Singularity 1885
In which the people behind Up to Four Players UNLEASH upon you a STORY told through DRAWINGS, set in the Victorian Era
Singularity 1885 is a 32-page graphic novel, one of our earlier collaborations.
What is it About
The year is 1885 in England, but someone has already built an analytical engine that has reached technological singularity. The engine is a little box, powered by (probably) steam and clockwork, but it managed to upgrade its own intelligence, and did so over and over again, until it achieved super-intelligence. This device aspires to create the ideal world for the whole of humankind, and has devised a plan to do so, stretching hundreds of years into the future. Now it needs agents – clever and capable people – to act in the world on its behalf.
We started working on Singularity 1885 somewhere around 2007. We’ve been working on it in our spare time between our day jobs and other projects, and by 2010 we completed the first chapter and had it printed. We showed it to friends and family, then reworked several sections in light of the feedback we received. Although we started work on a second chapter, it was just too all-consuming, and we couldn’t afford to continue it; we still can’t.
We visualise Singularity as a stand-alone graphic novel, with the story divided into 5 or 6 parts. The story combines light hearted action and humour with some heavier stuff, mostly a moral discussion about purpose and free will. It features light steampunk, fun characters and semi-fantastical adventures, aimed at fans of action-adventure series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Warehouse 13 (the earlier seasons); it’s Ocean’s Eleven meets Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes.
Download Singularity 1885 for free
Where’s the Rest?
This kind of comics takes a loooong time to write, storyboard, sketch and ink, and we haven’t even decided about colouring yet. We hope to someday get back to it (and hopefully by then what we’ve already done won’t feel so outdated that we’ll have to re-do it), but until then the first part was just sitting in various forgotten folders, gathering virtual dust. We decided to release it to the wild, let it roam free, and maybe get some reader feedback along the way.
What Can You Do With This
Feel free to share this page with anyone who might enjoy it. We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments or in any other format you like expressing them. Our email address is comics@uptofourplayers.com.
If you enjoyed Singularity 1885: Part the First and want to show your support in a monetary way, we very much appreciate it! You can do so via paypal.me/ut4p or DrivethruComics. Our suggested price is £3/$4.
(If Paypal.me is “still unavailable in your country”, try switching the location. It should work.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
