Doktor Sleepless Volume 1

Doktor Sleepless Volume 1: Engines of Desire #1–8 (July 2007–August 2008). Written by Warren Ellis. Illustrated by Ivan Rodriguez. Rantoul, IL: Avatar Press, 2008.

Fixup, so to speak, or bound collection, of the first eight issues of Doktor Sleepless comics.

Reviewed by Andrew M. Kelly, SFRA Review #286 (Fall 2008): pp. 26-27.[1]

In the broadest terms, Doktor Sleepless explores the disparity between the future science fiction has given us glimpses of and the future that the world presented to us. Graffiti in [the near-future American City of] Heavenside reads, “Where’s my F***ing Jetpack,” “You owe me a flying car,” and “Not my future” (1, 11, 1–3). [...] Heavenside is so deeply immersed in technology that it is mundane. The comic takes place in a domain of ubiquitous RFID tags[2] where people “interrogate buildings and can ping[3] their own bodies,” a clear nod to Bruce Sterling’s Shaping Things (2005). Tags work for everything, from one’s identity and franchise to health and well-being. [...]

Thematically, the book melds near-future SF with some of mysticism and references to H. P. Lovecraft’s Chthulu mythos. [...]

The book delicately balances the metaphysical and the science fictional [...]. Two copies of [protagonist] John Reinhardt seem to exist: one who may have lost his mind and taken up the mantle of Doktor Sleepless, and one who is secretly incarcerated within Heavenside [...]. The incarcerated version suggests that one version is an exertion of psychic will, while the Doktor’s mastery of technology throughout suggests a purely technological explanation.

The book has several components beyond the print version that permit further reader engagement with the text via a number of Web-based communities [... including] a wiki for collecting and collating information and analysis of the story’s content and theories on the book’s less explicable elements. Warren Ellis has also created a group blog [...] to pick up where the fictional blog [...] left off in “looking for outbreaks of the future” (4, 3, 6). These projects attempt to enrich the medium of comics by attaching extra content, and it encourages readers to think about the technologies, ideas, and theory at work. (Kelly, p. 26)

See for juxtaposition and interpenetration of technology and a kind of mysticism, and the consideration of high-tech in a dystopic world, including the high-tech fans of the comic are using in the real world.

RDE, finishing, 18Jan21