Site of the Week -- Dec. 6, 1999
luggy Freelance is a Web-based comic that has the irreverent feel of
early Bloom County and Doonesbury strips combined with a
harder, geek-centric edge.
It stars Riff (a sort of mad scientist slacker), Torg (a freelance Web
designer) and BunBun (a psychotic, switchblade-toting lop-eared rabbit).
The guys fight Borg wannabes, trip through dimensions and build
time machines. When they're home, they kick back, relax and summon a demon
or two to pass the time.
Sluggy deftly parodies modern science fiction--anyone who's ever
groaned at Star Trek: Voyager's energy particle of the week
technobabble will appreciate the humor--while taking on the subjects genre fans love to read about.
The site is easy to navigate and follows most of the standard online comic
strip conventions. There's also a handy viewer guide for jumping between major
story arcs. The only thing missing are some write-ups that explain who the
characters are, but those can be found off-site on one of many fan-created
Web pages.
-- Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week -- Nov. 29, 1999
efore gray-skinned aliens captured the world's xenophobic imagination,
green-skinned Martian invaders were the principal extraterrestrial bad guys.
Planet Mars in Popular Culture chronicles the rise of
Mars in the public psyche, from Percival Lowell's canals to H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds to Ray Bradbury's tragic, dying race in The Martian Chronicles.
Its creator, David Catling, is a research planetary scientist
at NASA who built the page in his spare time. His brief overviews of Martian-inspired phobia and euphoria in print, television and radio make up the majority of the site, which includes plenty of links to other Mars material. The site's Mars Chronology is an excellent, detailed timeline summarizing major scientific discoveries and public crazes about the Red Planet.
The only Martian craze the site doesn't cover is the current one:
terraforming and colonization. Oddly, there's no mention of Kim Stanley
Robinson's Mars trilogy--in which both ideas play a major
role--although perhaps the novels didn't reach far enough into the public mindset for Catling's purposes.
-- Kenneth Newquist
Site of the Week -- Nov. 22, 1999
hen LEGO released its first Star Wars sets, the company could almost hear adults crying, "Why didn't they have these when I was a kid?"
The Star Wars LEGO Experience Web site, however, is not
content to
sit back and mourn for the lost playtimes of yesteryear. Instead it
re-embraces LEGOmania as it documents every Star Wars playset now
available, while throwing in a few links to home-grown LEGO masterpieces
from around the world.
The site has pictures of official and unofficial LEGO minifigs (the
little LEGO folk) as well as detailed summaries of each playset, including costs
and release dates. Even better, its front page gives LEGO addicts regular
updates about blockhead happenings, including battles to grab sets from
crazed parents, LEGO-building contests, and--of course--the latest Star
Wars sets.
-- Kenneth Newquist
