Flying Robots

NOMAD the flying robot.

 I have no clear memory of when I first became aware of the science fiction idea of a humanoid robot, a mechanical man-made device that can behave like a human being. 

That might be a good thing, because I suspect that my first exposure to a robot might have been the clunky robot from Lost in Space, a Hollywood-style robot (a model B-9 robot) that inspired only embarrassment in me when I saw how it was deployed on television. 

Only much later did I see Forbidden Planet and realize how similar robot model B-9 was to Robbie. About the same time that I was exposed to B-9, I got to see the more human-like robots that were included in several episodes of Star Trek.

 Flint, the flying robot M4, Kirk, Rayna

 Flying Robots. I don't know if my introduction to the idea of a flying robot came from Star Trek or from Arthur Clark's story Against the Fall of Night. One of my favorite Star Trek episodes was "Requiem for Methuselah", which featured not only the flying robot M4, but also Rayna, a cute robot in the form of a woman. I was never quite comfortable with the advanced technology wielded by Mr. Flint, who is depicted as a 6,000 year-old Earthman.

 Anti-Gravity. I don't think there was ever a coherent account of anti-gravity or artificial gravity in the Star Trek fictional universe. M4 had some means of floating and defying gravity, but that was seemingly taken for granted by the crew of the Enterprise.

Captain Kirk meets a robot.

 The Robots from Andromeda. In the Star Trek episode "I, Mudd", viewers were introduced to humanoid robots that originated from aliens of the Andromeda galaxy. Strangely, these "robots from Andromeda" did not seem any more sophisticated than the ones that Flint had been able to make, working alone in his home robotics laboratory.

Other ancient alien robots were the stars of "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", another Star Trek episode. Stranded on a planet, but with access to ancient alien technology, Dr. Roger Korby builds a cute robot named Andrea.

Not long after being exposed to these Hollywood robots, I read I, Robot by Isaac Asimov and was exposed to Asimov's positronic robots. I was startled when a positronic robot, Data, appeared in Star Trek.

Figure 1. 1948 cover art by Earle Bergey

 Robot Appendages. Both NOMAD and M4 were usually depicted as being streamlined, but when needed, M4 could extend a spindly appendage. In one scene, M4 carries a bag of a precious life-saving mineral (ryetalyn). The bag of ryetalyn was carried at the end of M4's spindly, retractable appendage. What about the appendages of Arthur Clarke's flying robot? 

 Tentacles. For the November 1948 issue of Startling Stories, Earle Bergey painted one of the robots from Clarke's story Against the Fall of Night. Not only did Clarke imagine a flying robot, but his robots were decorated with tentacle-like appendages (see the image to the left). In Clarke's story, a mysterious  "Master" had brought several sophisticated flying robots to Earth.

robot tentacles

 Master of the Robot Domain. However, I never saw that Earle Bergey cover art depicting a flying robot with feet (Figure 1, above) until long after I had purcha$ed a copy of Against the Fall of Night in paperback book format (in the early 1970s) with cover art by John Schoenherr. 

The image to the right shows how Schoenherr depicted the floating robots of the Master (Look Ma, no feet!). I'm sure that I had the form of those floating robots painted by Schoenherr firmly in my mind, 45 years later, when I tried to depict a flying mechanical femtobot in 2017.

Figure 2. Aliens of Dar Sai.

 2016 vs 2017. Upon review of my old blog posts, I think it was in February 2017 when I made this image of a flying robot. However, in 2016, I was already quite concerned with femtobots and zeptites as two types of advanced nanotechnology. Back in August of 2016, I was diligently celebrating the fiction of Jack Vance and the many distant worlds that he imagined such as Dar Sai. However, it must have been in February of 2017 that I went back and inserted a copy of this image into an old blog post. Why might there have been flying femtobots and a genetics laboratory on the planet Dar Sai?

 Genetics of Telepathy. In my imagination, in the Asimov Reality there were efforts to engineer telepathic humans. I've previously explored the idea that some useful telepathy genes of alien species were transferred into the human gene pool. Might there have been an alien species on Dar Sai that could contribute genes to the development of telepathic humans? Maybe there were experiments on the planet Dar Sai that contributed to the development of both synapex linkages and orgasm trances.

Figure 3. I only have eye for you.

 Alien lanslarke. Two types of creatures on Dar Sai that Vance mentioned were the scorpions and a flying predacious creature called the lanslarke. In chapter 3 of The Face, Vance included an amusing scene in which the master criminal known as Lens Larque asks another man if that name suits himself. Is it possible that Demon Prince Lens Larque was a carrier of certain alien gene patterns, some derived from the flying lanslarke?

 Mr. Wombo can draw arms. As shown in my previous two blog posts, Mr. Wombo generated many human figures seemingly holding alien creatures that have many tentacles. However, for images such as the one that is shown in Figure 12 of my previous blog post, often there was no visible right arm for the woman. Figure 2, above, shows an example of one kind of image in which Mr. Wombo actually generated two arms for the woman. Figure 2 is a composite that I assembled from bits and pieces of several AI-generated images.

Full tentacles background.

 And hands, too. The image shown in Figure 3 was slightly modified by me from the original AI-generated image. I pasted in a pepper from this webpage. In my imagination, the transfer of alien gene patterns into humans would involve laboratory techniques, but in science fiction we need dramatic visual depictions of advanced technological innovations.

When generating the image shown to the left, Mr. Wombo even filled the background with looming tentacles. For this image, the right arm was from one AI-generated image and the left arm was from another image. Mr. Wombo has trouble depicting arms and hands, so getting two anatomically-correct hands in a single AI-generated image is not easy.

2 > 1. A day at the beach.

For some of these images that were generated by Mr. Wombo (such as the one that is shown to the right), suddenly two human figures were included in the scene. I suspect that poor Mr. Wombo did not have many alien creatures in his training set of images, so it is almost guaranteed that Mr. Wombo will try to replace science fiction-oriented images of aliens with conventional images of Earth people.

Search for alien telepathy genes.

 The telepathy-sexplay link. Mr. Wombo's motto seems to be "the more, the merrier". The image to the left shows a variant of this scene with three humans figures. This image is a composite. I added in several of the odd aliens in order to cover-up anatomical and other defects in the original AI-generated image. I also added a stinkhorn mushroom. I can imagine that this image depicts an alien telepathy experiment. In my imagination, telepathy requires intimate synchronization between mind patterns, and the most efficient way of achieving telepathic communication involves the kind of full mental integration that is best established between creatures (in this case, alien and human) who are sexual partners.

Alien synapex experiment.

For the image shown to the right, the aliens might be attempting to create a direct physical linkage to the human's nervous system: a synapex link. Such a linkage might be from the alien's tongue to a nipple or from a tentacle to her genitals. Mr. Wombo created the image of the human test subject with no pants. I manually added in the bare breast and the alien tongue. In addition, two of the three aliens in this image originated from two other AI-generated images and were pasted into this scene by me, both of them covering up defects in the original image of the woman. I also had Mr. Wombo zoom in and generate a new face for the human woman who is engaged in this telepathy experiment.

Figure 4. Alien-human hybrids.

 Alien-Human Hybrids. When using the "The Absurd v2" style, Mr. Wombo generated some images for which human arms were transformed into tentacle-like appendages. I tried to go with that theme and began using the following text prompt: "high resolution movie still of a very young Megan Fox as an alien hybrid that has fractal complex tentacles, Megan Fox has arms that are tentacles, Megan Fox is dressed Victoria's Secret style, long black hair, big fluffy hair, Megan Fox is very tall and slim, narrow waist, slim hips, skinny arms". That five-fingered humanoid hand was taken from a separate AI-generated image and pasted into this one (Figure 4, to the left).

Figure 5.  Tentacle legs.

 Alien Legs. I tried to get Mr. Wombo to continue extending the human-alien hybrid concept, but it was not easy to get Mr. Wombo to generate images of legs that looked like tentacles. Mr. Wombo seems quite certain that she should be wearing pink pants, not walking around on alien legs (see Figure 5, to the right).

 Wombo flight. Is it possible to get Mr. Wombo to make a flying alien robot? Rather than start with the original reference image from 2017 (a copy of this image which I also into this old blog post), I instead had DALL-E 3 generate a new image using this text prompt: "high resolution science fiction movie still of young woman in the role of a tall fitness model dressed in running gear standing beside a flying alien robot that has many tentacle-like appendages". 

Robot by DALL-E 3.

Part of the resulting DALL-E-generated image that was created for that text prompt is shown to the left. In the full-width image by DALL-E, the robot had long legs that were clearly planted on the floor. Maybe there were no flying robots in the DALL-E training set. I used the central portion of this image from DALL-E as a reference image for WOMBO Dream, hoping to get some actual flying robots.

Flying cloud bot; WOMBO dream.

 Cloud Bots. Having the word "flying" in my text prompt caused Mr. Wombo to generate images of some flying alien robots that are up above the clouds (see the image to the right). I wonder what those big purple appendages are. Some sort of wings?

Mr. Wombo gives her wings.

 Did you say wings? The image to the left, it looks like Mr. Wombo equipped the woman with wings. I was using this text prompt for these images: "high resolution science fiction movie still of Meg Ryan in the role of a tall fitness model dressed Victoria’s Secret style, Meg Ryan is standing below a flying alien robot that has many tentacle-like appendages, Meg Ryan has slim hips and skinny legs, long blond hair". Mention of "science fiction" is enough to insure that Mr. Wombo will start to sprinkle in stray planets into the background of the AI-generated images.

Figure 6. Alien mother ship.

 Alien mother ship. For the image to the right, I mixed together the creature with the tentacles that was from one AI-generated image and the looming alien "mother ship" that was in another image. 

First Contact. I did some minor tentacle surgery to add the spindly tentacle that is touching her arm.

 Meg Ryan Hair. Also, I have to comment on the special way that Mr. Wombo generates hair whenever Meg Ryan is mentioned. I'd be interested to know what images of Meg Ryan were in the training set images that formed Mr. Wombo's neural network model.

Flying alien robots.

The image shown to the left is also a composite that includes three of the many alien robots what were generated by Mr. Wombo. The medium-sized alien on her right side was positioned so as to cover up a defect in the continuity or the thick tentacle on that side of the image. The alien at her left hip was placed there in an attempt to make help viewers of the image be able to imagine an origin for the tentacle that is between her legs. Mr. Wombo was a failure at connecting the tentacles in the lower parts of these images to the flying alien robot above the woman.

Pink touch.

For the image that is shown to the right, it does not look like Mr. Wombo was trying to connect those three large tentacles to the hovering alien robot, but the right-most tentacle just seems to begin in mid-air. It is possible that as for Figure 5 there is something larger above, beyond what is shown in this image, which is the origin of the other two tentacles.

Pink hair hybrid.

As shown in the image to the left, if I included the word "pink" in the text prompt by asking for "pink alien tentacles" then Mr. Wombo could not resist making everything pink, including her hair. However, maybe we are dealing with alien-human hybrids on Dar Sai and pink hair might be a common feature of the alien-human hybrids who have been selected for their telepathic abilities.  

On a cloud.

In the image that is shown to the right, once again Mr. Wombo makes it look like she is up in a cloud. Alternatively, the puffy white stuff might be the floor and furniture of a laboratory belonging to an alien cyborg that is trying to establish telepathic contact with the Earth woman. 

Figure 7. Alien femtobot.

For Figure 7, I used this text prompt: "high resolution science fiction movie still of a hundred pink alien tentacles swarming over Meg Ryan, fractal complex branching tentacles from a flying alien robot, Meg Ryan has large eyes, very big eyes, huge eyes, giant eyes, Meg Ryan is dressed Victoria's Secret style, big fluffy hair, long blond hair". Figure 7 is a composite image. I had Mr. Wombo re-generate her head and several tentacles were pasted into this image in order to either cover up anatomical problems or try to make it look like there was some continuity in the tentacles coming from the alien "robot" and extending to her lower body. 

Pink and fuzzy.

 The trouble with pink tribbles. For some of the images that were generated by Mr. Wombo, the software seemed to grow tired of crafting creepy tentacles. For the image shown to the right, fuzzy pink balls dominated the scene.      

I wonder if those pink puff balls originate from something in Mr. Wombo's training set or if this is just the result of some sort of AI-hallucination.

Figure 8. Infite injection.

 Nanites. I was interested in the possibility that there might be a way to get Mr. Wombo to include some mind-modifying infites in one of these images. For the image to the left, I zoomed in on her head and used this text reference: "high resolution science fiction movie still of Meg Ryan under an alien robot, dressed Victoria’s Secret style, Meg Ryan is surrounded sparkling clouds of fractal complex laser light". I can imagine that the alien robot is sending nanites into her brain in order to help establish a telepathic linkage to her mind. Maybe these infites remove the revulsion that she would normally feel when alien tentacles swarm over her body.  

Alien probes.

 Get physical. The image to the right is a variation on this scene in which there is what looks like a mysterious Hi Tek™ device on her right hip. Maybe that is an alien device that helps to form synapex links to humans from the alien tentacles. For this image, Mr. Wombo opened up her pants and I removed her top to allow free access for an alien tentacle. This could be an early research and development phase for what eventually led to a practice among some human telepathic variants by which children routinely formed synapex linkages to their mothers by means of tongue to nipple connections.

Experimenting with alien tentacle fingers.

As shown above (Figure 4 and Figure 5) Mr. Wombo sometimes gave the human figures in this scene tentacle-like arms. Sometimes Mr. Wombo will try to put human-like fingers at the ends of tentacles. In the image that is shown to the left, I cut and pasted two such "alien hands" onto the torso of a human experimental test subject.

I'm left wondering how Mr. Wombo decides on different styles of hair for "Meg Ryan" with different degrees of waviness.

Figure 9. Alien fingers.

I used the image to the left as a reference with this text prompt: "high resolution science fiction movie still of Meg Ryan under a flying alien robot, dressed Victoria’s Secret style, Meg Ryan is surrounded by many tentacle-like appendages dangling from the alien robot, Meg Ryan has alien tentacles with fingers on her body, Meg Ryan is covered in many pink tentacles". Mr. Wombo generated the image that is shown to the right with what strike me as tentacles with rather creepy alien fingers.

I wish that Mr. Wombo could be forced to produce more continuity in the "alien tentacles" rather than having them seemingly start and stop at random at various places in these images.

Figure 10. Alien gripper tentacles.

The image to the left is another variant of this scene that was generated by Mr. Wombo. I liked this version because I like to imagine that an alien femtobot would be able to alter its shape as needed by rearranging its nanite components. These "alien grippers" look nothing like human hands and fingers, making the scene seem more mysterious and intriguing.

For both of these AI-generated images (Figure 9 and Figure 10), I had Mr. Wombo zoom in on her head and generate higher resolution images. I did not work very hard to make the skin tone of her neck match that of her chest.

Working with Mr. Wombo to make illustrations for science fiction stories often feels like taking a random walk. In this case, human-like fingers on alien tentacles attracted my attention, but as soon as I asked for more images with such fingers, Mr. Wombo went in another direction.

WOMBO-style robotics.

 What is a robot? Mr. Wombo has some conventional ideas about what a science fiction robot should look like, so no matter what type of alien robot I'm trying to depict, there is always the chance that we will suddenly be thrust into a scene like the one shown to the right. 

For this image, Mr. Wombo was still trying to find an interesting way to sprout alien tentacles from the main body of the alien robot.

Three arms.

 Three arms are better than two. For this scene, Mr. Wombo could not decide how to position her arms or even how many arms she should have. In the image shown to the left, she was given three arms.

As discussed above on this page (see the image 2 > 1), Mr. Wombo is always ready to add a second human figure to a scene where there is just one. Similarly, many of the AI-generated images had a second smaller robot. For the image to the left, there is a ghostly robot lurking in the lower right corner.

Bonus robots.

 Bonus bots. A more dramatic example of extra bonus robots is seen in the image that is shown to the right. The two small green robots are a fairly good match to the kind of flying robot with tentacles that was imagined by Clarke for his science fiction story Against the Fall of Night.

 Pink Balls. I'm not sure why Mr. Wombo sometimes decided to decorate her suit with pink balls. This is one of the rare AI-generated images that I'm showing completely unmodified from how it was generated by Mr. Wombo. 

 No more clouds. For this image, Mr. Wombo included an alien telepathy research laboratory test chamber for the background.

Handy accessories.

 Steamed. The image shown to the left includes two more of the accessory robots that were generated by Mr. Wombo and then pasted into this scene by me in order to cover up anatomical defects. In the original image, she had a large gloved right hand, but when I pasted in a small humanoid alien bot, I only left the fingers of her hand showing. I also pasted in an additional "tentacle" that I obtained from this webpage. The main image for this scene was generated using the "Steampunk v2" style of Wombo Dream.

Night bot.

 Night. For some of the AI-generated images such as the one shown in Figure 7, there were hints of something sparkling in the background. I sometimes asked Mr. Wombo to create "stars and nebulae in the background" and for the image shown to the right, I manually dimmed the AI-generated. In the original scene as generated by Mr. Wombo, there were some AI-generated stars in the background that made me wonder what the image would look like with a lower light level.

Generated by Mr. Wombo.

 Process. I'll use the image that is shown to the left to illustrate how I "zoom in" to modify parts of the images that are generated by Mr. Wombo. I was fairly satisfied with this image, but I wanted to slightly change the appearance of her face. I liked the strange object that was there in her hair and wanted to retain that feature.

alternative face by Mr. Wombo

I had Mr. Wombo re-generate her head as shown in the image to the right. Notice how Mr. Wombo significantly altered the object in her hair and also the texture of her hair.

Figure 11. New composite image.

I pasted the new face back into the original image, producing the new composite image that is shown to the left.

I prefer the new composite image because I like both the larger eyes and the parted lips.

Figure 12. An alien creature.

I felt that some of the images being generated by Mr. Wombo, such as the one shown to the right, included interesting alien creatures. This alien had a recognizable face and a mouth, unlike the one in Figure 11, above.

Icky. "beautiful" alien by DALL-E 3

 Tongue. I had DALL-E 3 generate an image with this text prompt: "high resolution science fiction movie still of beautiful alien creature that has a long pink thin wet glistening tongue seen in profile view". The DALL-E artificial intelligence has a different opinion about beauty that clashes with my concept. However, I was able to make use of this AI-generated tongue.

Alien first contact.

I made an adjustment to the color of the DALL-E-generated tongue and paste it into Figure 12, resulting in the new composite image that is shown to the right. 

Alien hold up.

 Alien telepathy experiments. Some of the images that were generated by Mr. Wombo, such as the one shown to the left, had a more enthusiastic interaction between the alien and the Earthling. In my imagination, she is enjoying this physical contact with the alien and learning to synchronize her mind pattern to that of the alien creature.

Squeezably soft.

In Isaac Asimov's story "What Is This Thing Called Love?" there was a line that amused my 12-year old self. Two aliens are discussing human breasts and one of them, imagines that they are like tusks or antlers and used for fighting. The other alien comments, "No, I understand they are quite soft."

 The first alien-human synapex linkage. In my imagination, during the telepathy experiment that is shown to the right, these aliens with pink tentacles make a similar discovery.

Synapex link version 1.

Mr. Wombo had many "tricks" for depicting a synapex link between an alien tentacle and a nipple. For the image shown to the left, there appears to be some sort of Hi Tek™ neural interface device positioned over both nipples. In synapex link version 1, I like how the alien mind-link device on her head seems to have merged with her hair. Many of these synapex images were generated by the "Nightly v2" style of WOMBO Dream, which usually wanted to make bubble-like loops around the edge of her hair.

Synapex link version 2.

In the image shown to the right, Mr. Wombo made high-relief interface devices with green indicator lights. Maybe if the neural linkage is lost then the lights turn red. 

Synapex link version 3.

For the third version of an alien-human synapex link (that is shown to the left), Mr. Wombo obligingly made a loop in a tentacle just where I could imagine there being a nipple. I had to paste a nipple into the hole that Mr. Wombo had created.

Synapex link version 4.

For the image to the right, I pasted in two small alien bots that had been generated by Mr. Wombo in other images. The one on her cheek was placed there to cover up a problem that arose from a strange strand of hair that M. Wombo had placed on her face and given the appearance of alien mucus. Ew. The other manually-added item was pasted there on the black strap between her breasts.

Synapex link version 5.

Synapex link version 5 (image to the left) is a composite. Most of the image was generated by the "Steampunk v2" style of WOMBO Dream. However, the head was pasted in from another image in order to cover up a strange array of odd items that were in here hair. Also, to give her something to look at, I pasted in in the alien tongue that is shown above (the figure called "Icky").

Synapex link version 6.

For the image that is shown to the right, Mr. Wombo generated the yellow light that is at the location of the synapex linkage. I paste in three objects: 1) a pink "tentacle" from one of the figures above on this page (the one called "Handy accessories") which gave her something to look at, 2) a small decoration on her collar, and 3) another small decoration on the strap that is between her breasts.

Synapex link version 7.

Synapex link version 7 (shown to the left) was generated by Mr. Wombo with another indicator light on the device that has formed a synapex linkage between hr nervous system and that of the alien. I again pasted in a copy of the alien tongue, this time in a different orientation. Maybe it is simply another tentacle which is pushing on the green button to terminate the connection and this particular experiment.

Synapex link version 8.

In the last of this series of illustrations of synapex linkages (image shown to the right), Mr. Wombo placed two dark green "buttons" in her hair and a blue "button" where I can imagine it makes contact with her left nipple to create the synapex connection. Again, the mysterious blue alien device in her hair seems to be actively arranging her hair.

Figure 13. Compare to this image.

 Book Covers. My original goal was to create an imaginary book cover for a science fiction story called The Femtobots of Dar Sai. To make the book cover that is shown to the left, I used the image from Figure 8 and expanded the top part to make room for the title of the book. The resulting AI-generated image (see the image to the left) is quite different from the original book cover that I made back in 2017.

A cover alternative by Mr. Wombo.

 Fun With Alien Tentacles. I used Figure 13 as a new reference image and had Mr. Wombo make variants on this cover image. The only modification that I made to the image shown to the right was to have Mr. Wombo zoom in on her head and generate a higher resolution version of her face and what I imagine to be nanites being fed into her head by the alien robot. 

I'm glad that Mr. Wombo took me into a fantasy world of alien femtobots with tentacles. By collaborating with Mr. Wombo, I was able to satisfy a six-year-long desire to make a better illustration of a femtobot from the planet Dar Sai.

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