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[soniku64]

I beleve it is the same world but with Anthro PC's and Space Stations you can permently live in have been made.

[NanoCell]

I've always thought that QC exists in the future.

[Is it cold in here?]

Any explanation has to account for the bands the characters talk about being contemporary in our time, and for sentient computers to be running around in the same era.

[pwhodges]

That's easy: it's fiction.

[Spluff]

what

[Is it cold in here?]

But you could explain anything that way!

One way to enjoy fiction is to play the game of fleshing it out. If it weren't just a game, the question would have been in the Ask Jeph thread, where I'm sure he would have blown off the question.

[raoullefere]

Well, obviously, we're not looking for that one. I mean, why even have this thread then?

Maybe the U.S. simply skipped 'Nam and stuck with the Space program. More likely, though, the difference is relatively teeny-tiny, since whatever makes Anthro-PCs go hasn't shown up in much other technology, Roombas notwithstanding. In fact, the Roomba, Vespabot, and Deathbot 9000 are the only real evidence I can recall there is any different tech at work bedsides the Antho PCs themselves.

I still think Hanners is lying about the Space station. Or confused—call it what you will. After all, wouldn't growing up in a Space station play hell with bone formation?

I also want to know why I keep capitalizing Space.

[Is it cold in here?]

Maybe her dad's space station spins to substitute for gravity. The alternative is that doctors in the QC universe have developed treatments that promote bone development even without gravitational pressure.

In fact, this is quite a promising line of bull. Our world has just discovered the role of somatic serotonin in bone maintenance. Mice genetically engineered to have trouble with serotonin synthesis grow unusually dense bones. What if Hanners had just such a treatment in childhood, but it was still experimental and they didn't know that serotonin inhibition would cause psychiatric problems? The serotonin booster drugs are already used in our world to treat OCD, and serotonin abnormalities have been proposed as a cause.
Serotonin and bone density

[sofiabailote]

c'mon, just because there's robots, anthroPCs and space stations doesn't mean it's THE FUTURE!! the music is current, the iPod is current (remember when Marten  couldn't resist getting one?), Hilary Clinton is alive (she has an anthroPC, as almost everybody in QC World), the cellphones are current, the eye-glasses, clothes, furniture... all current. They're not the fucking Jetsons just because they have robots! Not all science fiction is set in the future... When you watch a Ninja movie (sorry, I just saw one  ) you don't go "Holly shit, the dude just flew up that building! he's breaking gravity laws!! that must be the FUTURE!!

[sofiabailote]

Seriously, you guys need to break your reliance on bipartisan elections and start paying more attention to the third-party candidates.

We would... except everybody sane joins the two big parties. Only the people crazy enough to think they can beat the two-party system make a separate party. 

thanks, i can no longer in good conscious vote for ANYONE now .

Allow me to crush your idealism even further - they did it to fund Vietnam. 

...and just one last nail in the coffin- the space program was developed by Nazi scientists (von Braun, who became a US citizen in the 50s) to fuck the Russians (Sputnik 1 had just been launched)... So much for pathos...

[raoullefere]

When you watch a Ninja movie (sorry, I just saw one  ) you don't go "Holly shit, the dude just flew up that building! he's breaking gravity laws!! that must be the FUTURE!!

Actually, if you're over ten or so, you say, "Haha, no-one can really do that. See, he just hovered in the air for thirty-five seconds and kicked the good guy nine times in the left nostril. Can you see the wire?" Therefore chronological identification is immediately made irrelevant.

[Is it cold in here?]

What kind of answer are you looking for?

There are some great examples earlier in the thread of stories that "explain" how a world could end up like the one Jeph made up for fun.

Evidently the goal here wasn't as clear as intended. It's like one of those creative writing exercises where you're supposed to make up a story to go with a picture. Instead of a picture, there's a fictional universe that was designed to be funny instead of internally consistent. The challenge comes from the difficulty of making up an explanation that's consistent with the fiction, and the fun comes from making it interesting, funny, and ideally wacky in a QC'ish form of wackiness. It's a form of active, creative enjoyment of the strip, analogous to fan fiction except that this game leaves the characters in Jeph's hands.

Sitting back and enjoying the comic passively is fine, but it's not the only way to have fun with Questionable Content.

Clearer?