Imaginary Books

see the original magazine cover
Image credits.

30 months ago I played a little game with Project Gutenberg's Astounding Stories bookshelf.

Astounding Stories, November 1932
Cover art by Hans Wessolowski.

Shown to the left is an 85 year old magazine cover from Astounding Stories. I used Photoshop to alter that old cover image and mix in an image of model Rose Wood from photographer Cathleen Tarawhiti. I imagine that there was a magazine called Future Science (see the image to the right) in another Reality and a story called "Creatures from the Sedronic Domain".

Imaginary Books

The X-Phile Intervention
Image credits.

What can be more fun than imaginary stories in imaginary pulp science fiction magazines? Imaginary novels!

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 2 - stock" that I used the image shown to the right. 

The Last Grendel on Earth
Image credits.

The Exode Saga is about aliens who have visited Earth for millions of years and who are responsible for creating the human species.

One type of alien visitor who helped guide the development of the human species are the Grendels. The Grendels were artificial life forms that could take on any convenient physical shape. Due to their origins and their desire to remain hidden from humans, Grendels often hid under water.

Hierion Crossing
Image credits

The Grendels and the Kac'hin are two types of Sedronite.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Dauntless - Action Heroine stock 4" that I used the image shown to the right. 

The Sedronite with blue skin might be a Kac'hin, the type of humanoid that was crafted by the pek and designed to function as an interface in the Hadronic Domain for the Huaoshy. In this scene, there is a confrontation between a human from Earth and the alien that takes place in the Hierion Domain.

Luri of Tamari
Image credits.

The Anney Archives
Anney Fersoni is one of the Atlantis clones. Anney played an important role in making known the lost events of Deep Time, events that took place in the previous Realities of our Reality Chain. Anney might not have written any of the imaginary books shown here, but she did provide the Editor with a wealth of information about the Interventionists who have shaped Earth's history.

Parthney was the final Interventionist from Hemmal, but with the aid of time travel technology, there was a long sequence of Thomas clones who visited Earth in earlier ages. One of these was Thrukta. While working on Earth, Thrukta was befriended by Luri of Tamari. While Luri was fated to die at a young age, Thrukta stepped in and teleported her off of Earth. Two thousand years later Parthney provided a similar service to Hana.

Searching Earth
Image credits: see this and this.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Dauntless - Action Heroine stock 8" that I used the image shown to the right. Tryp'At Overseers are humans, but they have been genetically altered to have special gene combinations that give them the ability to use their femtobot endosymbiont for access to the Bimanoid Interface.

The Scutinary Vitalists
Image credits

After hierion physics began in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jackie published the idea that hidden within the human body might be a form of hierion matter. Only much later was that "Vital Residual" recognized as sedronic matter, the residue of destroyed zeptites.

"Sam Jackie" is an invented name that was used by the analogue of Jack Vance in a previous Reality.

The Toad Goddess saga.
Image credits.

In previous Realities, the names of famous science fiction story writers were sometimes slightly different, such as Mary Bradley rather than Marion Bradley.

Clarke's Law
If an Interventionist agent living on Earth had amazing abilities such as the power to teleport to and from the surface of Earth, are we justified to think of such a being as a god?

The Yōd Intervention.
Image credits.
Original photographs by Jessica Truscott.

After Ivory Fersoni and the Dead Widowers worked hard give me access to the stories of Anney, the tryp'At Overseers worked hard to cut me off from further contact with Anney and continuing access to her revelations about Deep Time. Currently, my chief collaborators in the investigation of Deep Time are Zeta and Yōd.

Photomagic

In the Ekcolir Reality.
The Lost Sea.
Image credits.

When I go to the DeviantArt website and browse the photography and computer-rendered images, I'm always dazzled and amazed. The stock image accounts of photographers such as Miranda Hedman, Jessica Truscott and Marcus J. Ranum generate millions of webpage views (currently, about 20 million views for these three photographers). I particularly appreciate the ability of these photographers to capture images of models while they are in realistic and interesting poses.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Journey to Proxima Centauri.
Image credits.

I like to imagine that in an earlier Reality of our Reality Chain, the analogue of H. G. Wells was a woman named Hafren Wells. In the Ekcolir Reality, the science fiction genre was used to prepare Earthlings for First Contact with the alien Fru'wu. In that Reality, Hafren Wells published stories that told the secret history of Humanity and how Interventionist agents have often visited our world and shaped human cultural development.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
The C laser.
Image credits.

Similarly, in the Ekcolir Reality, Jade Verne (the analogue of Jules Verne) was a famous author. Jade died young, but then had a second life as an artificial life form.

Nanomancy.
Image credits.

The pace of technological development was slightly faster in the Ekcolir Reality than here in the universe as we know it. Rather than rockets and ray guns, the golden age of Sci Fi in the Ekcolir Reality featured teleporters and lasers. Jade Verne wrote stories about teleportation to distant worlds and Hafren Wells included laser microscopy in her stories.

Ereus and Behgi. Image credits.

Hafren Wells wrote a book called Nanomancy which was later discovered by Cecile Eclore, a member of the Dead Widower Society. Hafren provided the first written account of replicoids that ever reached the people of Earth. However, in the Final Reality, knowledge of the existence of replicoids was a more closely held secret.

When Ekcolir traveled back in time and helped bring the Final Reality into existence, he provided the human population of Earth with special gene combinations that first existed on our world among the descendants of Dehla and her two daughters, Behgi and Suem.

A Search Beyond

The Atlan Intervention. Image credits.

In the Exode Saga, I pretend that the analogue of Isaac Asimov wrote a science fiction story called The Atlan Intervention. "Atlan" is short for "Atlantis". Special thanks to Miranda Hedman for the stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image to the left.

In that story, the analogue of Asimov struggled to convey to a naive audience of Earthlings the idea that the universe as known to us here on Earth, a universe of stars and cars and minnows and Dead Widowers, is only a small subset of a vaster universe. The Asimov analogue of the Foundation Reality had been taken into the Hierion Domain and had been told of the existence of the Sedronic Domain.

Image credits.

Zeta is fascinated by The Atlan Intervention because it explores the hypothesis that hadronic life forms such as humans must eventually transform into artificial life forms. The pek function so as to transform species like we humans into sedronic artificial life forms that reside in the Sedronic Domain. Atlan is a "place" in the Hierion Domain where Interventionist agents are based. Ignorant humans made the mistaken assumption that Atlan was a place on Earth and it became known to us as Atlantis.

Hapha

According to Yōd, Pla'tron is one of the human-settled worlds of the Galactic Core along with Tar'tron. The last positronic robot on Earth (Rycleu) was taken from Earth to Atlan and "de-programmed". That robot was then teleported to Pla'tron for "re-programming" and trained for a new mission to Earth. That new mission took place in ancient Athens and led to the origin of the legend of Atlantis in the writings of Aristocles.

Related Reading: the Hapha'iston Intervention

Next: haunting the Writers Block with femtobots

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

1st Reality

 'Hometime' by Cathleen Tarawhiti

My newest collaborator, Yōd, finally created a website for the final volume in the Exode saga. Zeta quickly added a banner and I'll describe the source of the images that she used in this blog post.

Three Domains
Zeta wanted the banner to depict the three domains of the physical universe and three major characters in The First Reality who each inhabit one of the three domains.

To depict Gohrlay, Zeta made use of a DeviantArt stock image called 'Hometime' by Cathleen Tarawhiti. A cropped portion of 'Hometime' is shown to the right on this page. Gohrlay in a normal human who resides in the Hadronic Domain of the universe (the universe of planets and stars).

'Elementals' by HiddenYume

To depict Inlat, the replicoid of a Grendel, Zeta used one of the two models that are in a DeviantArt stock image called 'The Elementals - Duo 09' by HiddenYume-stock. A cropped portion of that image is shown to the left on this page. This is probably not the true physical form of Grendels (see this for a better guess), but Talni had to work with the Gohrlay clones and thon had adopted a human-like physical form. Inlat resides in the Hierion Domain.

'Mermaid - Tethys 2'
by Elisa Navacchi

To depict Riaw the Nereid, Zeta used a DeviantArt stock image called  'Mermaid - Tethys 2' by Elisa Navacchi. A cropped portion of that image is shown to the right on this page. Riaw resides in the Sedronic Domain. As their exonym suggests, the Nereids evolved on a water world. The true physical form of the Nereids is unknown, but Riaw is shown under water and using a physical form that would not have been too startling for Talni the Grendel.

According to Zeta, the scene in the banner is meant to suggest how beings from the three different physical domains of the universe can interact. After being selected by Talni from among her many clone sisters, Alpha Gohrlay was eventually instantiated at Observer Base. While growing up, Gohrlay believed that Observer Base was located on the Moon, however, Observer Base is actually inside the Hierion Domain. The banner is shown below:

The First Reality banner.

Sedronites

The only place where Gohrlay, Talni and Riaw could all interact is in the Hierion Domain. It is unlikely that Gohrlay ever had any direct interactions with the Nereids, but in the banner image she is shown using a viewing device that provides her with a ghostly image of Riaw. Zeta says, "That is meant to be a hint of Gohrlay's telepathic ability. Who knows what she might have 'seen' once her mind was transferred into R. Gohrlay?"

In the banner, Talni is shown reaching through a kind of portal and and trying to make contact with Riaw. The Nereids and the Grendels were carefully nurtured by the bumpha as hadronic lifeforms that could survive for long periods in the Hadronic Domain.

The First Reality

Eventually the Nereids abandoned their biological bodies and transcended into the Sedronic Domain. Similarly, after helping create the human species on Earth, the Grendels became artificial life forms that could move back and forth between the Hierion Domain and the Hadronic Domain.

Next: the end of an era

This is the banner for A Search Beyond. Also see this gallery of banners.

Searching the Beyond

Zeta's draft cover illustration. blue sedronite source

Zeta put together a first draft cover for A Search Beyond. She wanted to emphasize the recursive nature of the story, so she put multiple cover illustrations on the cover (see the image to the right on this page).

Image Credits
There are five people depicted in Zeta's draft cover image for A Search Beyond, but two of them are only hinted at by the presence of their hand at the left or right edge of the scene.

In the background is a distant exoplanet, one of the places in the "Beyond" that was the subject of a search for the origins of the tryp'At and the Ek'col. In this blog post I describe the sources of the images that Zeta used.

Hand Pose Stock - Gripping
by Melissa Offutt

Those two hands were obtained from a Hand Pose stock image by Melissa Offutt (see the cropped image to the left) who has an 'unrestricted use' stock image account (Melyssah6-Stock) at DeviantArt.

In the Hierion Domain

According to Zeta, the hands on the cover belong to two Retrofuturians who are exchanging stories about Deep Time. One of those stories is called The League of Yrinna. 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 this image.

Investigative Science Fiction
Only recently did I learn of the existence of the Retrofuturians. According to Yōd, they are a group of investigative science fiction writers, not unlike the Dead Widowers.

alien cat - 1957
cover art by Frank Freas

I like to imagine that there were analogues of science fiction magazines in the Ekcolir Reality. In our universe, back in the 1950s, there was a Sci Fi magazine called "Future Science Fiction". In the Ekcolir Reality, stories published in that magazine included stories about events that took place in the Asimov Reality.

The League of Yrinna is a story about the far future of the Asimov Reality, when a group of investigative science fiction writers finally discovered the secret of how aliens crafted humans into a primitive primate species with the ability to use the Bimanoid Interface.

'Spillway' by Crematia18

In the Hierion Domain
The other story that Zeta included in her draft cover illustration is a version of A Search Beyond. In Zeta's whimsical cover image for A Search Beyond, the blue-skinned sedronite is shown inside the Hierion Domain.

The background was made using a DeviantArt stock image called "Wyoming Dam Spillway Stock 2" (see the image to the right). In order to create an other-worldly scene in the Hierion Domain, I inverted the colors of the spillway image, turning the white ice into a dark background behind the sedronite.

Lykkadis 8 by Lia Konrad

Zeta used "Lykkadis 8" to depict the main foreground character because of the hair in that image. In the Exode saga, the are multiple artificial life forms who take on human form. They often have hair that is composed of nanites, with each strand of hair able to move independently, like a snake. Who is this character with the wild hair? Zeta will only say, "She's one of the artificial life forms who investigated how the alien Phari helped adapt humans for use of the Bimanoid Interface."

"alien cat" by  Andrew Kuznetsov

For the "alien cat" who is perched on her shoulder, I used an image (shown to the right) that was posted to Flickr by Andrew Kuznetsov.

'Ultra Planet' by Adrian Thomassen

The planet in the background at the upper left of Zeta's draft cover illustration is another DeviantArt stock image: Ultra HD Planet Stock III by Adrian Thomassen (see the image to the left).

Retrofuturians

Floating above the entire cover image is a thread-like depiction of several families of fundamental particles including sedrons and hierions.

Next: investigating the origin of the Retrofuturians.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Political Science Fiction

brain variants (source)

This is the second in a series of blog posts about continuing investigations into the secret history of Earth. This blog post started with the title "tryp'At Overseers", but I soon suffered pangs of guilt.

Why guilt? The fundamental source of my guilt is that I'm a picky science fiction reader. For example, I don't enjoy the insertion of horror elements into science fiction. Also, I am bored by real world politics and bored to tears by science fiction stories that expect me to read page after page of invented fictional politics. I'm thankful that one of my favorite science fiction authors, Isaac Asimov, rarely included horror in his stories. He tried to depict a world consumed by terror in his story Nightfall, but I could never take seriously the idea that a civilization would collapse because it suddenly got dark.

Asimov and Politics

interior art by Paul Orban

What about Asimov and politics? Unlike me, Asimov did not seem averse to including fictional politics in his science fiction stories. Here are three examples.

1. Asimov wrote a couple of stories ("Evidence" and "The Evitable Conflict") about Stephen Byerley, a robot who became involved in politics. These stories could be called "The End of Politics" because they depict how the rational calculations of machines could replace human politicians.

cover art by Oscar Chichoni

2. Near the start of Asimov's Foundation Saga, Mayor Hardin makes use of advanced technology to establish Terminus as a viable political force in the galaxy.

3. When he was nearing the end of constructing his Foundation Saga (in Forward the Foundation), Asimov explored an odd plot twist in which Hari Seldon was forced to become a politician. With Trantor crumbling around him, Seldon had to find a way to survive long enough to establish the First Foundation on Terminus and the Second Foundation on Trantor. Seldon was able to go toe-to-toe with the military junta that took control of Trantor and he helped Daneel guide Humanity into the Foundation Era.

I prefer fictional universes in which there is no mention of politics, but Asimov managed to bend his fictional politics to the needs of an interesting science fiction story. In the case of Asimov's fictional universe of robots and the Foundation, Daneel was secretly at work behind the scenes guiding Humanity towards the creation of Galaxia.

Politics of the tryp'At

original art work by Virgil Finlay

I feel guilt over having introduced the tryp'At into the Exodemic Fictional Universe because the tryp'At play a fundamentally political role. For several years I imagined that after the end of the Time War and establishment of the Trysta-Grean Pact, the humans of Earth would be free to find their own path into the future.

Some readers of the Foundation Saga felt that Asimov made a mistake when he depicted Daneel as a kind of benevolent dictator who had created and controlled the Foundation. In the Exode Trilogy, I face the same problem with R. Gohrlay, who I reveal to be the meta-puppet master that controls Daneel. The remaining question is this: are the tryp'At Overseers also puppets of R. Gohrlay? Does it matter?

Why should we care?

cover art by Jim Burns

Martin Harry Greenberg was a long-time friend of Asimov. Not long before Asimov's death, Greenberg talked Asimov into a new project that required Asimov to create a new fictional universe that could be a playground for other science fiction writers. In "Isaac's Universe", there were exactly six planets in our galaxy that gave rise to space-faring species.

In Isaac's Universe these six different species are biologically quite distinct. In addition to we humans, there is a species that is similar to Earthly porpoises. Aquatic alien species have long been popular in science fiction. In the Exode Trilogy, the Nereids play a major role, but rather than transition from aquatic life to life on land, the Nereids originated on land and then engineered themselves to be able to exist in an ocean environment.

cover art by Martin Andrews (click image to enlarge)

Isaac's Universe also includes a species that can fly. I've never read any of the stories that are set in Isaac's Universe, but judging from the Martin Andrews cover art (image to the right), these flying critters have some serious wings.

In the Exode Trilogy, there are two species that can fly...sort of. One of these is the legendary Retair species. Their juveniles had vestigial wings that allowed them to fly in micro-gravity.

Michael Whelan cover art

Michael Embden cover art

The Fru'wu are an ancient client species of the Nereids. On worlds with a thick atmosphere, the Fru'wu can use their webbed limbs to glide through the air, but they really can't fly very well even under low gravity conditions.

Science fiction authors have always struggled with how to depict alien species. One approach is to simply make humanoid versions of various Earthly species such as cats or insects.

Martin Andrews cover art

If you diverge too far from familiar Earthly creatures then you are in danger of making them too alien. In some cases, there is no logical accounting for how some alien species achieved a technological civilization, but we are not expected to ask if technology is possible underwater or how tools could be crafted and used by a species without suitable appendages.

Martin H. Greenberg apparently wanted a fictional universe that was ready-made for politics. For Isaac's Universe, a group of competing species needed to be similar in the sense that they were each spreading their culture through the galaxy and colonizing exoplanets. I find it interesting that Asimov was not interested in writing stories set in "Isaac's Universe". I suspect he had no stomach for the imaginary intricacies of alien politics.

Here is how Asimov described the political terrain of Isaac's Universe:

insectoid cover art by Martin Andrews (click to enlarge)

"...since disputes may arise [between the six species] there must be some form of political/social machinery to settle them."

Life not as we know it
Just how different from we humans could biological organisms be? NASA has spent decades trying to "follow the water" in its search for life in our Solar System. However, the discovery of methane oceans revived the question: could there be forms of life that do not depend on liquid water?

Imaginary "methane bear" in a methane ocean

A recent theoretical investigation examined the possibility that a radically different type of biological cell might be crafted as an azotosome. It is theoretically possible that a non-polar solvent such as methane might hold organisms with "inside-out membranes". For organisms like us, a cell membrane is polar on the outside, but in a liquid methane sea, cell membranes might form with their polar parts in the middle of a bilayer cell membrane.

Imaginary silicone life form (Horta)

Asimov was a biochemist and he long ago considered possibilities for how life might exist without water as the fundamental solvent. See his life not as we know it article. Yes, we would feel foolish if we ignored another form of biology by too narrow a focus on worlds that have liquid water, but I believe that Asimov knew that the other possible biochemistries (such as life in liquid methane) are improbable long-shots. And even if there was primitive cellular life in some methane ocean, what possible implication could that have for we humans and our science fiction adventures in the galaxy?

Too Human?

Map of the Sedronite species

The problem that I face in my investigation of the tryp'At is that they are "too human".  Last year I accepted the hypothesis that I am tryp'At. The uncomfortable corollary is that I was "planted" here in the Final Reality as a kind of "sleeper agent". In recent years, all non-humans (such as Ivory and Thomas) have been evicted from Earth, but apparently the tryp'At were crafted so as to meet the definition of "human".

The green blob in the diagram to the left is my attempt to define a boundary that includes those Sedronites who we should think of as being part of the human family. It may be that only the "run-of-the-mill" humans who make up the bulk of the current human population of Earth and a few tryp'At are "human enough" to be allowed on Earth at this time.

tryp'At Overseers

I fear that under the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact, R. Gohrlay was forced to agree to establish the tryp'At as a type of "police force" that would enforce the ethical laws of the Huaoshy. R. Gohrlay might have been given a choice: either you do it or the pek will do it.

Not only do I now find myself having to investigate the political motives of the tryp'At, but I fear that I am "on the wrong side" in that I'm apparently playing out my role as an agent of the tryp'At. My remaining hope is that the tryp'At have seen into the future and they know that their efforts to remove non-humans from Earth will have beneficial effects. My fear is that I'll be tricked into doing something that will have disastrous consequences for our world. Will the Exode Trilogy turn out to be a horror story after all?

Next: the Hugos

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