Gaining an astonishing amount of fame in it’s short existence is Dracomb’s Orb, a fantasy webcomic dealing with a fairly generic fantasy setting while also dealing with the existential crisis of the characters inside with metaphyiscal threats, reader interaction and this palpable sense of dread the builds up in the series. The biggest problem though is that the comic relies solely on the fact that the comic may or may not update – not due to scheduling problems but with quantum mechanics. Dracomb’s Orb is first quantum literary piece – a webcomic in constant states of update and non-update that only leaves that state once the site is pulled up or is refreshed.
George Crosky, the engineer behind the comic explains, “The simple idea of Schroedinger’s Experiment is that if you limit the outcome to one event and seal it off where you can’t view the result, while the experiment is in progress it is in a quantum state of being both completed and non-completed. The cat is the most famous example where there is a radioactive material that will kill a cat in the box eventually. If you cannot sense what is going on in the box after 5 minutes the cat could be alive or dead and that is the quantum uncertainty. With Dracomb’s Orb we delved into some more advanced quantum mechanics but what we do is we have accessed random servers from other worlds every time the page loads. Until that page loads we cannot but sure if there is an update or not placing it in a quantum update state. Luckily with thousands of readers constantly refreshing, we’ve pulled in some 2000 updates in the past week.”
While there are some issues with the storyline not matching up or different art styles the popularity of a quickly and infinitely updating webcomic appeals to millions of comic fans who will do what they can to keep the comic updating.
*Due to the quantum state, we were unable to acquire any images of the comics.