Figure 1. Into the Exo Zone. |
Here in this blog post I'm going to take a rather random walk through science fiction of the year 1958. That was the year when a song called "The Purple People Eater" was on the radio. I have no idea if Sheb Wooley was a fan of science fiction or if he simply stumbled onto a way to make a buck off of the growing popularity of science fiction.
Just for fun, I tried to get Wombo Dream to make an image depicting a one-eyed purple flying alien that could play music with the horn on its head (see the image to the right).
"The Purple People Eater" song was included in the 1997 movie Contact, which was inspired by Carl Sagan's Novel Contact. Soon after a radio message from deep space is discovered, thousands of excited space enthusiasts flock to New Mexico and the radio astronomy facility which first detected the alien signal. In a light-hearted moment, "The Purple People Eater" is played in the movie sound track.
Published in 1958. Click image to enlarge. |
Where do we come from? For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, I often try to imagine how genes originating from distant planets might have been brought to Earth and inserted into Earthlings. Karen Anderson went as for as to imagine that cats had an extra-terrestrial origin. I'd like to know more about the aliens with tentacles, or something. There are more cats near the end of this blog post.
Plying in the Animal League. |
First Contact. Back in 2022 I made an illustration for a 1955 story called "Joy in Mudville". Here in 2023, I tried to use Wombo Dream to make a better illustration of a baseball-playing alien (see the image to the right). This is actually a composite image. I pasted together parts of seven different AI-generated images to make this illustration of First Contact with baseball-playing aliens (the Hoka from planet Toka) who look like Earthly bears.
Book cover by DALL-E 3 and WOMBO Dream |
Detective mystery. Also in the June 1958 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was a story called "The Questing Tycoon", a Simon Templar story by Leslie Charteris. The story is about a clothing manufacturer who becomes interested in Haitian zombies. Might it be possible to turn clothing factory workers into zombies, not have to pay them, and in doing so boost profits? Apparently, this story was first published by Leslie Charteris in The Saint Detective Magazine in December 1954.
For the imaginary book cover shown to the left, I first had DALL-E create an image for this text prompt: "Book cover for ”The Questing Tycoon" by Leslie Charteris, a Simon Templar story in Haiti featuring a beautiful Haitian girl who is dressed Victoria's Secret style, tall and slim beautiful Haitian woman in a pink jumpsuit, jungle background". Then I used the image from DALL-E as a reference image with WOMBO Dream.
Figure 2. In the Exo Zone. |
Into the Exo Zone. I don't know when I first saw The Twilight Zone (in reruns, probably sometime in the 1970s). One of the episodes was "Nick of Time" in which William Shatner struggles to not be turned into a "mindless zombie" by a fortune-telling machine. Apparently, the origin of The Twilight Zone can be traced to 1958 when a Rod Serling story called "The Time Element" was produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse.
Tyhry accessing the Sedron Time Stream |
"The Time Element" was a kind of time travel story. I'm a real sucker for time travel stories, but my favorite one is Asimov's The End of Eternity. As was also depicted in the "The Time Element", for my own science fiction stories I often like to imagine that some people are able to receive information from the past or the future by an unconventional means. In the Exode Saga, I make use of the Sedron Time Stream as a way to move information through time in ways that defy known physics.
1958 cover image by R. S. Lonati (source). |
Noÿs Lambent, time traveler. |
Advances in wired controls. |
Noÿs by Flora. |
Figure 3. Gift horses from Mr Wombo. |
Shift to If. The June 1958 issue of If magazine had a story called "Gift Horse" by A. Bertram Chandler. At Wikipedia it is suggested that "Gift Horse" is the start of Chandler's rim world series, but never having read anything else by Chandler, I have no opinion to offer on how this story fits together with his other work. "Gift Horse" is an actual time travel story in which what at first looks like a spaceship, turns out to be a time travel machine that carries a group of people into the far future, to a distant time when humans have become extinct.
The invention of time travel technology. In "Gift Horse", the lonely robots of the future, designed to serve humans, apparently invented time travel just so that they could obtain some replacement humans. It seems like there could have been far simpler solutions to their problem, but maybe the invention of time travel technology is child's play for machines with artificial intelligence.
another human-alien hybrid |
Chandler's 1958 story about a 'gift horse' features no aliens and no actual horses. However, horses have been on my mind this year while writing science fiction stories that are set in Earth's past (see the Mosy Saga).
Figure 4. Anti-gravity water lifter. |
Clarke did suggest that robotic spacecraft could travel between exoplanets of the galaxy delivering mail and recorded music. The one part of "The Songs of Distant Earth" that I liked was the idea (mentioned casually by Clarke) that a few hundred years in the future, there will be no large cities on Earth, only rural settlements.
Figure 5. Mr. Wombo's wet dream. Maybe this is a water slide. |
More Sci Fi prophecy. However, in the February 1958 issue of If was "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov. In that story, Asimov suggested that in the future when electronic computers were common, people would no longer be taught how to do simple mathematics. I have to count this as a clear-headed anticipation by Asimov of a social trend that is happening now.
Figure 6. by DALL-E 3. |
For Figure 4, above, I started with Hunter's painting, but I also had DALL-E generate a "a high resolution movie still of futuristic gravity physics research, lifting a spinning column of water out of an ocean". I pasted the Hi Tek™ device that DALL-E created into Mel Hunter's painting and then asked Mr. Wombo to create an image showing "a high resolution movie still of futuristic gravity physics research, a complex mechanical device is lifting a spinning column of water out of an ocean, sparking yellow electrical force fields are guiding the water up into the sky, ocean waves in the foreground, mountains in the background". The image in Figure 4 was made using the "Steampunk v2" style of Wombo Dream.
Fifty Feet poster by Mr. Wombo. Sadly, I could not get Mr. Wombo to put human feet at the end of tentacles, so imagine that each one ends with a foot. |
Jack Vance published quite a few stories in 1958 including "Parapsyche", a kind of "alternate universe" story. Also arriving on the big screen in 1958 were a number of truly bad movies that are often labeled as "science fiction" (for example, see this).
The most amusing movie title of 1958 was Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. I had DALL-E and Mr. Wombo help me make the movie poster that is shown to the left. Shown in Figure 6, above, is what DALL-E generated for this text prompt: "high resolution science fiction movie poster from 1958 showing an alien octopus woman with many tentacles, a beautiful human-like head and fifty human-like feet". Unfortunately, Mr. Wombo would not put feet at the end of tentacles. 😔
from 2022 (source) |
Updated R. Nyrtia image. |
As a positronic robot who could alter her appearance as desired, I think R. Nyrtia would have taken great care to maintain a close-to-flawless physical appearance, going to levels of perfection that surpass human biological constraints.
Figure 7. A tall human variant. |
In "Cosmic Casanova" our space-faring hero has been in space too long and he's horny. He makes arrangements to meet the woman as soon as he lands. However, he quickly discovers that the humans on this planet have evolved to be extra large and so he's only as tall as the woman's knees. His dreams of a hot sexual encounter with the woman quickly fade.
A gray human variant (spaceman). |
A happier ending. For the image to the left I used, "high resolution science fiction movie still, a spaceman and Margot Robbie in the role of beautiful space alien with very large eyes, Margot is dressed Victoria's Secret style in sparkling clothing, Margot Robbie has blue-gray skin and gray hair, a planet seen from orbit and stars in the background".
Figure 8. image source |
Mind Transfer |
One of my favorite stories from 1958 is Asimov's "S As in Zebatinsky" which includes an alien who can transfer his mind into a human body (discussed in this blog post).
For the image that is shown to the left, I used this text prompt with Mr. Wombo: "a high resolution movie still of a mind transfer experiment, blue aliens, move a human mind into an alien body" and a reference image from an Avatar movie (the central part of this image).
Figure 9. New cover image by Mr. Wombo. |
human figure by Mr. Wombo |
In 1968, Pennington broke the nipple barrier with his cover illustration for Glory Road. Sometimes it is fun just to see what Mr. Wombo can do when asked to make a variation of a science fiction book cover. I used Pennington's cover as a reference image and this text prompt: "full color science fiction paperback book cover showing a hunter with a bow, a tall and slim woman with long blond hair, a short alien in the background, painted in the style of artist Bruce Pennington". Mr. Wombo seldom includes nipples in his renderings, but he is less bashful about the bottom (see Figure 9). I took one of the AI-generated images produced by Mr. Wombo and pasted it into Pennington's 1973 "rings of Saturn" painting (see the image to the left).
A poster for The Fly. |
by R. S. Lonati (image source) |
In illustrations for my science fiction stories, I'm constantly searching for better ways to depict human-alien hybrids. I had Mr. Wombo use that "snake woman" image by R. S. Lonati as a reference image along with this text prompt: "high resolution movie still showing a tall and slim Kate Jackson in the role of a snake woman in her laboratory, Kate Jackson seen in profile view".
Inside the alien-human hybridization research laboratory. |
1958 alien biology research. |
For the image that is shown to the left, Mr. Wombo separated the woman from the snake. In my imagination, the snake is actually a snake-like alien.
In this image, I like how Mr. Wombo gave this alien two tiny legs. Both of these snake images are composites. In the image to the left, I had to paste in a second smaller snake to hide some of the anatomical errors in her leg. In the other image, the skull in the lower left part of the image came from another AI-generated image that Mr. Wombo created for this scene.
A 1958 drawing machine creating the cover art for Galaxy magazine. |
The final story in that issue of Galaxy was "Thing of Beauty" by Damon Knight. In "Thing of Beauty", there is a mysterious machine that can draw pictures. An expert on computers in the story predicts that it will be several centuries before researchers can make a computerized system for creating images. The image to the right is a modified version of the interior art for "Thing of Beauty" by Wallace Wood.
"The Robotic DALL-E" by DALL-E |
I asked DALL-E to make a "full color science fiction paperback book cover for the 1958 novel "The Robotic DALL-E" by Damon Knight showing a robot that is painting an illustration for a science fiction magazine cover". The resulting image (shown to the left) looks like a book by someone named 'Dame Knight' that is titled "Dati Dall-ie" and has a robot painter at work, creating what might be a piece of black-and-white interior art for a science fiction magazine. I wonder why DALL-E put all those human figures into this AI-generated image.
Figure 10. DALL-E's cat in outer space. (source) |
I had DALL-E generate an image for this text prompt: "a high resolution movie still showing a cat in a spacesuit, the cat is about to perform a space-walk outside of a space station that is in low Earth orbit" (see the image to the right). However, in this image it looks like the cat is in space without a face-mask for the spacesuit.
Preparations for a walk in space. |
In the image that is shown to the left, it even looks like the second cat is floating in micro-gravity. Based on this image, I must assume that ears and whiskers pose a special problem for cats in space. Some of the images that were generated by Mr. Wombo had the cat ears sticking up through the top of the helmet. As an innovation for cat-friendly spacesuit design, Mr. Wombo put triangular protrusions on the top side of this helmet. Related cat: Félicette.
DALL-E's golden age (source) |
For the imaginary book cover that is shown to the right, I had DALL-E generate a depiction of, "a colorful and dramatic science fiction book cover from 1958 with the title 'The Golden Age of Science Fiction'." I love how with the alien invasion in full swing, two Earth dudes still have time for a fist fight.
Related reading: 1953 and The Languages of Pao was first published in book format in 1958.
Next: First Contact.
1956. See this cover by Frank Kelly Freas. Visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers |
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