SIHA 2021

Триббл in space! Galactic fantasy.

Apparently Cosmoball was released in 2020, with trailers put out in an effort to attract attention as early as 2019, but I did not know that this movie existed until today. I mention Cosmoball here in this SIHA blog post for two reasons; firstly because in the Alastor Clustor novels of Jack Vance, he included the future sport hussade. Vance had little interest in doing things in a conventional way so his fictional sport did not even involve a ball.

Fantasy Space Aliens

fuzzy fantasy space alien

This blog post is about aliens from Hollywood and other odd corners of the global entertainment industry. Based on what is in the trailers, Cosmoball features several types of fantasy aliens from around the galaxy, including one fuzzy creature that seemingly "swims" through outer space. Eh? (story "explained") 

fun for children: blasting holes through characters

 Cosmoball is targeted at children, so in addition to the routine and sickening fantasy violence that graces children's "entertainment" these days there is also a Very Evil™ alien maniac threatening the universe in this "family friendly" film. 

Of course, here in the CGI era, nothing in your movie needs to make sense. All you have to do is just make your battles, fights and explosions look cool on the $creen... the ca$h will role in.

Searching through the Styrofoam and CGI caves of
Hollywood for interesting aliens in 2021 and 1965.

This blog post marks the beginning of my 2021 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA). I've never seen Cosmoball and I have no interest in all the "superhero" fantasy violence being produced by the film industry. As usual, a looming question is: can any of the dreck or drivel emerging from the television and film industry here in 2021 attract my attention and seem interesting enough for me to spend an hour or two watching the boob tube or (gasp) sitting in a movie theater? 

As has happened in past years, I'm again tempted to award a "retro-SIHA" this year because I am struggling mightily to find any interesting new aliens in movies or on TV. I still have fond memories of aliens from the 1960s such as the telepathic Talosians.

Dune film 2021

For me, scientific plausibility matters. Dear Hollywood: if you don't care about science then please simply call your stuff "fantasy" and don't market it as science fiction (or even Sci-Fi).

Last year I mentioned (here) the 2021 film version of Dune. I don't expect there to be any interesting aliens in Dune. The whole giant "sandworm" idea is as absurd as Star Trek's Horta and the asteroid worms in Star Wars.

Skylines is the third in a series of films that began in 2010 with brain-sucking aliens who were invading Earth. Skylines was apparently released on December 18th 2020. I never heard of it until 2021, so I'll count it as a 2021 film. Does it have interesting aliens?

While growing up in the previous millennium I was disgusted by the seemingly insatiable appetite in Hollywood for stories that depicted dehumanized "injuns", "Japs" and assorted "gooks" who were the targets for "heroic" movie stars to confront and battle. 

"horror science fiction depicting humanity’s desperate
fight against an overwhelmingly powerful alien force
that seeks its complete extermination" (source)

Now we are at the point in time where it is fashionable in Hollywood to endlessly battle robots and space aliens. As far as I can tell, the only goal in these films is high EPM: how many Explosions per Minute can you cram in? Standard Hollywood depictions of artificial life and aliens are almost always boring, stupid, repetitive and unimaginative. The writers don't care about how amazing it would be to actually meet and interact with alien creatures, they just want a convenient target for the fantasy hero's blaster. 😩

alien drone in Skyline

I do like the idea that if and when aliens arrive on Earth, they are likely to be in a non-biological form. The Skyline fictional universe is populated by the Borg "biomechanical" aliens and includes human-alien hybrids. Although there are entire websites devoted to cataloging such aliens (example), there seems to be nobody who can actually explain any of the potentially interesting aspects of the aliens in these Skyline movies. All that counts here is ACTION and confronting the Death Star Mother Ship Core... or something.

alien "pilot"

In Skylines, our heroes magically go through a black hole/worm hole and reach the home planet (Cobolt) of the Evil Aliens™. Getting too close to the black-hole-space-drive system will kill you unless you have Rose's magic wand. The trailer shows the Dark Styrofoam CGI sets where Rose must battle "mutant" aliens who are allergic to sunlight because they look so silly unless they are filmed in the dark of a cave. Ah, the heart-rending travails of low-budget films trying to impress audiences with special FX.

super-duper Rose hybrid

If I understand the "plot" correctly, billions of alien shell-like bodies called "pilots" have been equipped with "harvested" human brains. The star of Skylines (Rose) is some kind of alien-human hybrid with superpowers™ who ages rapidly, but otherwise looks human. Rose is the special creation of the Alien Matriarch, having been given her superpowers while still an embryo. Why? So that Rose can later kill the Matriarch and save Humanity, of course. Nothing in this pile of  💩 makes sense.

2020

Alien Monsters. I suppose there is no point in me trying to make sense of these Skyline films. We viewers in the audience are expected to believe -and ask no questions- when told that the previously pacified pilots with human brains are now going to "revert" to evil-doing becau$e we wanted to make a third film in a trilogy they are infected by a viru$. I doubt if either Joshua Cordes or Liam O'Donnell knows what a viru$ is beyond it being a $ciency-$ounding plot element that will help them make money. In the end, Cobalt is destroyed and Humanity is saved: once again the aliens with fantastically advanced technology are beaten by the primitive humans. One of the lines in the film is "...no respect for science..." and truer words were never spoken.

1967

And telepathy, too. In 1965, you could tell that the Talosians were using telepathy because the huge veins on the side of their heads would twitch.

The aliens of Cobalt were all led by their telepathic Matriarch. Maybe the mysterious "blue light" first seen by viewers in 2010 was how the film makers decided to depict an alien telepathic force that seemingly turns the people of poor planet Earth into zombies, ready to take their places inside the "pilot" body suits? I'm a sucker for alien hybrids and telepathy, so I wasted 2 hours watching Skylines on Netflix, but could I ever enjoy an alien invasion action flick? I doubt it. And certainly not this one. I rate Skylines as R for being a Revolting and woRthless excuse to make profit$ from two hours of fantasy violence. Anyone who makes disgusting films just to harvest money from people is the monster. I want those two wasted hours of my life back. 

honesty in advertising

The fantasy aliens of Skylines could have been crafted into interesting science fiction, but that was not the goal of this mindless video game violence festival. My advice to science fiction fans: don't waste your time on this hyper-violent nonsense. When you see reviews saying that this film provides "action-packed fun", don't be fooled by people who thrive on blood splatter and dismemberment. There is nothing fun in this movie except a couple of out-takes that you get to see when the credits role after the end of the movie. SIHA 2021 Awards

Related Viewing: Foundation 2021 - Related Reading: SIHA 2020

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".

Next: Reality Editing

Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens

Recruiting Telepaths

Typly: "Look, Hyng! No legs!" Figure A.

 I recently decided to try making a comic strip version of "Meet the Phari". I used Daz Studio to make the settings and depict the characters, as shown in the image to the right. Using Daz, I made the legs of Xyza and Typly "invisible" (not rendered) and then had to use Photoshop to make it look like they were standing in the hot tub.

You can also see that the very short skirt being worn by Hyng does not fit her hips very well and her left arm actually was passing right through the material of the skirt. Another job for Photoshop.

I also made use of ClarisDraw to assemble the eleven panels into a one page comic (full size). I made a 3 page version for easy reading this blog:

Above... page 1 of 3; Recruiting Telepaths (continues below).

Above, page 2 of 3; Recruiting Telepaths (continues below).

Above, page 3 of 3; Recruiting Telepaths (blog format). Alternate format: download the single-page comic here.

 

Three pink lights used for the star-watch scene.

The first setting for the action (seen in the first six panels, above) was outside, at night, during a star-watch. In Alastor Cluster, the night sky of planets is more interesting than here on Earth. A star-watch is meant to be a social occasion where folks are more interested in meeting a new lover than naming the stars of Alastor Cluster. 

The telepathic human-alien hybrids Typly and Hyng are out on the town looking for telepaths who they can recruit into the service of Delpha. Delpha is trying to improve human telepathic abilities so as to make possible telepathic contact between the ancient Phari and humans.

Xyza is feeling the telepathic sashei of Typly and Hyng.

As discussed on this blog page, I'm using jagged captions to indicate telepathic communication. The first few panels in the comic were "expanded" for display on this blog, making it easier to read the captions. My computer has a 1920x1080 display, so using the 15.8 Mb full sized image of the single page version (3045 x 4403 pixels) and displaying it at 65% size on my screen is optimal for me and even the smallest text in the comic is readable.

In panel #7, Xyza, Typly and Hyng have returned inside from the balcony where they were looking at the stars. The indoors setting is where I made a video, experimenting with lights and reflective surfaces.

cover art by Gene Szafran

Alastor Cluster, sashei and star-watches were all invented by Jack Vance for his novels that are set in Alastor star cluster. Vance introduced the idea of sashei in Trullion. For my fan fiction stories The Alastor Network and "Meet the Phari" I imagine that some people have the ability to telepathically activate brain regions that are important for sexual thoughts and sensations.

original cover art by Ed Emshwiller

Some people carry nanocoids in their brains that can help them synchronize their thoughts telepathically to others who have similar nanocoids. Also mentioned in panel #8 of the comic is the "otrance". Otrance is slang for "orgasm trance". Typly and Hyng are intent on having sex with Xyza, as a way of testing if they can amplify their telepathic abilities as a group. For some people, during a shared orgasm, their minds are best able to synchronize, creating an amplification of their telepathic abilities. This also has the benefit of keeping Delpha's telepathic agents and helpers happy.

Typly (blue), Xyza and Hyng (red) ready for the tub.

The final three panels of the comic take place in a private location where Xyza, Typly and Hyng can relax in a hot tub and start some sex play. Will they get lucky and manage to achieve three simultaneous orgasms? As a Phyphy, Hyng is a simultaneous hermaphrodite and she has a penis which is the subject of conversation in the last panel of the comic.

Depth of field example.

Panel #4 in the comic was my first experiment with camera depth of field. Closest to the camera is Typly, shown slightly out of focus. The camera is focused on Xyza. In the background, the stars are also out of focus.

Xyza glowing pink

Another challenge was giving Xyza a pink hue in the final panel. In the spa room, to the right of the hot tub is a sauna that emits a pink glow. I was using a pink "point" light source to give Xyza a pink glow, but because of Hyng's red skin, that really deepened her red coloration (see Figure A at the top of this blog post.) I was stubborn and rather than switch to a pink spotlight, for the comic I spliced together two different renderings, one half for a darker Hyng and one half for the pink Xyza.

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".

Next: SIHA 2021; alien exploitation films

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Humanoid Aliens

Four hybrids with blue skin. Only the first in daylight.

 I've been experimenting with Daz Studio as a tool for making illustrations featuring the human-alien hybrids who are characters in my science fiction story "Meet the Phari". I first created a character (Typly) with blue skin who I imagine to be a human-Plesypy hybrid from the planet Ottengla (shown here). 

Alien hybrids.

I then wanted to create a scene with low light levels, but with less light, it was hard to tell that my hybrid from Ottengla had blue skin (see the middle two panels in the image, above). I eventually found a VERY blue skin that worked under low light.

Then I began experimenting with redish-skin tones that would be suitable for a character named Hyng who is a Phyphy. In general, I don't enjoy green skin, but I also made an additional character with green tints simply because I wanted to fill in some blank space in my illustration of a pale human (her name is Xyza), Typly (the blue human-Plesypy hybrid) and Hyng (the red Phyphy, see the image to the left).

Previously, I made an animation using Daz Studio for a scene with relatively high light levels. Probably the most alarming discovery that I made while creating that first animation was that the Daz Studio software is only concerned about the visual appearances of objects and does not treat its models as solid physical objects. 

Figure A. Typly goes through the mirror.

I wondered what the 3Delight rendering engine would do when a human figure passed through a mirror. In the image shown to the right, Typly has dived into the mirror. The back of Xyza's head is in the lower left corner. Standing in front of Xyza is the reddish Hyng. In blue, at the center of the image, is the left hand of Typly and you can also see her glutes and right thigh. You can see the reflection of Typly's hand in the mirror and everything else visible to the upper right is reflected light, as is all of the green character. I don't understand why we see Typly's back at the upper right which seems to have come through to us from the far side of the mirror.

Boost brightness and contrast: more green reflections in the upper right.

Below on this page is a video showing this scene set in motion, but first I'll explain what is going on here. To create this scene, I used the four differently colored human figures and three reflective surfaces. 

Movie frame #1; the view from above. The reflective floor appears black.
The reflective surface walls (Planes) and the reflective sphere are shaded yellow here.
Camera 1 was used for the most of the movie, but there was another camera for views behind Plane.

Movie frame 151. Camera #2 is "behind" the mirror.

Hyng and Typly are closest to one mirror (Plane), but there us another mirror ("Plane (2)") positioned close behind the green character and Xyza. I set the ray tracing depth to 5 for this render, so the left most copy of the green character is a reflected image (in Figure A, above). The second smaller copy of the green figure must be light that began at the character (not directly in the camera's view; she is standing to the left of Xyza), bounced off the mirror behind her and then bounced off the mirror that Typly is passing through and then finally entered the camera. By playing with the image brightness and contrast, you can see additional reflections of the green figure at the upper right of the image. The right most one may be a five reflection image.

floating sphere

There is one rather weak "distant" light source used in this scene and eight spotlights. I wanted the scene to look like a dark dance floor setting. Besides the two reflective walls, there is also a reflective sphere that can be seen in the middle right of the video, below. The sphere is magically floating in front of Xyza's knees ( see image to the left). For the most elaborate version of the video, I added a reflective floor, making a total of 4 reflective surfaces.

Typly has mostly passed
through the mirror (camera 2)

I don't understand why light can go through these mirrors rather than simply reflect off. The image to the left is the "preview" image for camera #2 showing most of Typly's body having passed through the mirror at the time of Figure A.

mirror surface settings

When that view (from camera 2) is rendered, Hyng and Xyza can still be seen on the other side of the mirror (see Figure B, below). I've seen other people talk about having to put in multiple planes in order to prevent this kind of light transmission going right through supposedly solid objects. Maybe one of the many "surface" settings (shown to the right) could stop this transmission of light through the mirror surface.

Figure B. Frame 151. Camera #2 rendered image.

For the movie, I combined several rendered animation sequences using iMovie. Sadly, by the time iMovie and YouTube are done messing with the video created by Daz Studio, the quality has been reduced. At the very end of this blog post is a short video sequence uploaded directly into Blogger.

At the start of the movie are two establishment shots, both showing the scene from above. At movie frame 1:

movie frame #1, view from above

At movie frame 151, after Typly has gone through the mirror:

movie frame 151, view from above

The view from above at frame #151 (above) shows most of Typly's body having passed through the mirror. Her left arm is seen reflecting from the mirrored floor.

iMovie to YouTube (music by Kevin MacLeod):

Direct upload movie just to show off the green hybrid's sparkling necklace:

Typly being teleported (see animation, below).

In "Meet the Phari", Delpha and Grean make use of teleportation technology. I wanted to experiment with using Daz Studio to create a teleportation animation. In this rendered scene, Daz Studio lost the ability to control the eye color of Hyng the Phyphy. However, I has been wanting to experiment with white eyes for Typly and this experience with Hyng served the purpose. I think it is best to just leave Typly with blue eyes. I made my experimental teleportation animation (below) for 1080p video, but the default for Blogger video seems to be 720p. 😢

right click for options

select full screen view

Strangely, conventional video formats like 1080p (1920x1080 pixels) are not listed among the available options for Daz Studio animations. However, the video (below this paragraph) looks okay when viewed in full screen mode and right-clicking on the movie allows you to turn on looping.

YouTube video thumbnails

Next: a "Meet the Phari" comic strip.

Related: too hot for YouTube...

When a video is uploaded to YouTube, they automatically select three frames from the video as "thumbnails". You can pick one of those to be the "cover image" for the video or you can upload your own image.

Too hot for YouTube.

To the left is the image that I tried to use as a "thumbnail" for the "Recruit Telepaths" video on YouTube. However, YouTube removed that thumbnail and told me that it violates their sex and nudity policy. I guess fake (Daz Studio-rendered) girls in swimsuits are too hot for YouTube.

I really do not understand why the thumbnail was removed, but they left the video on display. I wonder if the word "recruiting" triggers their software to flag an image for review. I got a nice email from YouTube saying "our team reviewed your content", but I wonder if there were no humans involved in this decision.

more videos

On the Planet Saro

1935. Meet the ant people! Don and Betty visit the planet Saro.

Isaac Asimov was born in 1920 and he grew up helping in the "candy" shops that were owned by his parents. Of particular interest to the young Isaac were the magazines and comic books that were sold to customers... how could he resist reading them? What did he think about comics such as the one shown to the right on this page?

In 1935, comic books were competing for Isaac's interest along with science fiction magazines such as Amazing. 

Amazing Stories, February 1929

At the age of 17, Isaac began to get serious about writing his own science fiction stories and by 1939 he was a published author.

Asimov's first published story is set in outer space and sadly, it only features human characters. I have to wonder if Isaac, who studied biology, was a bit embarrassed by the fictional aliens that appeared in most stories about life on distant planets. While growing up, Asimov had to convince his skeptical father that it was not a waste of time to read science fiction magazines. 

Apparently Isaac's argument was that since the word "science" was in "science fiction", those Sci Fi magazines were educational. For a time, the young Isaac read and rated every Sci Fi story being published.

Phagocyte Domain

Educational. In the February 1927 Amazing was a story called "Phagocytes" by A. H. Johnson. That story was written from the perspective of a white blood cell. I love science fiction stories with maps (example) depicting the locations that are explored by adventurers who visit strange new places. For "Phagocytes", readers were provided with a map of the battleground where the immune system fought invading bacteria (image to the right). The story is narrated by a well-spoken phagocyte who describes the action during the battle.

In the same issue of Amazing there was "The Death of the Moon" by Alexander Moore Phillips. In that story, readers such as the young Isaac were taken back to the age of the dinosaurs. I recently mentioned a short story by Asimov (Darwinian Pool Room") that dealt with the extinction of dinosaurs. In "The Death of the Moon", Phillips imagined that space-faring lunarians long ago visited Earth, just at the time when the Moon was becoming uninhabitable. The clever lunarian scientists built a spaceship and made plans for a great migration of all the lunarians from the dying Moon to the green Earth.

The dying Moon.

There's the interior art (image to the left) depicting the the lunarian spaceship, ready for the trip to Earth. The lunarians have six limbs, but they walk upright on the two hind-limbs. The lunarians were great tool-users and equipped with finger-like digits at the end of the their fore-limbs. In the color cover illustration (above, left), one of the lunarians is shown using a ray-gun to blast a dinosaur, but all of the members of the expedition from the Moon are killed by Tyrannosaurus Rex. Thus the invasion of the lunarians was halted, and, in time, humans evolved to inherit the Earth.

I despise stories built upon a foundation of a technological breakthrough that is made by one person and never repeated. "The Death of the Moon" is such a story. The great scientist who designs the lunarian spaceship is killed by Mr. T. Rex, putting an end to the lunarian space age after just one flight.

cover by Kenneth Barr

The first Sci Fi story featuring insectoid aliens that I ever tried to read was Serpent's Reach. I'll accept Sci Fi characters wearing Jodhpurs in 1935, but not in 1980. I was unable to finish reading Serpent's Reach and my first insectoid alien story was my last until I had the "pleasure" of reading "The Death of the Moon". That old story by Phillips has the huge advantage of being short, although readers had to suffer through annoyances such as having the stars described by Phillips as being sardonic.

How many sardonic stars are in your star cluster? 🌟 I've been thinking about aliens in the context of Alastor Cluster, one of the literary inventions of Jack Vance. For "Meet the Phari", I've added the four-legged Plesypy to the bipedal Fwai-chi of Marune and the swimming merlings of Trullion.

More ant scientifiction coming soon! (1928)

I'm not sure what accounts for the popularity of insect-like aliens in science fiction. Right after the end of "The Death of the Moon" readers were treated to the editorial blurb that is shown to the left, promising another great story about alien ant-life.

In my opinion, science fiction fans could have gotten along just fine with fewer stories about ant-people, although the ones found on the planet Saro were apparently not dangerous. 😌

Back in the 1970s I tried to watch Fantastic Voyage. That movie was so bad that I don't think I made it to the end. I never read Asimov's novelization, but I must wonder if he ever came up with a plausible mechanism for shrinking people.

In the case of Ant-Man, I like the idea of "explaining" such shrinkage by making use of imaginary particles (see Pym particles). For my own stories that are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, there are both the tiny hierions and the even tinier sedrons.

Click image to enlarge.

Anyhow, this blog post is not about fictional ants. I mention them here because ant-like aliens appeared in one of the early Sci Fi comics, providing me with a lead-up to the announcement that I have decided to try making my own comic version of "Meet the Phari". I'm going to be using Daz Studio to make the human and alien-human hybrid characters in my comic version of the story. Apparently, Ant-man figured out how to telepathically communicate with ants by using a "cybernetic helmet". The telepathy depicted in "Meet the Phari" is also technology-assisted telepathy, although the lowly humans of Alastor cluster have no understanding of the physical basis of telepathy. The goal (of Delpha) in "Meet the Phari" is to boost the developing telepathic abilities of humans to the point where they can begin to communicate telepathically with the alien Phari.

Teaching a friend how to hunt synpaz.

 Red, White and Blue. In my stories, I use italicized text to depict telepathic communication between characters. As shown in the image at the end of this blog post (below), back in 1963 the thought captions were given squiggly borders to indicated telepathy. For the image shown above, I adopted that style of caption for showing the thoughts of three "Meet the Phari" characters. Inside Alastor star cluster, a common social occasion is the "starwatch", the one shown is here taking place on a balcony of a tall building of a large city. Two of these characters are telepaths, one from the planet Ottengla and one is a genetically engineered Phyphy who was made in Delpha's genetics laboratory. Poor Artep...

See the comic strip.

Related Reading: Star Trek: New Visions

Next: reflective surfaces in Daz Studio

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".

image source: Tales to Astonish 1963