Buld First Contact

Figure 1.
Generated by Wombo Dream.

 Here in this blog post I'll be updating some of my old illustrations from the Exode Saga by making use of artificial intelligence software to generate new versions of old images. Why am I going back ten years to revive old images from the past? For me, imperfections in those story illustrations are a constant source of discomfort. Now that I can employ AI tools like DALL-E and WOMBO Dream, I simply can't resist trying to improve those old illustrations.

The image to the right (Figure 1) was made by using an old image from 2013 (see Figure 2) and this text prompt: "high resolution movie still showing a park ranger and a tall slim woman dressed in white near the Washington Monument, the woman is holding a bright light source in her hand, an alien spaceship in the background, the spaceship is cloaked and appears as a fuzzy semi-transparent blob".

Figure 2.
Old image from 2013

Mr. Wombo (my pet name for the WOMBO Dream software) did not understand what I meant by "the spaceship is cloaked and appears as a fuzzy semi-transparent blob". In the original image (see Figure 2), I tried to give the hovering spacecraft blurry outlines. When the Buld finally arrived on Earth (after a ten thousand year journey from the galactic core) they were reluctant to interfere with the course of history on Earth. The Buld woman, dressed in white, is going to have to use her memory-editing nanites to deflect the attention of the park ranger.

Figure 3.
Obtaining a brain pattern.

 Gohrlay's Brain. One of the key events in the Exode Saga is when Gohrlay's brain is scanned and her brain pattern is used to create the first positronic robot's brain circuits. To get the image that is shown to the right (Figure 3) I used an old image from 2013 (Figure 4) as a reference with this text prompt: "science fiction magazine cover showing two women who are part of a brain scanning procedure, Margot Robbie is laying on a table, dressed Victoria's Secret style, Megan Fox is looking at a video screen image of a brain, Painted in the style of Edmund Alexander Emshwiller".  In the years since 2013, I've developed the habit of often converting illustrations for science fiction stories into imaginary book covers.

Figure 3 well illustrates Mr. Wombo's penchant for converting inanimate objects into human Figures. In this case, I did not mind the insertion of a third woman into this scene.

Figure 4. Gohrlay's brain in 2013.

The original "Gohrlay's Brain" image from 2013 is shown to the left (Figure 4). The original elements in this scene were taken from old science fiction magazine illustrations and the title of the imaginary magazine was inspired by this horror magazine. Here in 2023, Mr. Wombo updated the brain scanning equipment for a new millennium (as shown in Figure 3).

In the old magazine cover art, human artists had no problem painting hands and fingers. In contrast, Mr. Wombo really struggles to generate anatomically correct arms, hands and fingers.

For the 2013 brain scan image (Figure 4), I pasted into the scene an actual brain scan. Figure 3 is completely AI-generated except for some of the text.

Hi Tek™ brain scanning.

Mr. Wombo was certain that a virtual reality headset can make extracting a human brain pattern much easier.

Cool shades.

 Goggles. However, it seems like Mr. Wombo does not have the concept of actually looking at data that is being displayed by a virtual reality headset... headsets just look cool. Mr. Wombo could not even decide if her eyes should be open or closed. The version that is shown to the left was made using the "Steampunk v2" style of Wombo Dream.

Figure 5. New recursion
for 2023 by Mr. Wombo.

 Recursion. I enjoy recursion as an element of science fiction stories, particularly science fiction stories that mention science fiction. For the Exode Saga, there is the Writers Block, a special place at Observer Base that has a large archive of science fiction stories, many that are unknown on Earth. In the Ekcolir Reality, science fiction story telling was used to prepare Earthlings for First Contact with the alien Fru'wu. 

In the Buld Reality, First Contact went essentially unnoticed, but in the Ekcolir Reality, the Fru'wu shared advanced technologies with humans in the 20th century. That technology had unintended consequences, leading to catastrophic global warming and dramatic sea level rise when the Antarctic ice all melted.

Figure 6. From 2013.

Here in the Final Reality, when there was no physical evidence for aliens, the Editor began to describe the Secret History of Humanity in a series of science fiction novels that constitute the five novels of the Exode Saga. However, eventually the Editor decided that it was not wise to draw attention to his family and their alien-derived gene patterns.

Back in 2013, I made the image that is shown to the left (Figure 6) as a way of illustrating recursion. With the help of Mr. Wombo, I made the image that is shown above in Figure 5. Here, Mr. Wombo spontaneously made all of the human figures female when I used this text prompt: "a high resolution movie still of a young Megan Fox seen from behind while she paints a man who is a sculptor, the sculptor is sculpting a statue, the statue us using a hammer and chisel".

Figure 7. Mr. Wombo's tall artist.

 Going up. For Figure 5 (above) I also placed these three "artists" on an imaginary book cover. When I look at Figure 5, I can't decide if there is  human artist at work in this scene or if I am looking at a completed sculpture that simply includes three human figures. Mr. Wombo was also uncertain about this scene and when using Figure 5 as a reference image, Mr. Wombo went off in some strange directions.

For the AI-generated image that is shown to the right, Mr. Wombo's chosen direction was up. I've previously had fun with Mr. Wombo's tendency to create tall people with four arms (for example, see Figure 16 on this blog page). Here, I imagine this is a sculptor with four arms and two heads who is creating a sculpture of a woman with a very long neck.

The only alteration that I made to this image was to have Mr. Wombo re-generate the lower face. In the original AI-generated image, it looked like that face had two noses.

Figure 8. Replicoid game.

However, maybe the human figure on the left side of Figure 7 is actually a manikin. That is how I interpret the image that is shown to the left. In my science fiction stories, I often want to have artificial life forms (such as replicoids) or robots with synthetic bodies.

For the Foundations of Eternity, I use this banner image:

Foundations of Eternity banner (source). R. Gohrlay.

I don't imagine that the first bodies for positronic robots like R. Gohrlay were very sophisticated.

Figure 9. Sculpting studio.

 Wombo Studios. Maybe Figure 8 (above) shows some on-going humanoid robot design work at Observer Base when the first positronic robots were being built. I was using my text prompt about "sculpting a statue", so I'm not really sure why Mr. Wombo often crafted images with what look like manikins. Some of the images were like the one shown to the right, which is more like what I think of when I say "statue". Figure 9 is one of the few AI-generated images that I show here without making any modification. Maybe this is a scene from the Wombo Art Studio, where the artists have to work overtime with fig leafs and strips of gauze to make sure that no offending body parts are rendered by the image-generating software.

Back in March, I experimented with trying to create transparent human figures as part of trying to illustrate teleportation. Here, I was content with conventional opaque statues, but I wanted them to be painted.

2021 illustration: painting a statue.

Two years ago I had a character (Lany) in one of my science fiction stories who was a sculptor. At that time, I made the illustration that is shown to the left. That was supposed to be Lany paining one of her sculptures. Can I now do better by using WOMBO Dream?

Figure 10. New statue painting in 2023.

The image that is shown to the right (Figure 10) was generated by Mr. Wombo in two parts. For the statue (left side of the image) I used this text prompt: "a museum statue, the statue is tall and slim, narrow hips, skinny waist, the statue has long blond hair". 

Figure 11. With Lany's helper.

For Figure 10, Lany the painter (right side of the image) was generated with a text prompt that included, "Kate Jackson is using a paint brush to paint a statue, Kate Jackson has one arm extended and holding a paint brush". The two AI-generated human figures were then pasted into a background image that I can imagine to be Lany's studio.

Why is Lany using such an unusual method to apply paint to the statue? For Figure 11, Lany is shown having to reach over her robotic assistant, Kate.

Figure 12. The artist's model.

The image to the right (Figure 12) was generated by Mr. Wombo when using Figure 5 as a reference image and making the image generation process only weakly dependent on the reference image. For this scene, Mr. Wombo seemed to forget all about sculptures and statues. In my imagination, she's a model and is serving as a living reference for other students in the art class who are painting or sculpting a human figure.

Figure 13. Sculpting tools.

One of the major frustrations of collaborating with Mr. Wombo to create illustrations for science fiction stories is the fact that Mr. Wombo struggles to create images in which people are doing something interesting with their hands. Maybe in the image to the left (Figure 13) the two sculptors are using a Wombomatic hand adjuster to sculpt the hand of the blond statue. I specified in my text prompt to have the two sculptors holding tools, but I had to just paste in various objects to cover up the anatomically incorrect hands that Mr. Wombo had generated.

Figure 14. Large sculpture project.

For some of these sculpture images that were generated by Mr. Wombo, the sculpture was extra large. In the case of sculptures created by Lany, I originally imagines life-sized sculptures of human figures or small synpaz replica. However, maybe some residents of Observer Base would have requested that Lany craft particularly large statues that could be displayed in places like backyard gardens.

 Lany at large. In the original AI-generated image for Figure 14, there was what looked like a small paint pallet or some similar flat surface near the artist's left hand. I pasted another AI-generated image into that space and added another reference image at the left edge of the scene in order to cover up a strange right arm that Mr. Wombo had generated for the giant sculpture. I imagine that the sculptor is painting the sculpture in an attempt to make it appear as life-like as possible. 

Bisop the humanoid robot.

 Life-like Artificial Life. For my science fiction story called Echo of Cynym, I had a character (Bisop) that was an artificial lifeform, but Bisop was trying to live among people without revealing the fact that she was a robot from the planet Triskelion. In trying to illustrate such a character, I want images that can appear almost human, but just slightly artificial.

Figure 15. From Jan. 2023.
This image was made using "Pallas - 47"
by mjranum-stock.
Available under the CC BY 3.0.

To generate the image that is shown to the left, I used the book cover image that I made back in January (Figure 15) as a reference image for Mr. Wombo along with this text prompt: "a science fiction book cover showing a humanoid, the humanoid has long blond hair, the humanoid is dressed Victoria's Secret style in strips of transparent plastic that glows, a planet and stars in the background, the humanoid has very large blue eyes".

Figure 16. Artificial lifeform.

The image in Figure 16 is an example for which Mr. Wombo was able to move towards the "strips of transparent plastic" that I was hoping for. In this scene, Bisop seems to be on the surface of a planet with a treeline in the background, but as usual for a text prompt that mentions "science fiction" there is a planet instead of the dangling tentacles in the reference (Figure 15). 

I've placed some other renderings of this scene at the bottom of this blog post which illustrate the spectrum from a quite artificial appearance for Bisop to one that is more normal for a human. By asking Mr. Wombo to generate images of a "humanoid", I was hoping to get AI-generated images of a humanoid robot that looked just slightly "robotic" in some subtly way.

Figure 17. A robot of Aurora?

And the answer is "no": the PG13 version of WOMBO Dream did not generate those nipples for this scene (Figure 16). The nipples in Figure 16 were not AI-generated, they were manually copied over from Figure 15. In Echo of Cynym, Bisop is quick to show her breasts to the Editor when he arrives on the planet Dethevicinelec. The one WOMBO Dream style that will sometimes generate an image of a nipple is "Gloomy" (see the image to the right). 

There is a point in Isaac Asimov's novel The Robots of Dawn where Asimov describes the fact that the rather artistically inclined Gladia designs "surfaces" for household servant robots that in a subtle way suggest clothing. Figure 17 might be the sort of robot "surface" design that Gladia created for the people of the planet Aurora, a kind of surface design fashion that some Aurorans might have had built into their household servant robots.

Dawn robot #1.

Dawn robot #2.

When using the image shown in Figure 16 as a reference image, Mr. Wombo was able to quite consistently generate addition images that I can imagine as being depictions of robots on the planet Aurora. Two such images are shown to the left and to the right. Asimov seemed to imply in The Robots of Dawn that within the social system of planet Aurora, casual sex with household robots was not unusual.

The 2023 SIHA Award.

 In 2024: Part 5 of the Mosy Saga. 

Next: the 2023 SIHA award winner.

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Password

cover art: Ken Kelly

I own a copy of the DAW January 1981 printing of The Book of Dreams by Jack Vance. The Book of Dreams is the final book in Vance's five volume Demon Princes series.

cover by Ken Kelly

That DAW paper back has cover art by Kenneth Kelly depicting a scene where the protagonist Kirth Gersen quickly dispatches some of the body guards of Demon Prince Howard Treesong.

One other book with a cover by Kenneth Kelly that I bought was Waves by M. A. Foster. Most of Kelly's cover art was for fantasy books. It would be interesting to know how he came to paint Howard Treesong.

Looking beyond the cover art for that first DAW edition of The Book of Dreams, there is a drawing on page 172. Here is the same drawing as shown in a more recent edition of the book:

source

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In my copy of the book, the "Secret symbol" is printed up-side-down. That error was lamented by Vance as making the symbol look like a beached whale.

Secret Password
In Chapter 8 of A Search Beyond, the Dead Widowers are making a sustained effort to probe the mysteries of the Asimov Reality in Deep Time. They are frustrated by the fact that someone sabotaged the story database of the Writers Block, making it difficult to discover how information about the Asimov Reality was inserted into science fiction stories that were published in the Ekcolir Reality.

1985 Ken Kelly cover art

Working "behind the scenes", nonoscopic replicoids of Asimov and Vance begin assisting the Dead Widowers. One of these is the replicoid of Vance and he knows the secret meaning of "VLON": Vance Lives ON. That knowledge is one of several missing puzzle pieces: VLON becomes a password that allows Anney to achieve access to the hidden index of Writers Block stories.

Today I learned that there is a mysterious link between Vance and M. A. Foster. According to Zeta, the analogue of M. A. Foster in the Ekcolir Reality was named Mahasvin Foster.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Brian Froud.

Know Matter
I've previously had fun with the idea that in the Ekcolir Reality the entire science fiction genre was guided by the Writers Block. Replicoids in the Hierion Domain were provided with information about advanced technology that the Fru'wu would soon make available to Earthlings. Using the Bimanoid Interface, those replicoids "put ideas into the heads" of science fiction story writers on Earth.

At the start of the Final Reality (the world as we know it), these kinds of Sci Fi Interventions were still being attempted, but then Grean was tasked with putting an end to the practice. During the Buld Reality, efforts were made to warn the people of Earth about the pending arrival of the Buld. After those attempts were all blocked, I ended up with latent memories of having been warned about the future. Those warnings were only allowed to be active in my conscious mind after the Buld had visited Earth and then departed.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Michael Whelan.

In the Exode Saga, all of Humanity is engaged in a struggle to convert itself from a disposable species, designed to be replaced by the Prelands, into a life form that can avoid self-destruction and spread among the stars. Under the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact, a small amount of information has been allowed to "leak" from Deep Time into the Final Reality, but all factual information about previous Realities must take the form of science fiction stories.

The replicoid of the Editor (Irhit) had carefully guided him towards being able to play an important role in releasing information about Deep Time to the people of Earth. Along the way, the Editor has been assisted by a group of collaborators. Currently Zeta and Yōd are the two main collaborators for the Editor. The replicoids of Zeta and Yōd are helping the Dead Widowers hack into the story database that exists inside the Writers Block. The nanoscopic replicoid of Vance is working from "inside", but the Editor must also help by providing a missing puzzle piece from outside.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original cover art
by John Schoenherr and Paul Swendsen.

DAW Books
It is fun to imagine that DAW Books existed as a major source of "secret information" about Deep Time that was passed to the Editor in the Final Reality. DAW books came into existence right when I was in my personal Golden Age of discovering published science fiction. To some extent, for Sci Fi fans of my generation, DAW paperbacks were the functional equivalent of what the pulp science fiction magazines had been back in the original Golden Age of science fiction.

When the science fiction genre was "created" in the Ekcolir Reality, many artists who had illustrated fantasy fiction in earlier Realities were recruited to illustrate science fiction stories. Examples of such recruits are Kenneth Kelly and Brian Froud. Zeta has been investigating the mystery of how Brian Froud came to create the cover art for Don't Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee. According to Zeta, in the Ekcolir Reality the analogue of Lee wrote a detailed account of how the Fru'wu came to visit Earth and provide rudimentary hierion technology to humans. Zeta believes that Froud had actually been allowed to see the true physical form of the Fru'wu. Apparently there were many fanciful depictions of the Fru'wu by artists in the Ekcolir Reality, but somehow Froud "got it right".

Baa Bee Boo

cover art by Paul Swendsen

Back in 2015, Gohrlay made sure that I was aware of Vanth (the last Fru'wu on Earth) and the fact that Luri was a kind of specially crafted human. Zeta's replicoid is now working with two other crafted Interventionist agents in the Hierion Domain: Cecile and Mahasvin. Strangely, I know that I read both Don't Bite the Sun and Drinking Sapphire Wine, but only my memories of the later book remain in my mind. Zeta and I are sifting through Don't Bite the Sun looking for a hidden clue about Deep Time that was apparently erased from my mind.

Yōd believes that my memories of Don't Bite the Sun were erased and replaced by "parallel" memories about Clarke's story Against the Fall of Night. Yōd claims that I've been "crafted" so as to dream of space travel and avoid thinking about the main danger facing humanity: that our species could curl up into a self-generated virtual reality and never reach the stars. Apparently knowledge from Deep Time about that danger is even more important than information about the catastrophic global warming that took place in the Ekcolir Reality.

Next: evolution in science fiction

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Prelands

I've been writing about Prelands for several years, but, of course, I've never actually seen one. Originally, I first heard about Prelands from the perspective of the Buld. In the Galactic Core, the Buld crossed paths with Prelands on worlds such as Hemmal. Both Parthney and Kach grew up on Hemmal and Kach actually spent several years interacting with Prelands. However, it is not clear that even Kach ever saw the true physical features of the Prelands.

My ideas about the physical appearance of Prelands were strongly influenced by the infites that I received from Parthney.

Three artificial life forms and Parthney.
Center: one simulated human female.
Left + right: simulated Prelands. image credits

Most of the Buld and Parthney apparently only ever saw impersonations of Prelands as performed by the pek who lived among the Buld on Hemmal. Those performances by the pek always emphasized the unusual facial features of the pek, particularly their small jaws and narrow mouths.

The Prelands of Hemmal are what Gohrlay calls "Core Prelands". Later, when I began to receive information from the Atlantis Clones, I started learning about the Prelands of Earth, the Giant Prelands.

The Sedronite family tree.

Thus, it is not clear that any human has ever actually seen a Core Preland and lived to tell the tale. However, rumor has it that Core Prelands are small and elf-like. However, such rumors might only be disinformation.

Most recently, I've been questioning Gohrlay about the nature of her fellow Observers when she lived her first life at Observer Base in the First Reality. Also, in the First Reality, there were "wild Prelands" living on Earth. I must classify all of the the Prelands known to Gohrlay as Giant Prelands, although there were differences between the wild Prelands and the "mock Prelands" of Observer Base.

Preland Overseers

One of the most confusing aspects of Preland biology is how the Prelands have been altered in various Realities of our Reality Chain. The Prelands of the First Reality had significant differences from the Prelands that are here in the Final Reality. When R. Gohrlay and the positronic robots of Earth took control of the galaxy, they were particularly upset by the existence of Prelands. The positronic robots were devoted to we humans and deeply offended by the fact that the pek had been systematically replacing humans with Prelands.

In ways that have never been explained to me, the positronic robots altered the basic genetic character of the Prelands. Some of those genetic modifications involved the transfer of Asterothrope gene combinations into the Prelands.

Prelands of the First Reality

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Of course, the Observers (such as Gohrlay) were almost completely ignorant about the zeptite endosymbionts that had been used to give Observers a Preland-like body form. That was a small "joke" by the pek, who in the First Reality were very close to driving the human species into extinction and making the Prelands the dominant primate of Earth.

After the positronic robots took control of Observer Base, those robots and the Observers entered into a long period of discovery. Eventually some level understanding of nanotechnology was achieved among R. Gohrlay's tribe of robots, but it was not until after the negotiated end of the Time Travel War that anyone on Earth was allowed to fully understand the importance of Earth's zeptites. It was the Atlantis Clones such as Angela who were able to access the information resources of the Hierion Domain and construct an outline of how zeptite endosymbionts were used by the pek back in the First Reality of our Reality Chain.

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It is only now, with the help of Gohrlay, that I am able to make sense of what Angela learned about zeptites. One of the capabilities of zeptites is that they can provide organisms such as we humans with complete protection from invaders such a viruses. However, when the Prelands were designed as the primate species that would replace humans on Earth, the pek were constrained by the ethical principles of the Huaoshy. In particular, the Prelands had to be an "integral life form" of Earth, not some foreign invader that was defended against Earthly microorganisms by zeptites.

I can only speculate about how the pek solved the problem of adapting Prelands to the viruses of Earth. It seems certain that the Prelands were designed and crafted on worlds of the Galactic Core such as Hemmal. While evolving new species on worlds in the core, the pek have always been careful to maintain linkages to Earth for continual update/exchange of viruses. Thus even before Prelands were placed on Earth, they were already resistant to Earthly viruses.

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According to Gohrlay, the pek are masters of crafting multiple "versions" of the Prelands that are genetically identical, yet have distinct morphological features. By activating different developmental guidance programs in the zeptite endosymbionts of Prelands, two major types of Prelands can be produced:

1) The "Giant Prelands" were designed to be deployed on Earth and compete successfully against humans. The Prelands of Earth were constrained by their zeptite endosymbionts so as to make them adept tool users, but with very little capacity for tool creation and manufacture. The Prelands who were placed on Earth by the pek were meant to "immunize" Earth against possible development of a technologically sophisticated primate like humans. These Prelands of Earth were able to drive humans nearly to extinction on Earth. According to Gohrlay, the Giant Prelands were morphologically quite similar to we humans.

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2) In contrast, the physical features of the "Core versions" of the Prelands were shaped by another type of developmental program as enforced upon them by their endosymbionts. The Core Prelands such as those of Hemmal could never be confused with humans. Core Prelands were artificial primates, forced to rely on nanite-assisted feeding and reproduction. For a time, there was a cadre of "elf-like' Core Prelands who carried out missions to Earth.

The Observers at Observer Base when Gohrlay had her brain scan were actually humans crafted to have body features similar to Core Prelands. They thought of themselves as being the source of the "next evolutionary step" that would produce another type of primate that would inherit Earth. Gohrlay is amused by my misguided efforts to depict the physical features of the Prelands, but she refuses to correct my errors.

Next: Tricking Trysta

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100 50 25

In the Ekcolir Reality

Three of my favorite science fiction topics in this blog are Jack Vance, Star Trek and Isaac Asimov. Vance was born in 1916, so all this year I have been celebrating 100 years of Vance. The original Star Trek was beamed into homes starting on September 8th, 1966. Later this year, I want to have a special blog post to celebrate 50 years of Star Trek (here it is).

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image shown to the right.

I'm already working on a blog post that will "go live" next year, before April 6th 2017. Asimov died on that date in 1992. I don't want to celebrate the loss of Asimov 25 years ago, particularly since within the Exodemic Fictional Universe he continues to live on with all of his memories and his mad obsession with writing still intact: all bundled up in the form of an artificial life form.

First Contact in the Final Reality

Recently, I was working on my special April 6th blog post when Gohrlay mentioned a book that the analogue of Asimov published in the Ekcolir Reality: Guide to Earth and Aliens. At that point in Deep Time, the alien Fru'wu had not yet arrived on Earth, but it was an open secret that an official First Contact special event would soon take place. Asimov and others associated with the Writers' Block had long been preparing Earthlings for First Contact in that Reality.

Foundations of Eternity

In our Reality, the day of First Contact with the Buld came and went with little notice, just like all of the previous such alien contact events on Earth. In a very real sense, Earth was too well prepared for First Contact. When the Buld spaceship arrived in Washington, there were a few miserable refuges waiting to escape from this primitive planet, but otherwise nobody cared.

The arrival of the Buld was little more than a timing device. By the technical terms of Huaoshy ethical laws, creatures such as we Earthlings are not supposed to know about alien visitors who arrive on our world and who have more advanced technology than we do. However, under one carefully argued interpretation of the terms of the Rules of Intervention, the Buld were judged to be our technological equals, so, strictly speaking, there is no reason why we should not know about their visit to Earth.

Luri offers to save Earth

The potential problem with the arrival of the Buld was that they had been given access to sophisticated spaceship technology. They had no idea how their speed-of-light spaceship worked, but the Buld were certainly capable of transporting other visitors to Earth from distant planets. Through the years, Earth had become "contaminated" with special Sedronite genes that gave a few Earthlings (such as Angela Fersoni) access to advanced technological knowledge as it existed on Earth in Deep Time. There was potential danger in the combination of that Buld spaceship and knowledge of hierions that had been obtained by Angela.

50 years of Star Trek

In my imagination, in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, a copy of Asimov was able to live on into our future. It is fun to imagine that the "Asimov analogue" was able to be transported into our future before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel.

Another pleasant fantasy is that the time traveling Asimov might find his way back to us in 2017.

Next: Gohrlay Clones

More Numbers: 200 years of Frankenstein.

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