Fortuna

Prossit avatarA hugely important character in the latter part of the Hawke series is the android Fortuna . I asked Sydney about her origins and what were his reasons for devising this character. Sydney said that his first motivation was to find a supporting character for Hawke. Unlike Mac and Laura who had emerged almost unbidden from the many”extras”in the strip to be Hawke’s sidekicks in the early days, Fortuna was a consciously crafted character and appeared fully formed at her first appearance. Her physical appearance actually reflects her inner personality in that she has the form of a beautiful and desirable woman, but is actually a silver-blue skinned construct of alien origin. This physical

The robot from Fritz Lang's Metropolis
The robot from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

paradox is reflected in her personality, for she is at one and the same time a super computer with access to a vast memory bank, with mental and psychic abilities far beyond the human,but is also an entity who is intrigued by and indeed who craves human emotion .She has nurtured this characteristic in herself by years of tending the old miner Otto on the asteroid where Hawke eventually finds her in ANGEL OF MERCY. Her aesthetic sensibilities and human empathy evolve as her strong relationship with Hawke develops throughout the strip. Indeed she seems to give paramount importance to emotions. Like the fairy folk of legend she is virtually immortal and for her,like them, nothing is new, and thus she envies humanity for whom the delight of newness and discovery still abounds .

As with many of the themes explored in the strip , Sydney says that the choice of an android was also influenced by the general interest in robotic intelligence in the early seventies when both science fiction and philosophy were asking questions about whether artificially created entities could think and be truly autonomous and if so whether they might deserve respect and rights in human society. A seminal work on this theme was Philip K Dick’s DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP ,published just seven years before Fortuna’s first appearance, a sci-ci classic which dealt with these difficult issues.This in turn spawned a popular interest which was taken up by the movie industry with such movies as WESTWORLD ( 1973) whose androids decided to take their fate into their own hands.

Fortuna has a number of anticidents in the way of female robots but Sydney expresses great admiration for Fritz Lang’s classic METROPOLIS, whose robot was certainly a subliminal influence on Fortuna’s evolution, but in that case involved a disastrous intermixing of a robotic female body with a human soul.

Leila, from TIME OUT OF JOINT , based on the same actress as was Fortuna , a little later
Leila, from TIME OUT OF JOINT , based on the same actress as was Fortuna , a little later

 

The     physical appearance of Fortuna was based on a minor Italian actress of the sixties , of whom Sydney had obtained a   set of portrait photos. He had first used her likeness in the Hawke strip in TIME OUT OF JOINT in 1971 for the character of Leila , the girl from the future who had been captured by the minions of the “All-mind” . Look closely and you will see a distinct likeness to her later incarnation as Fortuna.

In conclusion Fortuna’s complex and paradoxical character places her in the front rank of the dramatis personae of the Hawke universe. Skipper Prossitt

 

Fortuna, with Otto in ANGEL OF MERCY
Fortuna, with Otto in ANGEL OF MERCY

A car in space?

Prossit avatarElon Musk’s audacious launch of his Falcon Heavy rocket last week was a huge breakthrough in spaceflight technology and puts his company SpaceX far ahead of his rivals in the commercial space business. The re-useable boosters , two of which landed with balletic precision after the launch, will cut the cost of heavy launches in future from around $1b to more like €100 million.

 

Elon Musk 's car in orbit  shows an uncanny resemblance to  the famous scene in Sydney's  ANTI-GRAVITY MAN
Elon Musk ‘s car in orbit shows an uncanny resemblance to the famous scene in Sydney’s ANTI-GRAVITY MAN

But there was also a touch of whimsy in the launch as the payload on this flight was a Tesla car equipped with a dummy astronaut , a Bowie soundtrack and a nod to “Hitchhiker” with the “don’t panic” sign on the dashboard . There were many comments about the bizzare sight of a car in orbit around the Earth. Nothing like this has ever been seen before………unless of course you were reading the Jeff Hawke strip in 1965. In ANTI- GRAVITY MAN which appeared in the Daily express fifty three years ago, we see a car in orbit around the Earth , in this instance the iconic mini-cooper. In the Hawke story some alien technology has been harnessed to equip the car with anti-grav motors. Its owner , equipped with diving suit and using a school atlas , rescues a stranded astronaut from certain death in his doomed space capsule.

Another example of how Messrs Patterson and Jordan got there first. Skipper Prossitt

The famous scene in ANTI-GRAVITY MAN where an eccentric amateur scientist  rescues a stranded astronaut  from Earth orbit in his Mini Cooper
The famous scene in ANTI-GRAVITY MAN where an eccentric amateur scientist rescues a stranded astronaut from Earth orbit in his Mini Cooper