This blog post is a review of my favorite images that I included in blog posts during the 2020 calendar year. The image to the right was made back in July when I was trying to imagine how a new
Exode Saga character (Nirutam) was trained for "her" mission on Earth. As a fain, Nirutam was a hermaphrodite, but upon casual inspection, humans view the fain as being female.
In theory, the Editor is creating the Exode Saga as a set of five linked novels, including A Search Beyond. However, a recursive fictional aspect of the story is that it will actually be up to the Editor's grand-daughter, Rylla, to tell the people of Earth about the ancient aliens such as the fain who have long been visiting Earth.
I don't know exactly how many images I have uploaded to this blog during the past year... it might be close to 2020. I do know that back in
November of 2018, there were 1746 images that I had uploaded since Jan. 15th, 2017. Since the end of 2018, I've averaged about 161 image uploads per month for this blog.
There are also some images that I upload to my other blogs, but for this blog post I'll focus on images from the wikifiction blog.
Don't forget to click on the images in this blog post if you want to enlarge them.
I began the year with special attention paid to the science fiction stories of
Isaac Asimov and
Frank Herbert, both of whom were born in 1920. The cover image to the right was made in honor of Asimov's character,
Lady Samia of Fife.
I read science fiction for entertainment, not to expose myself to the most disgusting horrors that an author can imagine. I have to wonder what kind of child abuse Herbert endured in his youth, thus the image shown to the left on this page.
I'm a sucker for new technologies that appear in science fiction stories. However, some imaginary science ideas are exceptionally lame, such as Asimov's "
synapsifier". The good doctor asked readers to imagine that by speeding up synaptic neurotransmission you can attain telepathic powers! And that was not even the silliest "future science" in his novel
Pebble in the Sky.
Dani the robot and Nirutam were the "
two wrongs" who threatened to disrupt the
Trysta-Grean Pact. Telepathy nearly took over this blog during 2020 and I confronted the challenge of depicting telepathy in my imaginary book and magazine covers.
Telekinesis is not too far removed from telepathy, so I had fun imagining how
Zeta's young baby, Tihri might show off (see the image to the right). Actually, Tihri's
flying trick is not all that difficult after the discovery of
negative mass hierions.
One of my favorite stories by Asimov is
The End of Eternity. Through the years, I have made several illustrations for that time travel novel, including a new one for 2020 that is shown to the left.
February
To illustrate my blog post about Herbert's artificial intelligence Sci Fi story "
Do I Wake or Dream?", I made several fun illustrations including the one shown to the right.
In second place for 2020 behind the many stories about telepathy was either teleportation or
anti-gravity.
I tried to go a step beyond mere anti-gravity with the
Clarke-Brunner Effect. In past years, I've made several illustrations for
hierions and the
Hierion Domain, but beyond imagining that artificial life-forms such as Dani could slip to-and-from the Hierion Domain using a hierion tube or some other fictional technology made possible by the Clarke-Brunner Effect, it remains an ongoing challenge to illustrate these imaginary elements of future science.
March
For the Exode Saga, I imagine that the
Huaoshy altered the
dimensional structure of the universe so as to make all further time travel impossible. Other aspects of the physical universe were also altered;
twitino-mediated telepathy was no longer possible. My blog post "
Writing Backwards" is a gallery of older images that attempt to illustrate telepathy, but I could come up with nothing better for that 2020 post. 🙁
Not far behind telepathy, anti-gravity, time travel and teleportation during 2020 has been the versatile
replicoid. I like to imagine that replicoids can be on Earth, un-noticed, so maybe we need a special International Scientific Investigation Organization (
ISIO) to reveal their presence among us.
A closely related form of artificial life, similar to a replicoid, is the
selfie. Here in 2020, I've had the alien
Nirutam,
Mary and
Glisten all being depicted as having a pet cat. Nirutam's "cat" was an artificial lifeform, her selfie, disguised as a cat.
Almost all of the telepathy in the Exode Saga is really
technology-assisted telepathy. The natural, twitino-mediated telepathy of
Neanderthals was only good enough to confer some social bonding and a good sense of direction.
The common method of allowing humans to use technology-assisted telepathy relies on nanotechnology. Many different types of
nanites appear as plot devices in the Exode Saga and sometimes they get stored in special
containment vials. All of Dani's
femtobot components end up in such a vial.
First imagined as an Exode Saga character in January, by March I had selected the method of
killing Nirutam. Don't be fooled by the illustration shown to the left; her death has nothing to do with viruses.
April
After her death,
Zeta and the Editor discover some
infites that Nirutam left behind. As shown to the right, those nanites were sealed up in a containment vial, but because of his
tryp'At genes, the
Editor was able to open the vial, expecting it held infites and a message for him.
Since Isaac Asimov appears as a character in the Exode Saga, I have expended some effort to learn about his life and how he became a famous author. I wonder to what extent
fraudulent advertisements in pulp magazines contributed to Asimov's attempt to attend medical school.
In April, I got an
early start on my annual celebration of the fiction of
Jack Vance by reading "The Potters of Firsk". The image to the right is meant to illustrate a story from an alternate
Reality in which the
analogue of Vance wrote stories about uranium.
May
The month of May was all about Jack Vance, mostly my exploration of his
Magnus Ridolph sreies of stories. However, first up was Vance's 1951 story "
Son of the Tree". The Ridolph stories were all published between 1948 and 1958 and it is interesting to see him mature as a writer when reading through the series.
One of Vance's imagined aliens in the Magnus Ridolph series of stories (
McInch the Golespod) was employed as a living garbage disposal system.
"
The Kokod Warriors" is my favorite among the 10 Magnus Ridolph adventures. I'm glad I read these old stories, but I advise readers with an interest in Vance's fiction to start with other stories such as his novels that are set in
Alastor Cluster.
June
Back in 2019 I wrote the first part of a story that became
The Yerophet Experiment. I finally completed the story in 2020 and it came to have a total of 51,000 words.
After having fun with the robot Dani, I inserted a related robot, Danni and other robots of
Triskelion, into
The Yerophet Experiment, including
Sybski and
Vyky.
The story told in
The Yerophet Experiment begins on the planet Triskelion, a world where humanoid robots are manufactured and used as integral elements of society. There is a rather long middle of the story depicting the spaceflight that takes
Azynov,
Yōd, Kresso and Shery to the planet
Yerophet. Kresso and Shery are the daughters of
Colleen who is trying to find a way to prevent the telepathic
Kerub of Yerophet from harming human settlers on that world.
For
The Yerophet Experiment, I imagined that
Maturin went to
Eternity and was recruited to play a role in watching over Yōd inside the
AR Simulator. Some of what Azynov and Yōd learn while inside the Asimov Reality Simulator could be dangerous if it fell into the hands of Yōd's sister Zeta and the Editor back on Earth.
I began the second half of 2020 with some
backstory for Nirutam and the
fain. How was Nirutam prepared for her mission on Earth?
When infites just can't cut it. A well-trained Interventionist agent has grown to understand a culture by experiencing life
within the culture. I had previously used the idea that the planet
Tar'tron could have a population of English-speakers that would be useful for helping prepare
Interventionist agents for missions on Earth. I invented
something similar for the Andromeda galaxy.
In July, I also made
some plans for how to continue telling the story of how human telepathy was developed on the worlds of
Alastor Cluster, a project which originated back in
2012. In the original timeline of the
Asimov Reality, the spaceship of Jantiff and Glisten Ravensroke was known as the
Dark Star. However, with the arrival of Azynov and Yōd inside the AR Simulator, events and even names of spaceships began to change!
In August I began a series of related stories that became a 96,000 word novel called
Grean's Hack.
Grean's Hack takes place in the
Ekcolir Reality during which Isaac Asimov wrote some fiction but had a more active career as a scientists. Working with his son,
Sven, Asimov helped develop a way to use technology-assisted telepathy to link writers on Earth to people inside the Hierion Domain.
What if the fain had more extensive contacts with humans in the Ekcolir Reality than in the Final Reality? The
Fru'wu brought advanced technology to Earth that resulted in catastrophic global warming. Might it be possible for the fain to help mitigate some of that damage?
In addition to making use of fain gene combinations deployed in fain-human hybrids, hierion-probes are also used to facilitate communication between
mind clones, one located on Earth and another in the Hierion Domain.
Several duplicate copies of characters in
Grean's Hack are made by teleportation duplication. Some of the duplicates (such as
Relda) must be shifted around through time in order for them to fulfill their roles in helping reduce the damage done to Earth by advanced Fru'wu technology.
As described
here, some of the characters in
Grean's Hack were inspired by the writers who came up with the story for the film
Forbidden Planet.
I've long given high priority to using the Asimov Reality Simulator as a way of investigating the origins of human telepathy in the far future of the Alastor Cluster. For
Grean's Hack I imagine that a
Foundation Reality Simulator can be used to study the history of the interactions between the alien fain and humans in that Reality. One of the ancient worlds known to the fain was
Atlam. For
Grean's Hack I suggest that robots from Atlam came to our galaxy long ago and helped create the positronic robots of Earth.
The story
Grean's Hack includes
Dr. Bulson Fara, an archeologist of the Foundation Reality who is searching for evidence of ancient aliens who visited
Terminus in the distant past.
Another character in Grean's Hack is Danela Steel, a Foundation Reality analogue of Daneel. Danela has plans for how to make human fears over invading aliens help prepare the people of Terminus for the future.
At the end of August I wrote a 10,000 word story, "The Gensifer Clan", that forms a link between
The Yerophet Experiment and "
The Power of Pause". Eventually, Azynov and Yōd will have to go to
Yrinna in order to contact the
Phari, an alien force that helped
R. Nyrtia and
Grean develop human telepathy.
Helping Azynov and Yōd on their way towards eventual contact with the Phari is Glisten Ravensroke. Before traveling to Yerophet with Glisten, Yōd first visits the planet Ottengla and learns about the existence of
Human-Plesypy hybrids with telepathic abilities. The Gensifer Clan of Yrinna has long harvested useful gene combinations from the people of Ottengla.
Right at the end of August I began "
The Synpaz of Seelie", the next part of
Grean's Hack. In "The Synpaz of Seelie", the replicoid of
Petra Nicholls is instantiated as a synpaz named Artep. Artep eventually moves in with
Mary and the copy of Asimov who reside at the Writers Block. Artep is about one tenth the size of a normal human and can fly.
Creation of the synpaz replicoids was originally motivated by the presence of the
sy'Paz in Eternity. The sy'Paz are alien-human hybrids that were often used by R. Nyrtia for special missions on Earth. Artep meets Quen and Rusan, two sy'Paz agents who now do odd jobs for Grean.
Grean is in a race against time, trying to complete her study of the
Bimanoid Interface before the
Reality Change that will end the Ekcolir Reality. Part 9 of "The Synpaz of Seelie"
explains the nature of Grean's Hack, a trick for gaining access to Phari knowledge of hierion physics that is available inside the AR Simulator.
Rusan and Quen go back to 1860 in order to start Earthlings on the path towards developing the mathematics that will be needed to start a science of hierion physics. They get themselves into trouble and another Inteventionist (
Flora) must come to their rescue.
For "
Final Change" the last section of
Grean's Hack, Asimov meets Joanna MacDonald and he gets to read her first science fiction story about Grean. Joanna has "visions" of the future and predicts that she will be taken from Earth into the Hierion Domain. Joanna has been designed by Grean to be a mind clone of Mary.
Asimov is allowed to read a draft copy of another story by Joanna called "Positronic Robots", a story about time travel. However, Joanna is then removed from Earth before that story can be published. Joanna then lives as a synpaz replicoid in the High Chamber of Seelie where some sy'Paz have begun an advanced physics research project.
Working in
High Seelie, Joanna develops hierion-based materials with unusual properties and she also influences Mary so as to help her discover a negative mass hierion.
Artep must coax Joanna out of High Seelie when it is time for the Reality Change that converts the Ekcolir Reality into the Final Reality.
Mary from the Writers Block is not taken over into the Final Reality. When the replicoid copy of Asimov who has lived with Mary reaches the Final Reality, he is sent to
Tart'tron.
Right at the end of September, I began a new story called "
Hierion Writers Club", an origins story for Mary. For a time, Mary's teleportation duplicate in the Hierion Domain is known as 'Yira', but then she goes back to using the name 'Mary'. The story also depicts the origins of the Writers Block after Grean the
Kac'hin takes control of Eternity.
In October, I read Jack Vance's story "
The Plagian Siphon". I was stimulated to make the imaginary magazine cover that is shown to the left.
In October, I also read some stories by
John D. MacDonald, the writer who inspired my Exode Saga character named Joanna MacDonald.
The story "
Grean Fiction" (38,000 words) was inspired by the 1956 movie,
Forbidden Planet.
Tara Morbius returns to Earth from Altair IV and must complete the time travel loop that led to her own creation as a genetically engineered human. A problem remains: Tara has no personal knowledge or experience confirming that time travel is even possible.
Eventually, after being taken into the Hierion Domain, Tara meets
Delpha the Kac'hin and learns that Delpha has already taken care of loose ends in the time loop. A report on what was learned about the Fru'wu teleportation network has been sent back into the past. Tara gets to go into retirement at
Talya.
December
I completed "
Hierion Writers Club" after having started the story in in September. Yira must try to adjust to life in the Hierion Domain during the time when Grean takes control of Eternity. Eventually, after about a century in the Hierion Domain, Yira (Mary) allows a replicoid copy of Isaac Asimov to become the director of the Writers Block.
In general, I despise political science fiction, but for "
The Galaxiad" I imagined two political parties of the far future, one in favor of forming the
Galaxia group mind and another party that resists Galaxia. The story introduces a new human variant, the Werefe and a new form of artificial life, the
sedroid.
Many Sails, an ancient sentient spaceship, makes use of sedroids as her helpers.
Many Sails collects
Vyky for further study of the telepathic abilities of the Werefe.
In "
The Olivine Intervention", Yōd and Azynov visit Yerophet for a second time, but at a point in the Asimov Reality timeline that is before their first visit to that world. They are able to use the AR Simulator to move around through Alastor Cluster as needed. Working with
Glisten, Yōd takes care to protect Glisten's unborn baby from dangerous exposure to Kerub telepathic signals. With some help from
Rylla and the mind clone network, the story can finally be told about a year later.
