The Tool Maker

WOMBO Dream: "Making a tool"

 Last year I read "Not Final!", a short story by Isaac Asimov. I finally got around to reading Asimov's follow-up story for "Not Final!", another short story which was called "Victory Unintentional" and was published in the August 1942 issue of Super Science Stories.

Robots and Aliens. All of the characters in "Victory Unintentional" are either robots or native creatures of the planet Jupiter. The best thing about "Victory Unintentional" is that it depicts humans as sending robots to investigate a planet, which is exactly how we humans of the space age have so far used space travel to study the planets of our solar system.

Figure 1. "a human hand holding a
 hammer while driving a nail into a board"

 Alien Invasion. The worst thing about "Victory Unintentional" is that Asimov tried to imagine how life could exist on the "surface" of Jupiter. Asimov did not try very hard. "Not Final!" and "Victory Unintentional" remind me of Asimov's story "Runaround" which among all of the positronic robot stories in I, Robot irritated me the most because Asimov (a chemistry student) felt compelled to bring chemistry into the plot. Now, having finally read "Victory Unintentional", I think I dislike it even more than I dislike "Runaround", simply because "Victory Unintentional" features even more chemistry than "Runaround". Asimov's readers are expected to simply go along for the ride, even while knowing that Asimov's plot (about evil creatures on Jupiter who want to start a war with humans) is quite silly. Almost as silly as that hand in Figure 1.

interior art by John B. Musacchia

 Suspension of Disbelief. The second worst thing about "Victory Unintentional" is that Asimov told his readers that humans spent 25 years designing robots that could survive the harsh conditions on the "surface" of Jupiter and so the robots featured in the story can 1) move around in the high gravity, 2) fly a spaceship that can land "on" Jupiter and then return to outer space, and the robots have 3) body parts made of a magic metal that is completely resistant to corrosion, and 4) these robots are completely resistant to being damaged by even very powerful electric currents. While on Jupiter and inside the thick and turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter, the robots can see the creatures of Jupiter and communicate with them using radio transmissions and a code consisting of clicks (see the illustration to the right). In the story, the people of Jupiter try to destroy the robots by using Hi Tek™ heat rays that reach the high (for Jupiter) temperature of 30°C.

hands playing a piano keyboard

 Robots as Tools. To his credit, Asimov tried to think about ways to use robots to do jobs that are unpleasant, difficult or impossible for humans to do. The idea of robots as tools has been on my mind this year while I have been experimenting with artificial intelligence and trying to use WOMBO Dream to make illustrations for science fiction stories and I've also tried to make use of Bard and ChatGPT as collaborators for writing science fiction stories. I view these artificial intelligence systems as tools and I have endeavored to try to learn how to use these new tools effectively. Figure 1 (above) illustrates one of the problems with WOMBO Dream: its inability to deal with human anatomy. Similarly, the chatbots can't remember the previous parts of a story, making them pretty useless as story writers. Like all other tools, we must not expect too much from these AI tools and with practice it is possible to get better at using these kinds of tools.

"abstract fluid v2 style"

 I tried providing the interior art for "Victory Unintentional" to Mr. Wombo along with this text prompt: "air-brushed full color pulp science fiction cover art, on the surface of Jupiter, in the style of artist John B. Musacchia, robots land a spaceship on Jupiter, aliens of Jupiter attack with heat rays". When set for a strong dependence on the reference image, there was very little color in the resulting AI-generated images (see the image to the right).

"normal" setting

When set for "normal" dependence on the reference image, there was more color (see the image to the left). Sadly, Mr. Wombo could not make heads nor tails of the black-and-white reference image. I selected from a large number of images a pair that had three humanoid figures that we might imagine are the three robots who land on Jupiter in "Victory Unintentional".

low dependence setting; who needs a head?

The image to the right was generated with the setting for low dependence on the reference image. 

Apparently, John B. Musacchia only had one painting published as a science fiction magazine cover image. That was the cover for the Summer 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. I used that old cover art as a reference image with the WOMBO Dream software....

full sized image here

original cover by Musacchia

The image to the left shows what was generated by Mr. Wombo using this text prompt: "air-brushed full color pulp science fiction cover art, Meg Ryan, long blond hair, in the style of artist John B. Musacchia" for the human head at the lower left and I used "air-brushed full color pulp science fiction cover art, Margot Robbie with an alien plant man, on the surface of an exoplanet, in the style of artist John B. Musacchia" for the rest of the image.

interior art by Damon Knight

 "Starstone World" by Hannes Bok is told as a first person narration by a dead man. The narrator is killed in a car crash, but he gets better. His mind travels through space and ends up being re-incarnated on the titular Starstone World. That blond woman with the blue dress (above) is an alien from Starstone World. The alien lady is named Sula and she plants the narrator of the story in her garden. Yes, "Starstone World" is a painfully slow fantasy story with bumbling wizards and magical crystals. In "Starstone World", the mind of the dead man from Earth eventually gets back to Earth, is returned to his original body and then he obligingly publishes the tale of his interstellar journey in Science Fiction Quarterly. The interior art for the story was by Damon Knight.

Figure 2. the Great Mirror by Musacchia

I'm glad I went and looked at the Summer 1942 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. "The Great Mirror" by Arthur Burks is interesting. I've previously blogged about Burks' 1930 story "Earth, the Marauder" and his 1951 sermon on the evils of birth control. In "The Great Mirror", Burks imagined that the lamas of Tibet had advanced technology in 1940, including rockets that could fly to Mars, but there are also teleportation devices and telepathy in the story. The lamas have stolen the titular Great Mirror from the Martians and now the Martians are invading Earth and trying to get back their Great Mirror. 

Figure 3. The mirror by WOMBO Dream.

The "mirror" is no mirror; it is a viewing device which can produce images of any place in the universe. The image to the left was generated by Mr. Wombo, providing a modern color version of the original interior art by Musacchia. The original illustration (see Figure 2, above) showed a lama on the right and the hero of the story, Howard Davies, and his girlfriend, Deema Moray, on the left. In the middle of the dramatic battle for Tibet, there is a time-out so that the Martian leading the invasion of Earth can perform a quick marriage ceremony for Howard and Deema.

A Martian defines the rights of women.

Deema is an interesting female character for the 1940s, a roving news reporter who must alert the world to the danger of the Martian invasion. Howard and Deema become Mr. and Mrs. Davies and the Martian gives a little speech (shown to the right) making sure that everyone knows that the proper place for a woman is in the bed of a man like Howard.

Tyhry and Marda using the RSS

 Reality Simulation System. This scene (Figure 2, above) with the Martian "mirror" was of particular interest to me because I'm currently writing a scene for my science fiction story "The Cythyrya Investigation" in which Tyhry uses a view screen for the Reality Simulation System to show Marda some alien Hua on an exoplanet of the First Reality. The pink-skinned Hua (like the one shown in the image to the left) lived many thousands of years after the time period of Tyhry's visit to Sermyth.

 Tribute. According to Forrest Ackerman, Hannes Bok (real name: Wayne Francis Woodard) literally died as a starving artist. His distinctive cover art was seen on magazines such as Marvel Science Fiction, Imagination and Planet Stories. As a tribute to Bok, I tried to have Mr. Wombo make alternate versions of some of the old cover illustrations that Bok made for science fiction magazines.

Mr. Wombo's angel (see)

The cover for the June 1951 issue of Imagination was an illustration for "Hell's Angel" by Robert Bloch. Bloch is credited as the writer for several Star Trek episodes including "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" and "Catspaw". Hannes Bok's story "Starstone World" reminded me of another Star Trek episode, "Spock's Brain". In "Starstone World", after magically traveling trough the interstellar depths, a man's mind from Earth has to be surgically implanted in an alien's head... or something.

A new version of the "hell's angel" is shown to the right, as generated by WOMBO Dream. I used this text prompt, "full color air-brushed painting of Margot Robbie as an angel with a harp and a halo, skinny legs, narrow hips, Margot Robbie is dressed Victoria's Secret style, painted in the style of Hannes Bok," along with Bok's original art as a reference image.

going thataway...in 2023

 Extra Legs Fail. As discussed in a blog post from two years ago, the cover art for the August 1951 issue of Marvel Science Fiction was the subject of a naming contest. A new version of that multi-legged alien creature is shown in the image to the left. Mr. Wombo did not understand the whole alien bug-creature thing.

Red Coral Wombo

 Extra Eyes. As shown in the image to the right, Mr. Wombo did really get into making multiple frog eyes for his version of the cover for the May 1951 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories. I'd never read "Red Coral", but naturally I wondered why the frog people are keeping women in cages. 

 Reading Red Coral. I'm not a fan of Ray Palmer, but according to the table of contents, the story is only 4,500 words long, so I went ahead and read "Red Coral". The story starts with, "the frogs just brought me a nude woman," (see the original cover), so how am I supposed to resist that?

Blurb by Editor Palmer for his own story ("Red Coral").

interior art for "Red Coral" by Bok

 Nuclear War. When I was reading "Red Coral", I began wondering if Chris Carter had ever read this story. The X-Files included the idea of submarines finding alien spaceships on the sea floor. I also thought of the X-Files episode in which an alien spaceship appears just before a plane crash. 

Palmer makes reference to "A Descent into the Maelström" by Poe, but for Palmer's story, the narrator describes how his submarine was sunk and there is reference to H-bombs and a nuclear war with the Commies (an event before the start of the story). Sadly, after introducing the nude woman, Palmer spends most of the story talking about politics and spending tax money on warfare.

Mr. Wombo's red coral girl

 And Baseball. Writing in the early 1950s, Palmer also included baseball in the story. The narrator of the story is from Brooklyn and tells readers: "I been out to the ballpark plenty of times when the Bums got the bum's rush for the pennant in the "crucial serious."

 The End. The frogs have advanced technology. Palmer can't be bothered to explain where these intelligent frogs came from, but we readers are told that the cute girl is synthetic, created by the frogs for the narrator of the story. Apparently, the narrator of the story was one of the last men on Earth after the nuclear war and now the frogs (who "are the masters of this planet" and "have been for millions of years") are trying to recover the human human species, maybe in the way Dinosaurs were recovered in Jurassic Park. The narrator and the girl are placed on an island of red coral where they call each other "Adam" and "Eve".

WOMBO Dream is creating...
reload the page to animate.

The March 1940 issue of Weird Tales featured a painting by Bok on the cover illustrating "The Horror in the Glen". To the left is a version of that scene while being generated by Mr. Wombo. The WOMBO Dream software had a problem with my rather vague text prompt: "full color air-brushed painting of Margot Robbie with skinny legs and narrow hips, Margot Robbie is dressed Victoria's Secret style, with some alien creatures, painted in the style of Hannes Bok", often failing to draw any alien animals.

alien jungle scene (see)

 The Horror. The image to the right was among the best that I could get as an AI-generated version of Bok's original artwork. Mr. Wombo does not seem to care about making sure that body parts are coordinated and pointing in sensible directions, but some how this image does convey the idea that she is trying to turn and look in several directions at the same time. I'm not a fan of horror, so there is no way that I'm going to read "The Horror in the Glen".

 Bok Festival. All of the rest of the WOMBO Dream-generated images in this blog post also were generated with a text prompt that began with "full color air-brushed painting" and ended with "painted in the style of Hannes Bok".

Cover by Mr. Wombo (see)

 KIAINE! I was particularly interested to see how Mr. Wombo would deal with the cover for the Winter 1941 issue of Planet Stories. I'm not certain that this cover painting was made by Bok, but it seems to depict an exciting type of wind surfing. The internet speculative fiction data base says, "Cover art is not credited; no signature found on the artwork".

 Follow the red clay road. In the image shown to the left there are three alien creatures. I don't know if the alien to the left side of the image is supposed to have wings. Maybe the wing-like appendages are a type of antenna for the reception of telepathic signals. The alien in the lower right seems to have only legs and no arms, which is one solution to Mr. Wombo's problem in correctly creating hands. In the original reference image, the human woman had bare legs, but Mr. Wombo provided her with green and black striped leggings.

Figure 4. Half green.

 She's Green. Mr. Wombo had a hard time making a green alien in the same scene with a human being. As shown in Figure 4 (to the right), the WOMBO Dream image generator really wanted to give her green skin. I was happy to see an image be created in which she was actually doing something with her hands. Mr. Wombo also seemed certain that she should be wearing big boots.

Figure 5. All green.

To the left (Figure 5) is another version of this scene where Mr. Wombo made her completely green. Since this could be a humanoid alien on a distant exoplanet, I left intact Mr. Wombo's alien language magazine cover.

For both Figure 4 and Figure 5 I had to clean up one or two of the hands. I left the lower hand in Figure 5 the way that Mr. Wombo created it.

Often Mr. Wombo puts ladies in extremely high heels, but for Figure 5, Mr. Wombo seemed to save on electrons and used invisible heels for her boots. I'm not sure why Figure 5 got some power cables... maybe that alien beast is getting some electroshock therapy.

Figure 6. DALL-E's palace of love.

 A Vancian Interlude. I recently asked ChatGPT (the version that is running as the Bing internet search system) if it was familiar with the clones that Jack Vance included in his novel The Palace of Love. 

Using the "precise" mode, I asked, "What were the names of the cloned human beings in Jack Vance's science fiction novel The Palace of Love?"

Bing reply: In Jack Vance's science fiction novel The Palace of Love, Viole Falushe, one of the Demon Princes, was so obsessed with a girl from his youth that he created a number of clones of her in a vain attempt to psychologically manipulate one into returning his love³. However, I couldn't find the names of these clones in my search results. Would you like me to look up more information?

Drusilla Wayles; evening
encounter with Kirth Gersen

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) Demon Princes - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Princes.
(2) The Palace of Love (Demon Princes, #3) by Jack Vance | Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1902254.The_Palace_of_Love.
(3) The Palace of Love - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love.
(4) Jack Vance - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Vance.

I asked: "Can you see what Wikipedia says about Drusilla Wayles on this webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love ?"

Bing reply: According to the Wikipedia page for The Palace of Love, Navarth has custody of an 18-year-old girl, variously known as "Drusilla Wayles" and "Zan Zu from Eridu," who was given to him as a child by Falushe to nurture and protect. She resembles the young Jheral Tinzy to a disturbing extent¹. Is there anything else you would like to know?

Jheral Tinzy finger shortage

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) The Palace of Love - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love.
(2) The Palace of Love - Wikiwand. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Palace_of_Love.
(3) Navarth. https://www.liquisearch.com/navarth.

I asked, "Was Drusilla Wayles a clone of Jheral Tinzy?"

Bing reply: Yes, according to the same Wikipedia page for "The Palace of Love", Drusilla Wayles was bred parthenogenically from the original Jheral Tinzy. Is there anything else you would like to know?

I asked: "What were the names of the other clones of Jheral Tinzy?" 

Bing reply: I'm sorry, but I couldn't find the names of the other clones of Jheral Tinzy in my search results. Is there anything else I can help you with?

Drusilla I on the Avente Esplanade

 Change Mode. I switched to the "creative" mode and asked, "Can you see what Wikipedia says about Drusilla Wayles on this webpage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love ?"

Now in "creative" mode, Bing replied: According to the web search results, "Drusilla Wayles" is a fictional character in Jack Vance's science fiction novel The Palace of Love. She is a young woman who works as a journalist for the magazine The Cosmopolite. She meets Kirth Gersen, the protagonist of the novel, and helps him infiltrate Viole Falushe's Palace of Love by posing as his wife¹. She is described as having "a round face, a snub nose, and a wide mouth" and being "intelligent, lively, and good-natured"¹.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) The Palace of Love - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love.
(2) Drusilla - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drusilla.

Drusilla Three

(3) The Palace of Love (Demon Princes, #3) by Jack Vance | Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1902254.The_Palace_of_Love.

Note: in case you have never read The Palace of Love, what Bing said about Drusilla Wayles (starting with "works as a journalist", above) is false, some kind of AI-hallucination. 

I asked, "Was Drusilla Wayles a clone of Jheral Tinzy?"

Bing now replied: According to the web search results, Drusilla Wayles was not a clone of Jheral Tinzy, but a parthenogenetic offspring¹. She was bred from the original Jheral by Viole Falushe, who gave her to Navarth to raise¹²³. She looked very similar to the young Jheral, but had a different personality¹.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) The Palace of Love - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Palace_of_Love.
(2) The Palace of Love - Wikiwand. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Palace_of_Love.
(3) The Palace of Love - Plot Summary. https://www.liquisearch.com/the_palace_of_love/plot_summary. 

Drusilla four.

I asked, "Would a parthenogenetic offspring of a woman be a clone of the woman?"

Bing replied: According to the web search results, a parthenogenetic offspring of a woman would not be a clone of the woman, but a half clone⁴. A clone is an organism that has the same genetic material as another organism³. A parthenogenetic offspring is an organism that develops from an unfertilized egg and has only half of the mother's genetic material³⁴. For organisms where sex is determined by chromosomes, like humans, a parthenogenetic female can produce offspring only with the sex chromosomes she has at hand – which means she will always produce XX female offspring⁴.

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) Virgin births from parthenogenesis: How females from some species can .... https://umbc.edu/stories/virgin-births-from-parthenogenesis-how-females-from-some-species-can-reproduce-without-males/.
(2) Parthenogenesis: How Females From Some Species Can Reproduce Without .... https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2020/12/28/parthenogenesis_how_females_from_some_species_can_reproduce_without_males_654569.html.
(3) Parthenogenesis - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis.
(4) Virgin births from parthenogenesis: How females from some species can .... https://theconversation.com/virgin-births-from-parthenogenesis-how-females-from-some-species-can-reproduce-without-males-150496.

an alien that routinely gives
birth by parthenogenesis

I asked: "At https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis it says, 'In some types of parthenogenesis the offspring having all of the mother's genetic material are called full clones,' so isn't it likely that a viable human being produced by parthenogenesis would have to be a diploid full clone?"

Bing replied: According to the web search results, a viable human being produced by parthenogenesis is not likely, because parthenogenesis in humans never produces viable embryos¹⁴⁵. The reason is that unfertilized eggs lack specific instructions about gene expression from the sperm¹⁴. Parthenogenesis in humans may result in aberrant formations called tumors and teratomas, which are unable to survive and develop into a human fetus⁴⁵. Therefore, a diploid full clone of a woman by parthenogenesis is not possible in humans.

Jheral Tinzy with a repaired hand

Source: Conversation with Bing, 4/29/2023
(1) Is parthenogenesis possible in humans? - Studybuff. https://studybuff.com/is-parthenogenesis-possible-in-humans/.
(2) Can parthenogenesis occur in humans? – KnowsWhy.com. https://www.knowswhy.com/can-parthenogenesis-occur-in-humans/.
(3) Research and Conclusions on Parthenogenesis in Humans. https://spillwords.com/research-and-conclusions-on-parthenogenesis-in-humans/.
(4) Parthenogenesis - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis.
(5) Can humans reproduce by parthenogenesis? - TimesMojo. https://www.timesmojo.com/can-humans-reproduce-by-parthenogenesis/.

I asked, "For the science fiction story "The Palace of Love", Jack Vance imagined a far future time when it was possible to make human clones. Isn't it likely that those clones would be diploid and that Drusilla Wayles was a clone of Jheral Tinzy?"

another alien mother; how many fingers?

Bing replied: I suppose it is possible that Jack Vance imagined a far future time when it was possible to make human clones by parthenogenesis or other methods. However, based on the web search results, the novel explicitly states that Drusilla Wayles was a parthenogenetic offspring of Jheral Tinzy, not a clone. A clone would have the same genetic material as Jheral Tinzy, while a parthenogenetic offspring would have only half. Therefore, Drusilla Wayles was not a clone of Jheral Tinzy, but a half clone.

It can be exhausting trying to deal with AI chatbots. I have no idea why it is that in one mode Bing's ChatGPT readily admits that Drusilla is a clone while in another mode it denies the facts. I asked Bing to write a poem in the style of Navarth about the clones of Jheral Tinzy at the Palace of Love. Bing composed several stanzas of the poem then erased the poem and gave me four DALL-E-generated images depicting the Palace of Love, including the one in Figure 6. Bing then insisted that we change the topic of our discussion.

Next: another story writing experiment with artificial intelligence

Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers (see)