![]() ![]() As the ship plummets to Earth, the mission commander notes solemnly that the sheer vastness of space made them completely, well, lose their marbles. After three weeks, everyone on board is claiming that the universe is actually incredibly tiny and that they're playing with the planets like rubber balls, ring-tossing with Saturn, and so on. EC Comics: "Marbles", a story in Incredible Science Fiction #30, involves the first crewed mission into space on board the X-17, a spaceship designed with every comfort and precaution in mind.For extra humor, the man who gives him this advice is blind. In 52, Animal Man is told not to look out the spaceship's windows for too long because it tends to cause existential crises.It turns out that it's just a simulation designed to weed out the psychologically unstable. A Tharg's Future Shocks short story called 'Solo Flip' concerns an astronaut, alone on a long-duration interstellar flight, who eventually goes mad, throws himself out of an airlock. ![]() ![]() ![]() features a condition called "Isolation Syndrome" or "Abbo Dabbo" as a recurring element. At one point late in ∀ Gundam, some of the soldiers being transported from Earth to the Moon on the Will Game decide they don't like it in space, get drunk, and try to float back down to Earth in barrels.Planetes spends a large portion of its run dealing with space madness, when a member of the team of space garbage collectors becomes separated from their craft in the depths of space and ends up combating the fear of being alone by convincing themselves that all people are meant to be alone.In addition to the Humans Are the Real Monsters elements of the series, the madness might also be partly a result of the Applied Phlebotinum used in the Vaia ships, given that the captains of Blue Impulse and Grey Geshpenst also go insane. After being isolated in space with no supervision, the children on the Ryvius turn on each other quickly and cruelly. He has some strange hallucinations before collapsing. In an early episode of Captain Harlock, Tadashi Daiba comes down with a case of space madness on his first trip in space.Cabin Fever is a related trope, due to its similarities to the close confines of a spacecraft. It is of course an example of Space "X".Ĭompare Ocean Madness, since Space Is an Ocean and all that and Space Isolation Horror. The trope takes its name from an episode of The Ren & Stimpy Show, about, well, Ren's space madness (and only Ren's, because his moronic sidekick Stimpy seems to be immune). Regardless, a good chunk of fiction seems to link outer space with insanity. Then there's the added lack of basic features of the environment on Earth such as gravity strong enough to feel, days and nights, and an atmosphere which leads the human mind that can't handle the emptiness itself, for any length of time, to start making things up to fill it. Maybe it's the loneliness (what with them being cut-off from the rest of their kind), the feeling of insignificance it inspires, or more specifically to a story the things that mankind was never meant to encounter.Īnd as if the deprivation of social interaction isn't bad enough, there is also the effect of spending too many weeks with nothing productive to do between course corrections. Something about the deep recesses of outer space seems to inspire insanity in a lot of fictional characters. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |