The aliens in our minds... (III)

Ahhh - Starslip Crisis (now without the Crisis) - cracks me up every time.

The aliens in our minds (II)

A new species has been found - a kind of worm  - only half a milimeter long - living in the mouthparts of Norway lobsters (also known as Dublin Bay prawns or langoustines) and their reproductive cycle are most interesting:

"A phylum is a broad division in taxonomy: all vertebrates, for example, from fish to humans, are in the chordate phylum. In 1995, Peter Funch and Reinhardt Mobjerg Kristensen, both then at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, discovered an animal so unlike any other that a new phylum – Cycliophora – had to be created just for it.

Symbion pandora, as they called the new creature, is a tiny animal with a complex body and a bizarre life cycle. They live on the hairy mouthparts of Norway lobsters, with tens or even hundreds per lobster. They feed on bits of leftover food and seem to be harmless to their hosts.

Things start to get complicated when you consider their life cycle. Let's start with a feeding animal living on a lobster's mouthparts: this individual – it's hard to assign a sex – can then produce one of three kinds of offspring: a "Pandora" larva, a "Prometheus" larva or a female.

The Pandora larva develops into another feeding adult – a straightforward case of asexual reproduction. By contrast, the female remains inside the adult and awaits a male – but, attentive readers will be crying, what male?
The answer lies in the Prometheus larva. This attaches itself to another feeding adult, then produces two or three males from within itself. These dwarf males, which are even more internally complex than the other stages, seek out the females and fertilise them – though the details are unknown.
Once the female has been fertilised, she leaves the adult's body and hunkers down in a sheltered region of the lobster's mouthparts. Her body, no longer needed, turns into a hard cyst. Inside this, a fertilised egg develops into yet another stage: the chordoid larva.

In due course this larva hatches and swims off to colonise another lobster. Once it has attached itself to one, it develops into another adult and the cycle begins again."

So if reproduction can be so different here - how mindblowing different could it be many a lightyear or parsec away? Fascinating.
Link: NewScientist

The aliens in our minds...

Yesterday I came across this article about Stephen Hawkings warning us against aliens. They may have been around for a very long time, and may not recognise us as being especially gifted in the thinking department.  Intelligence is not a constant, and even Stephen Hawkings himself may be concidered to be nothing more than a clever tadpole by them.

Hawking’s logic on aliens is, for him, unusually simple. The universe, he points out, has 100 billion galaxies, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. In such a big place, Earth is unlikely to be the only planet where life has evolved. The numbers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational.

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

Human perception of aliens has always been based on what we already know about deep space, celestial dwellers - namely ourselves.
From Star Trek to Star Wars, from Enemy Mine to Forbidden Planet, from Journey to the moon to Avatar - it's all about humans and being human. We simply can't grasp the idea, of what kind of alien we just might encounter somewhere in the future, but it won't look human. So forget the ripled foreheads - chances are they don't even have foreheads! Everything we are, is a product of the planet earth itself. If Earth was a bit bigger or smaller, our frame would probably be different, if the plantlife had never evolved, the planet would probably be without oxygen, and our respiration would have to be Anaerobic. Not to mention the distance to the star, how many moons, the amount of water, which atmosphere and so on.

Even if an exo-planet would be the same size, having plants, having mammals, the chance of a monkey to turn up would be very slim, and even if so - would it sprout a brain? And if it did - just remember that for about 70.000 years ago a bottleneck of the human population occurred, reducing human population to about c.15,000 individuals! It's a miracle that even we are on this planet.
Some of my favorite aliens are the bugs in Starship Trooper (for their "alieness") and the inhabitants of Alien Planet (designs by Wayne Barlowe are inspiring and alien. He did alien design for Avatar as well, but I won't comment on those here).

Having said this - it's a genuine problem to describe aliens in fiction. Since most readers will be human, how can they relate to an alien being as strange as it possibly will be? Aliens may communicate with fumes, chemistry, light, signs, whatever is handy on they homeplanet. They may react emotionally on totally different signs as we do. They won't have any recognisable body language or expressions for us to go by. They probably won't have genders like we do, so forget the Orion slave girls... And I haven't even taken cultures into the equation yet.

So when producing fiction, you have to walk a fine line, when it comes to describing what cannot be fully understood. And that's possibly why the good Professor Hawking has been ridiculed for stating that we should avoid aliens. Because he believes, that they are out there, and they are not your average Vulcan - they are Something Else. And the lot that ridicules him seems to lack imagination.

I'd love to see aliens more alien in future fiction and real aliens to turn out more friendly and forthcoming than we've ever been...

Valkyria Chronicles - Development Artworks.

This must be the most excellent book I never get to own! Just popped by Parka Blogs (at http://www.parkablogs.com/) for a quick whiff of what's cool and awesome, and found this!

I've never seen the game "Valkyria Chronicles," but according to the wikipedia it's a turn based (not a word against turn based games from me!) taking place in Europe in an alternate universe in 1935. Two superpowers, The Autocratic East European Imperial Alliance and The Atlantic Federation are faring war (the Second European War) over a multi-purpose mineral called Ragnite.

It has been critically acclaimed by a numerous sources, such as writers for IGN, RPGland, RPGFan, G4TV's X-Play, Gametrailers,and Gamespot. It's graphic utilizes SEGA's CANVAS graphics engine, and resembles a watercolor painting in motion! (This I bravely copy/pasted from the Wiki. because it sounded so cool...) The in-game visuals should be some of the most beautiful in 2008, winning awards for Best Graphics from both GameSpot and RPGamer, and a score brilliantly composed. All this of course sprouted both manga and anime adaptions from the original game.
All this is truly amazing, but what I'm still awestruck about is this book called "戦場のヴァルキュリア (Valkyria Chronicles) Development Artworks". 400 pages of blissful awesomeness, filled with stuff I never knew I needed to know. Just reading the review at Parka Blogs was a direct linkup to pure inspiration!

I quote from PB:

"There's plenty of character design. There are so many characters I lost count somewhere. Each character has different drawn profiles, uniforms, weapons, armour and gadgets. Just like the game, all these are in watercolour style with pencils. There's also plenty of (Japanese) commentary.
Under the Weapons and Machine sections, lots of tanks are featured, among other war machines. You'll get to see the different sides of the tank profiles and 3D models before and after paint is added. They are very beautiful and detailed. Absolutely gorgeous. All the fact sheets are included, as with all the characters.
And there are also the set and background concept art for the locations. Most of them are development sketches and paintings."

"The book is split into different chapters, namely Story, Characters, Weapon Machine, Military Affairs Natural History, Geography, Illustration, Preproduction and Interview. It's loaded with beautiful concept art for all aspect of the game. Character designs, storyboards, background art, promotional art, etc."

I lack words. It sounds - simply fantastic! And the graphics looks great!

But... It's sold out, in Japanese, and is just out of reach on so many levels, that I probably never get to hold it in my unworthy hands.

SteamPunk on speed

My newest find: http://www.smartmaxstore.com/. It's both cool as well as inspirering, filled with SteamPunk to such a degree that rust may become permanently stuck to your screen after visiting. Don't miss the oppotunity to explore the universe of "Smog" - a Victorian fantasy - and this is how it starts: "Follow the plume of smoke of the Bristol train and the houses of Notting Hill appear one after the other before your eyes. This very train stops shortly after tea time in Paddington station where luggage carriers – much too young to carry suitcases without effort – surround travellers checking in at the Great Western Hotel. The ones who have business in the City take mechanical cabs and rush into Bayswater Road."

Check out their figurines - they're fantastic in that insane way only SteamPunk can present.

Miss Ticklenott is just one of the colourfull  inhabitants of the "Smog" universe but don't miss out on the other world  they've created - the "Mauser Earth" - more SteamPunk, which unfortunately at present time is offline. Go enjoy the artwork, and do buy if you feel tempted.

Tomb by mrcolossal

Tomb: A very alive and kicking web comic, that just shouldn't be missed. This is good stuff for any comic craving soul. The anarchy just seem to ooze out of the page. Go see. Now!

See more of mrcolossal other comics and and brilliant sketches at his blog:

http://mrcolossal.livejournal.com/

And don't miss his Star Trek: Next Generation satire!

Sparth

Sparth (aka. Nicholas Bouvier) is possibly one of the most amazing SciFi illustrators I've seen in a while. I just spend the last few hours cruising around in his artwork, and I must say. It's breathtaking! His work with light is just awesome. Please do yourself a favor and check him out. He's amazing...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sparth-art/with/4488920324/ or just hit the picture...

Enjoy

/Jon