Femtobot Revelation

Figure 1. Tyhry communicating with Sorsyph.

 For my science fiction story "D*", I introduced the idea that the bumpha have the ability to make femtobot replicoid copies of people that can grow and develop, just like biological human beings. For example Tyna, a copy of Tyhry who lived in the Asimov Reality, discovered that she was a femtobot replicoid. My plan is to next depict Tyhry as discovering that she is also a femtobot replicoid. The question becomes, how does Tyhry make this discovery?

In the case of Tyna, she was able to use advanced hierion probe technology of the Jarnell Corporation to discover her true nature as an artificial life form that was derived from a biological tryp'At. In the case of Tyhry, I'm imagining that it is the Felydyans who will reveal to Tyhry the truth about her own artificial nature. 

Figure 2. Tyhry & Tyna & Sorsyph.

Previously, in Vythoth the Chresmoscopist, Tyhry met the Felydyans of Gyryph and they provided the special "sedron fuel" that was needed to allow Sedrover to travel at speeds faster than light. At that time, Sorsyph already knew that Tyhry was a femtobot replicoid, but there was no reason for Sorsyph to inform Tyhry that she was not a biological human.

Now, in "D*", Tyhry must find a way to enter into the Eternity space-time bubble in the Hierion Domain. Tyhry can access Eternity by way of a femtotube, but only because Tyhry is composed of femtobot components. 

Figure 3. Tyhry is taken to Nyrgyl.

I'm imagining that Sorsyph will provide Tyhry with a dramatic demonstration that she is a femtobot replicoid. As shown in Figure 3, Sorsyph teleports Tyhry to the surface of a planet (Nyrgyl) that is similar to Mars, with a very thin atmosphere. Tyhry is trying to speak, but the atmosphere is so thin, she cannot hear herself shouting at Sorsyph. Tyhry discovers that as an artificial life-form, she really does not need to breath.

Figure 1 (above) shows Tyhry being contacted by the Felydyans. Then, Tyhry is joined by Tyna (see Figure 2) and a very small copy of Sorsyph teleports onto Sedrover. When Tyhry is teleported to the surface of Nyrgyl, she finds herself inside a box. The symbols on the faces of the box (4 Xs and 2 Hs) symbolize chromosomes.

Left panel, the original interior artwork for "The Palindromic Blonde" (uncredited). Manually colorized. Second panel: background generated by ImageFX. 3 right panels: generated by WOMBO Dream.

Figure 4. Tyhry's dream vision of Nyrgyl.

Sorsyph explains to Tyhry that Nyrtia made use of femtobot replicoids to accelerate her search for a human form that would be adapted to telepathy. Imagine a population of femtobot replicoid copies of humans who are all able to alter their physical form at will: what body forms might humans adopt as their optimal form? In particular, what physical form would be optimal for telepathic humans under the constraint that telepathic communication is only possible between two individuals who love each other? An early step in the creation of telepathic humans involved creation of the H chromosome, which had the genes needed to make hermaphrodites.

This video (above) was generated by Whisk Animate. See also: this blog post about Whisk-generated videos.

Figure 5. Snake Planet by Mr. Wombo.

Tyhry recognizes the planet Nyrgyl from a "dream" vision of the future that she had as a child. In that vision, Tyhry received information by means of the Sedron Time Stream about her future visit to Nyrgyl. At the time, she was reading lots of fiction (including Beyond the Snake Planet by "Bill Wesley", which I suspect was a fake name), so in her dream there were strange creatures on Nyrgyl (see Figure 4).

For Figure 4 I asked Whisk to generate an image of "A colossal, segmented, light-brown worm-like creature with a reptilian head and open roaring mouth is emerging from the reddish-brown sand behind her, kicking up a dust cloud". That "her" refers to "a very tall and athletic fair-skinned girl with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing a white jumpsuit. The jumpsuit is made from a very thin and almost transparent sparkling material. She is barefoot and has a very slim body". I requested that the Whisk-generated image show her "foot kicking up a very small spatter of sand", but Whisk insisted on making an inappropriately large dust cloud at the position of her previous foot-fall.👣

Figure 6. Alternate snakes.

 The Snake Planet. According to ISFDB, Bill Wesley published seven stories between 1954 and 1960. Simply based on the title of the story, I could not resist taking a look at "The Palindromic Blonde" as published in the February 1960 issue of Future Science Fiction.

Figure 7. A palindromic fish.

Sadly, "The Palindromic Blonde" was apparently an attempt to write a humorous story, but it makes very little sense. Mr. Wombo had some luck making a palindromic fish with two heads (see Figure 7). There are some more palindromic fish at the very bottom of this blog post.

 The AI Nipple Embargo. Usually WOMBO Dream does not generate images of completely naked women, but apparently if you hold a fish in front of you, then you can take a dip in the pond without wearing a swimming suit. I manually added some swimming suits to these images such as the one in Figure 7.

Figure 8. Return to Snake Planet.

I also made some imaginary pulp magazine covers for the "snake planet" theme (see Figures 5, 6 and 8). For the image that is shown to the left in Figure 8, in an attempt to make a more exciting scene I manually pasted in five of the six snake heads that are shown in Figure 8, possibly just making an overly-busy scene. The text, "Novels of the Future" and "Return to Snake Planet by Bill Wesley" was all added manually to the original image that was generated by Mr. Wombo.

 Colonization. In the original story Beyond the Snake Planet, some humans depart from Earth and seemingly carry out a random search of nearby star systems for a habitable planet. I suppose in 1959 it was not easy to imagine either 1) sending automated spaceships to explore space or 2) having astronomical techniques that would allow for detection of exoplanets across vast interstellar distances.

Sand worms of Dune.

In Beyond the Snake Planet, the first planet with alien life that is discovered is small (like Nyrgyl), but it has both plant and animal life, including creatures that when first seen emerging from underground are called snakes, but then upon close inspection the alien creatures are described as being worm-like. 

Worm watching (image source).

I wonder if the alien "worms" in Beyond the Snake Planet provided inspiration to Frank Herbert. when he was deciding to add "sand worms" into his story Dune.

Figure 9. Cover art by Malcolm Smith.

 Snake God. In the May 1942 issue of Fantastic Adventures was a story called "Daughter of the Snake God" by William P. McGivern and David Wright O'Brien. According to the magazine's editor, Raymond A. Palmer, "Daughter of the Snake God" was written in just 10 days in order to provide a story to go along with the cover illustration by Malcolm Smith. 

Figure 10. Sychymymy

I provided Mr. Wombo with the image shown in Figure 9 and this text prompt: "photorealistic rendering of a very young Kate Jackson as a goddess, Kate Jackson is twenty years old, Kate Jackson is riding on a very large snake, Kate Jackson is shown in photorealistic detail, Kate Jackson has long black hair, cinematic quality, dressed Victoria's Secret style in sparkling lace". WOMBO Dream generated the image that is shown to the left in Figure 10 and then I added the text "The legend of Sychymymy". Mr. Wombo seemed quite certain that a woman should not ride on a snake.

Figure 11. Snake rider.

The image shown in Figure 11 was built upon one of the best images by Mr. Wombo that seemed to show her riding on a snake. The image shown is a composite. I pasted in a second snake head because in the original image it looked like the snake's neck branched, but there was only one head. While the image in Figure 10 was only altered to add the text, for Figure 11, I zoomed in on the woman's head and had Mr. Wombo generate a higher resolution image that I then pasted in over her original face. 

Figure 12. Blurb by Palmer.

On the page with Ray Palmer's account of how "Daughter of the Snake God" was written (see Figure 12) there was also the cartoon that is shown in figure Figure 13.

Figure 13. Cartoon by John Cherry.

I asked Claude to "try to guess the text prompt that was used to generate the image" from Figure 11. I wanted a description of the image that I could provide to ImageFX.

Figure 14. A palindromic snake by ImageFX and pasted into the background image. Her head by Mr. Wombo.

Figure 15. By ImageFX.

 Claude: "This image appears to be fantasy artwork in a distinctive 1970s/1980s pulp fantasy style. It shows a woman warrior with dark hair wearing a metallic bikini top and a white skirt/loincloth with a gold belt. She's wielding a sword overhead while standing on or beside giant serpents or snakes. The serpents have prominent fangs and yellow eyes, with red-orange and blue scales. The background features a gradient of magenta/purple colors.  Based on the style and content, a likely text prompt could have been something like:  "Fantasy warrior woman fighting giant snakes, 1970s fantasy book cover art, sword and sorcery, vibrant colors, Frank Frazetta style"  The image strongly resembles classic fantasy illustrations from artists like Frank Frazetta, Boris Vallejo, or Julie Bell who were known for creating iconic sword and sorcery artwork featuring scantily-clad warriors in dramatic poses battling mythical creatures. The vivid color palette and composition are characteristic of vintage fantasy paperback covers and movie posters." 

Figure 16.

Using that rather long text prompt from Claude (above), ImageFX generated the image that is shown in Figure 15. As seen in Figure 15, ImageFX had a tendency to either 1) start making a long snake and then put a snake head at each end of the long thin body or 2) make a looped body with no head. 

 Heroic. With suggestions from Claude, I then made modifications to the text prompt and got images such as the one in Figure 16 using: "a beautiful woman riding bareback-style on a giant green snake, she is straddling the elongated back of the snake like riding a horse, magenta background, science fiction book cover art, Malcolm Smith style, detailed scales, a woman astride the snake's spine with legs on either side, snake body extended horizontally beneath rider, heroic pose with sword raised while mounted, snake's head turned to side, clear view of rider mounted along the snake's back". Figure 16 has a rare ImageFX-generated image where the nipples of a woman are visible.

Figure 17.

When including "photorealistic image, cinematic quality, sharp focus, vibrant and saturated colors, emphasizing texture and materiality" in the text prompt, ImageFX generated images such as those shown in Figures 14 (above) and 17 (to the right).

Figure 18. Jo & Joe.

In "Daughter of the Snake God", the plot unfolds like an Indian Jones movie. Readers are told that Dr. Allen Curtis is off to Peru to study Inca ruins. Arriving in Peru, we learn that the locals who are supposed to assist Dr. Curtis during his mission in Peru are fearful of Sacha, a snake like jungle goddess, possibly related to Quetzalcoatl. 

Figure 19. Nazi tanks in Peru.

 You can tell me. After the Peruvian assistants run off (all but the trusty Juan), Dr. Curtis is glad he brought along his cute secretary Jo (although the type-setter sometimes calls her "Joe", see Figure 18). Dr. Curtis is on a mission to stop an evil Nazi plan to take control of South America (see the Nazi tanks in Figure 19). 

Figure 20.

The images in Figures 19 and 20 are the original two page-wide interior art for the beginning of "Daughter of the Snake God" by Ned Hadley. I colorized that interior art and added into the lower right a "snake woman" from a 1949 cover painting by Malcolm Smith. The resulting image is shown below in Figure 21.

Figure 21. This image was used as a reference image so that Mr. Wombo could generate Figure 22.

Figure 22. Generated by Mr. Wombo from the image in Figure 21.

Figure 23. 1948.

 I then used the image shown in Figure 21 as a reference image and Mr. Wombo created the image that is shown above in Figure 22. Figure 22 was generated in two parts, the left and right sides, which I manually merged together. I also had to zoom in on the couple near the center of these images and have Mr. Wombo separately generate them in a third image. I also added some additional snake heads to the left side of Figure 22 in an effort to make it more interesting and to cover up some ugly features in the original image.

Figure 24. By Mr. Wombo.

 The Thrilling Conclusion. In "Daughter of the Snake God", Dr. Curtis and Jo survive a battle against a German Panzer division with the help of a rain storm and a giant snake named Sacha that is ridden by her "daughter", an ancient Incan woman who rides on the snake (see Figure 9, above). 

Figure 25.

The cover art for the January 1948 issue of Fantastic Adventures by Robert Gibson Jones is shown in Figure 23. I used that cover art as a reference image for WOMBO Dream along with this text prompt: "photorealistic image of a very young Kate Jackson with a giant snake, Kate Jackson has long black hair, Kate Jackson is fifteen years old and beautiful, photorealistic detail in Kate Jackson’s face and hair, Kate Jackson is pretty, Kate Jackson is cute" and Mr. Wombo generated images such as the one shown in Figure 24.

Figure 26.

In most cases, Mr. Wombo provided clothing for the woman as seen in Figure 24. Sometimes Mr. Wombo took advantage of her long hair and did not bother to give her a top (see the example in Figure 25). In a few of the images generated by Mr. Wombo, she was not given any clothing, but a snake was strategically placed in her lap (see Figure 26).

Figure 27.

 One Last Image. Previously, I had a blog post that showed some AI-generated images depicting Sam's General Store on an asteroid. I used the image from Figure 13 (above) as a reference image and got some AI-generated images such as the one shown in Figure 27. Maybe Sam has spaceship refueling stations on both asteroids and on Earth.

Search for alien worms (source).

Now that we are 25% of the way through 2025, it is time to start my annual search for interesting Hollywood aliens (SIHA). My hope is that the crop of fictional aliens in 2025 will include more than snakes and worms.

I know, let's use aliens as click bait!

"The 2025 film program is littered with aliens"

Related Reading: Sachamama

Next: Searching for interesting aliens in 2025.

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