From the Cutting Room Floor - Artificial Covers

Figure 1. In the Ekcolir Reality.

 I'm continuing to use both DALL-E and Wombo Dream to help make illustrations for the Mosy Saga. One of the key issues in the Mosy Saga concerns how the Ekcolir Reality was transformed into the Buld Reality by means of a Reality Change. The Buld Reality is essentially the world as we know it. Earthly civilization in the Ekcolir Reality was significantly different than in the version of Earth that we know.

Eventually, after the Buld Reality was crafted, the Huaoshy put an end to all further time travel. However, the Mosy Saga takes place in the Ekcolir Reality, while time travel and Reality Changes were still possible.

 Cover Illustrations. How can an entire Reality be represented by a single image? In the Ekcolir Reality, women played a more important role in the development of science and space travel technology than was the case in our own twentieth century. Also, there was first contact with space aliens in the 1950s.

Figure 2. Buld Reality.

In a 1984 essay called "Metaphor", Isaac Asimov once wrote an interesting account of a science fiction cover illustration that (see the cover here), while not showing an actual scene from the story, did manage to capture the essence of the story. In the same way, Figure 1 does not really have anything to do with the Ekcolir Reality. Worse, the idea of steam-powered space ships is quite silly. The AI-generate image for Figure 1 was made using the "Steampunk v2" style of Wombo Dream.

Figure 2 is an alternate version of Figure 1, which is not meant to imply that in contrast to the Ekcolir Reality, here in the Buld Reality we need computers to make space travel possible. Maybe in the Ekcolir Reality, the computing devices are simply artistically disguised and made to look like antique machinery from a past age. In any case, I'm trying to imagine a good imaginary book cover for the Mosy Saga and a single image that depicts the essence of the story.

steampunk robots inside a spaceship

 Bard in the Steampunk Era. I wanted to ask Bard to comment on the idea of steampunk spacecraft and how well Mr. Wombo can depict a steampunk scene (such as Figure 1), but Bard still refuses to accept uploaded images that include humans. I transformed the image that I wanted to share with Bard into one that has robots, not humans. Here is what Bard had to say about the image to the right: "Yes, I can see how this AI-generated image could be interpreted as a steampunk spaceship interior. The robots are wearing steampunk clothing, which is a style of clothing that was popular in the steampunk era. The spaceship also has a clock on the wall, which is a common feature of steampunk spaceships.  The robots are wearing goggles and leather and they have brass accents on their bodies. The clock on the wall is large and ornate, with gears and cogs visible.  Overall, the image has a dark and industrial feel to it. This is consistent with the steampunk aesthetic, which often combines Victorian era technology with steam power."

Steam-powered toy. (click to enlarge)

 Built from Nanites. After my chat with Bard, I returned to my original image of a steampunk spaceship interior and I decided to keep one of the two robots. For the Mosy Saga, I have replicoids, which are artificial lifeforms composed of nanites, but conceptually they are similar to robots. Replicoids can re-arrange their nanite components and take on any convenient form, so it is often not possible to know if a character in the Mosy Saga is a biological human or a replicoid who pretending to be human.

In the Ekcolir Reality, there is First Contact with the alien Fru'wu in the 1950s and then the Fru'wu share some of their advanced nanotechnology with Earthlings. The Fru'wu are mentioned in some of my stories such as Grean Fiction and Someday Mars. In the Final Reality (the world of our Earthly timeline), the Fru'wu are not allowed to accelerate the pace of technological progress on Earth.

Symyn in a sex education class.

Starting with Figure 2 (see above) I added another human figure to my reference image and tried to trick Mr. Wombo into making the two human figures seem to be doing something interesting. Sadly, Mr. Wombo prefers to draw images of cute women just standing around looking cute. The idea that a woman might do something interesting is a foreign concept to Mr. Wombo.

In Part 4 of the Mosy Saga, it is mentioned that one of the tasks for Caz on Tar'tron was to provide sex education for her students such as Symyn. Before allowing Symyn to engage in sexplay with Qyp, Caz wanted to first be sure that Symyn had some sexual sophistication. As an Ek'col, Qyp had powerful telepathic abilities, including the power to make the mind pattern of Symyn resonate with his own. During such periods of mind resonance, Qyp could telepathically cause a human woman such as Symyn to have orgasms... simply by telepathically suggesting it.

Figure 3. Synym (right) and Thylon.

 Caz Control (Cazation). Also mentioned in Part 4 of the Mosy Saga is the idea that while Symyn and Thylon were going to school on Tar'tron, it was unusual for anyone in the women's dorm to be sleeping alone. Sexual relationships between men and women were carefully regulated by Caz, but Symyn and Thylon had a seemingly endless string of female lovers.

Growing up together on Tar'tron, Symyn and Thylon were aware of the fact that they were tasked with finding the most suitable male Ek'col to join them on their Interventionist mission to Earth. Knowing that Symyn had very weak telepathic powers and was most susceptible to the telepathic mind powers of Ek'col males, Thylon allowed Symyn to take full responsibility for selecting their future husband. The task was complicated by the fact that in the social system of Tar'tron, there were no husbands, no wives and no long-lasting sexual partnerships. 

Two mind clones of Tar'tron.
"I know what you are thinking."

 50-50. One of the advanced technologies of Tar'tron that was available to Symyn and Thylon was reproductive technology that allowed them to have children together, producing children who had half of their genes from Symyn and half from Thylon.

Play time on Tar'tron.

 Mind Clones. Caz never bothered to explain to Symyn and Thylon that they were genetically designed so as to be mind clones of Qyp. This meant that half of the brains of both Symyn and Thylon were almost identical in structure to one half of Qyp's brain. 

Because Symyn and Thylon were mind clones of Qyp, Qyp could efficiently use his Ek'col telepathic abilities to make sure that his mind pattern could fully resonate with the mind patterns of Symyn and Thylon. 

Plat time with Thylon.

Qyp was reluctant to use his telepathic powers to influence the behavior of Symyn. He had to wait until Caz stepped in and encouraged Symyn to spend some time in physical contact with Qyp. Synym's limited telepathic ability allowed her to sense that Qyp had access to her mind, which initially made her uneasy. Given that mostly unconscious sense of dysphoria, Symyn sought out other playmates and ignored Qyp for many years. This was a good thing, because it allowed Synym to have a healthy understanding of her own lustful emotions before ever having her sexual desires amplified telepathically by Qyp.

Synym and two friends await
three boys for a play session.

Up until the time when Caz brought Synym and Qyp together, both Symyn and Thylon were mostly involved with their fellow female students. 

 The More the Merrier. By custom at their school, most sexual trysts between males and females took place in the school classrooms (which were well-stocked with sex toys) and those sexplay sessions traditionally involved groups of four or more lovers. It was unusual for males and females to be alone together. Even when meeting at lovers point, a short distance down the shore from school, usually there would be multiple couples present and engaged in sex play within close proximity of one another. The idea of privacy for sexplay sessions was an unknown concept for Symyn and Thylon while growing up on Tar'tron.

Figure 4. Synym's toy collection.

 Endosymbionts.. Figure 3 (above) began as part of an attempt to illustrate a scene in which Caz would demonstrate to Symyn the fact that by proper activation of a human's endosymbiont, a person could be forced to experience an orgasm. I wanted Caz to be holding a device which she could pretend to use to provide Symyn with an orgasm. In reality, Caz could use nanites to quickly make Symyn experience one or more orgasms, but Caz was trying to limit how much her students knew about nanotechnology.

Mr. Wombo does not like to create images that are to sexually provocative. For Figure 3, I manually altered the original AI-generated image so as to depict Symyn handing a fun toy to Thylon. Using Figure 3 as a reference image and this text prompt: "high resolution movie still of Megan Fox and Elle Macpherson in the science fiction film 'Women in Space', Megan Fox is twenty five years old, Elle Macpherson is blond, Megan Fox and Elle Macpherson are seen in profile view, dressed Victoria's Secret style in silk, Megan Fox is holding a toy, spaceship interior in the background", Mr. Wombo produced toys such as the ones shown in Figure 4.

Synym the sports fanatic.

Also mentioned in Part 4 of the Mosy Saga is the fact that Symyn spends much of her time playing sports. Some of the sports on Tar'tron involve hunting and using tools such as bows and arrows. It is annoying that when Mr. Wombo makes an image for a scene that is related to sports, the people usually have to wear clothing with obnoxious brand labels plastered on them. 

The clothing on Tar'tron is all automatically generated by clothing nanites, but I suppose there could be the names of teams on the "uniforms". I was tempted to turn the image to the left into a zero gravity sport scene, but I suppose the use of artificial gravity was routine for the folks of Tar'tron when in orbit.

Micro-gravity ping pong by DALL-E.

Zero Gravity Sports. I asked DALL-E to make an image depicting "high resolution movie still of two floating women dressed in civilian clothes playing ping pong in micro-gravity inside a space station in the film '2100: A Space Odyssey', zero gravity" and got the image shown to the right.

Space Balls. Image by Mr. Wombo.

Starting with a similar image from DALL-E, I asked Mr. Wombo to generate "high resolution movie still of floating women dressed Victoria's Secret style playing ping pong in micro-gravity inside a space station in the film "2100: A Space Odyssey", zero gravity sport, Katrine De Candole, Megan Fox, Elle Macpherson and Kate Moss are twenty years old, Elle Macpherson is floating upside-down in the background" (see the image above, Space Balls).

Figure 5. Synym's fun with nanites.

 Figure 5 shows a depiction of Symyn while she is experiencing a rather long-lasting and mind-blowing nanite-induced orgasm as part of her sex education on Tar'tron. (Note: there is a sequence of related images at the very bottom of the second blog post in this series.) Caz is using nanites to exercise complete control over Synym's sensations.

Originally, the whirlpool in the background was just an astronomical feature invented by Mr. Wombo, then I imagined that it represented nanites spreading out from a hand-held device. Here is the text prompt that was used by Mr. Wombo to generate Figure 5: "high resolution movie still of Megan Fox and Elle Macpherson in the science fiction film “Women in Space”, Megan Fox is fifteen years old, Elle Macpherson is blond, Elle Macpherson is seen in profile view, dressed Victoria's Secret style in red silk, Elle Macpherson is holding a remote control device, spaceship interior in the background".

Figure 6. Synym's new space car.

 What can I do to put you in a new car today? Second only to Mr. Wombo's horrible struggles with human anatomy is the problem that the image training set endlessly constrains which images the software will "naturally" generate. I often find myself trying to create a science fiction scene (such as the interior of a spaceship) and then suddenly Mr. Wombo will decide to replace the Hi Tek™ devices of the future space age with an automobile. I'm sure that there are many automobiles in the image database that was used to train Mr. Wombo, but I don't want them inside my spaceship.

Anatomy by Mr. Wombo.

 Figure 6 (to the left) provides an example of how what was originally the interior of a futuristic spaceship in orbit around the mysterious planet Tar'tron was suddenly transformed into a car dealership by Mr. Wombo. But, let's go with it... maybe Synym needs a space car so that she can efficiently complete her mission on Tar'tron.

Two too long fingers.

An example of Mr. Wombo's unusual designs for human anatomy is shown to the right. The woman with the golden clothing suddenly has an extra hand emerging from her leg.

It is also common for Mr. Wombo to struggle with hands and fingers. In the image to the left there are two extra-long fingers. Maybe that is a special feature of some human variants in the far future world of Tar'tron.

Some of the goofy anatomy generated by Mr. Wombo can be quickly repaired by manual editing of a small part of the image. In other cases, the entire image is irreparable. It is quite rare for me to get an image from Mr. Wombo that I can use without having to do some editing.

8 Toes. Too many toes.

 Too many toes. The image that is shown to the right (8 Toes) provides a good example. Here are the edits that I made to the original AI-generated image: 1) I zoomed in and had Mr. Wombo re-generate the two faces at higher resolution and then I pasted those better faces back into the original image, 2) I manually cleaned up the girl's hands and the mom's right foot, including the reflection on the floor. I liked this image because of 1) the bright colors that Mr. Wombo used for their pajamas, 2) the highly reflective floor and 3) the interesting background which I could imagine being the wall of a child's room on Tar'tron. However, I did not alter the mother's left foot which was crafted by Mr. Wombo with too many toes. Also, Mr. Wombo avoided having to draw any hands for the mother by linking together her two arms. I have no idea why Mr. Wombo felt the need to put those patches or name tags or what ever they are on the pajamas. 

Kittens can solve most problems.

 Kittens to the Rescue. The other issue that I had with the image 8 Toes was that although I like the poses of the two characters, I felt there was something missing. Maybe there should have been a kitten or a small puppy there on the floor. If all else fails, just try to cover-up what Mr. Wombo drew.

In an attempt to deal with the toe problem, I had DALL-E make some images with this text prompt: "a very young and tiny kitten on a dark but highly reflective floor, the reflection of the kitten can be seen in the floor". DALL-E generated four different kittens and I used three of them to modify the original 8 Toes scene (see the image to the left). For this toe cover-up image, I also trimmed the side of the mother's left foot. I did not bother trying to add in hand for the mother.

post-graduate education

 Continuing Education. In Part 4 of the Mosy Saga, it is not revealed how long Synym and Thylon resided on the planet Tar'tron. Part 4 of the Mosy Saga is only a glimpse at the time when Synym and Thylon were attending the equivalent of what we might call "college". Although sex education was an important part of the formal education of Synym and Thylon on Tar'tron, I suppose they had ample opportunity to continue studying their own sexual responses after completing their college years.

"We can do this... together."

 From Tar'tron With Love. The fundamental constraint on the type of telepathy that Qyp and Thylon have is that they can only telepathically link to the minds of other individuals with whom they share a powerful sexual attraction. This is due to a constraint that was built into the Phari endosymbiont. To avoid misuse of telepathy, the human brain was constrained so as to only allow telepathic linkages between people who love each-other.

Both Synym and Thylon develop their capacity to enter into loving relationships by endlessly experimenting with their female friends while growing up. At the dormitories of the schools that Synym and Thylon attend, the most important lessons are often learned outside of the formal classrooms.

Synym and Thylon practical exam

In the image shown to the right, Synym and Thylon are completing a homework assignment for one of their many sex education classes. The third woman in this scene is their tutor who is evaluating the ability of Synym and Thylon to work as a team, knowledge that they will eventually apply on Earth when they are the wives of Zule. 

The clones of Synym and Thylon on Earth (Potina and Tara) will both be quite busy with their "careers" while living with Zule in Norsum, so usually no more than one of Potina or Tara will be with Zule at any given time. There will be many occasions when both Potina and Tara are away from home and Zule will depend on the Rep for entertainment.

Making plans.

 A 3 Body Problem. The figure to the left shows a young Synym being talked into trying a three body sexplay session. Younger students are advised to only have one sex partner at a time, but eventually the time comes to widen their horizons.

Nanotechnology.

 Infites.
The figure to the right depicts an experiment with nanite-induced orgasms. In the fictional universe of the Mosy Saga, humans are composite organisms composed of both biological cells and endosymbionts that are composed of invisibly small nanites. Some types of human behavior can be modified or controlled by sending infites directly into one of the two human endosymbionts, by-passing the cellular nervous system. I've previously described the challenges of getting Mr. Wombo to visually depict nanites (see also).

"No, you can leave your clothes on."

The image to the left is another nanotechnology experiment in which Thylon is providing Synym with an exceptional nanite-induced orgasm.

"Who needs men?"

In most cases, advanced nanite technology was not available to residents of Tar'tron such as Thylon and Synym who were being trained for missions on Earth. Most of the time they had to resort to primitive tools to help generate orgasms. 

 In the cockpit. The image to the right shows Synym poised to give a massage to her lover. I like the idea that Thylon and Synym had an aircar for their travels around Tar'tron. Maybe they had their own version of a mile-high club.

Synym was teleported.

 Teleportation. Another alternative for travel on Tar'tron might be teleportation. In the past, I've struggled to find good ways to depict teleportation in a static image. The image to the left was generated by Mr. Wombo after I started using a text prompt that said: "high resolution movie still of Katrine De Candole on a beach looking into an inter-dimensional portal and seeing Megan Fox, Katrine De Candole is very tall and slim, Katrine De Candole has narrow hips, Katrine De Candole is fifteen years old and dressed Victoria’s Secret style in a leather skirt and a silver shirt, Megan Fox has black hair".

When trying to coax Mr. Wombo into generating a suitable image, I did get a few images of Synym wearing sandals, but Mr. Wombo rally likes ladies in boots. It is also hard to make Mr. Wombo stop adorning the women with giant sunglasses in scenes like this one.

Steam-powered teleportation.

I decided to let Mr. Wombo have a try at creating a steampunk teleportation device. In the image to the right, it almost looks like Synym's right arm has started to dematerialize. Here is the text pronpt that I used with the "Steampunk V2" style: "high resolution movie still of a steampunk spaceship interior and a teleportation terminal, Megan Fox is being teleported and is surrounded by sparkling lights, Meg Ryan is looking into the steampunk teleportation beam and looking at Megan Fox, very tall and slim, narrow hips, fifteen years old and dressed Victoria’s Secret style, Meg Ryan is blond". There is another similar steampunk teleportation image here.

Steampunk teleportation system by DALL-E.

The image shown to the left was generated for me when I asked DALL-E for a "steampunk teleportation platform and a steampunk control console for the teleportation system inside a steampunk spaceship".

click image to enlarge

Working with the background image that was made by DALL-E, I added in two human figures and used Mr. Wombo to generate the image shown to the right. I still struggle to imaging how teleportation could be possible in a steampunk fictional universe, but it looks pretty nice.

In the teleportation device.

I tried to get an alternative teleportation system using Mr. Wombo's "Retro Sci-Fi V2" style.

The image to the left shows a closeup view of a test subject inside the teleportation chamber.

Retro-teleportation.

The image to the right shows the entire teleportation scene. Since I grew up reading science fiction stories in which everyone assumed that Hi Tek™ devices of the future would be powered by electricity, I'm more comfortable with that approach than I am with steam power.

Some alternative AI-generated teleportation scenes are shown at the end of this blog post.

Next: more AI-generated science fiction book cover images. 

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