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Fig. 11.5
The introduction of Spider Jerusalem's drug addicted maker in Transmetropolitan, Issue
#1 (Ellis and Robertson
1997
)
a wide-ranging assortment of common science fi ction tropes, including the home
replicator, or “Maker.”
Makers in Transmetropolitan are marketed and sold by “Godti”: a branch of the
mafi a, whose advertisements proudly exclaim “Live like a Don….or Sleep with the
Fishes”! In Issue #1 of Transmetropolitan (Fig.
11.5
), Spider Jerusalem's Maker
introduces itself, saying:
I AM A GODTI 101 MAKER: I RECOMBINE MATTER INTO ANY OF TWENTY-FIVE
THOUSAND DIFFERENT FORMS. I AM FUELED BY A BASE BLOCK OF SUPERDENSE
NEUTRAL MATTER SUSPENDED IN A DRIFT VISE, ALSO HOLDING THE FUEL
CONVERSION THAT ALLOWS ME TO USE GARBAGE OR OTHER UNWANTED
MATTER…AND I AM
NOT
YOUR FUCKING
ASHTRAY.
(Ellis and Robertson
1997
, p. 20)
Makers in Transmetropolitan have personalities and opinions: When Spider
Jerusalem orders a pair of “live-shades,” his maker produces a set of glasses with
mismatched red and green lenses. Jerusalem discovers that the machine intelligence
embedded in his Maker is high on a synthetic “hallucinogen simulator for live
machinery” (Fig.
11.5
). Even after Spider Jerusalem removes the machine's “drugs,”
it continues to manufacture and install new ones, and at one point, when he tries to
“junk” the machine, he wakes up with a horse's head in his bed, courtesy of the
