Chronosis from Urbanomic depicts how time is perceived in comics in all of its absurdity. Each member of the creative team dives into the three disciplines in relation to it. Because while we perceive time one way, time is way more abstract.
Writing Chronosis Effects
The co-plot writer Reza Negarestani is renown for ‘theory fiction’ a genre depicting philosophy in story form. With most of the lines written like epic poetry, there’s a sense of grand scale. Through the embodiment of time, Akarana, the reader experiences what philosophers refer to as the Specious Present. This state of being is described as a state of consciousness from living in the moment. It sounds simple until you realize this means seeing the past, present, and future all at once, sometimes non-linearly. Yet it never seems overwhelming; in fact it seems like it’s where life truly begins.
Voices of…
Akarana encounters three people trying to achieve immortality via different thought processes.
Reason
Through the reptilian rationalist, the reader sees how despite their technological success, the reptiles don’t always make the optimal choices. As part of a greater federation, they have the tools and resources to expand further. This reliance on the paradigm is what blinds them to the psychological fallacies they face. It’s what allows the abstract Akarana to hijack the rationalist’s ship and use him as a catalyst to influence the other two. By sending the rationalist to the past of course.
Independence
In present day, an independent human researcher uses the hallucinations via his brain’s ossification to present theories contrasting modern evolution. But even the researcher is losing faith and he merely wants to let his hereditary condition mean something. With his daughter bound to experience these episodes, the researcher can’t help but worry about the future. Funny thing is, the hallucinations actually lets him be closer to perceiving the time the way Akarana does.
Remember the conspiracy theories about lizard people? Chronosis shows it has to do with the earlier mentioned reptilians and alternate timelines. Then there’s the way the researcher speaks to people at a live show. It sounds like Akarana themselves. Some of the people the researcher influences still don’t believe his context, they just like how confident and persuasive he is. To them it sounds as rational as mainstream theory. This difference in speech is highlighted by co-writer Robin Mackay who writes the Earthling dialogue. Unlike Reza “Blades” who does the overall prose script.
Faith
Which brings us to the final viewpoint, a cult of one aging alien in multiple bodies and experiences. The cult once worshipped and try to live like the forces of nature, ever in equilibrium. That is until they encounter Akarana who shows them how limited nature is in comparison to time. Following in Akarana’s example, the cult member devotes himself to embracing the essence of time. It’s to such a degree that he speaks to his past and future self all at once. No one else can even see him, despite the collective’s culture of helping those he comes across in a subtle manner.
But really words fail it to describe all of this.
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How Art Shows The Abstract
It’s the art by co-plotter Keith Tilford that really displays the nature of time. The creative team speaks about influence from Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko among others and it shows. Kirby’s style makes use of visual shorthand to bring unusual depth including geometric shapes for abstract composition. Ditko on the other hand with his psychedelic art in the likes of Dr. Strange and Shade, The Changing Man show how surrealism becomes mundane. All of which coalesces into Chronosis where the reader sees events happen in multiple instances.
Chronosis Is Modern Art?
One of the more creative uses of this presentation comes in the panel work. Sometimes images sequentially appear from different times and places. Another page has panels in unique shapes; each panel suggests time flows in different ways: some go forward, others go up, a few go diagonally. To the casual reader this will seem as confusing as the hallucinations of the researcher… and that’s kind of the point.
While empirical evidence for time perception does come from physical factors like the metabolic rate and parts of the brain, beings like Akarana perceive time via pure consciousness. While we as a species can measure time, we barely know anything about it. For us time is just changing numbers, but for Akarana, the positions of time are a sense.
It might take a few reads to get a full understanding of the events in Chronosis but the story is being told. All that the book asks of its readers is to think more abstractly to see how everything comes to pass.
Give Chronosis A Try
In full, Chronosis is a story about accepting time as something we are learning to understand. Living in the moment is but the pinnacle of experiencing time by a philosophical standpoint. The truth is that’s a journey people keep going through, usually after losing what holds them back. With all of that in mind, it’s best to admit that perceiving time is more abstract than people realize. But that’s okay because time isn’t permanent.
Overall this series gets an 8/10, so consider picking it up after its release on March 24, 2021 on MIT.