanding Science Fiction Comic category in 2001,^[1] and was a nominee in that category in 2002, 2005 and 2006. Eric Burns of Websnark praised the comic for its consistency in being both funny and hard science fiction.^[2]