Alex Ries

Alex Ries is an Australian illustrator and concept artist, currently based in Melbourne.
He is probably best known for his original approach to creature design and has worked with clients including book publishers, videogame developers and the scientific and medical communities.

His education and experience, coupled with a strong interest in biology, zoology and real-world technology, has fostered an amazingly artistic style able to not only accurately illustrate life from the real world, but fictional life as well.

He's been doing this for years and for a range of medias, but especially his thought and designs on aliens are interesting. They all seems very applaudable and real, and you accept them on the spot as living beings.
His designs, colours and the way he poses and presents his creatures makes you think more in the lines of BBC nature and historic programs than Star Wars I-VI. It's all got this underplayed tune running as a red line throughout most of his artwork.

Birrin:
And even though most of his stuff is worth a close study, his Birrin project close to being his most fascinating one.

The Birrin are a sentient hexapod (six limbed) living on a Venus sized home world. And they seem to enjoy life immensely! They do drugs, socialize, explores, hunts and fights with great enthusiasm.
He illustrates and writes small scenarios of their social and cultural development through the ages, which is not quite unlike ours.
I really like their designs very much and I am always eager to see more about the Birrin.

If I have to put my finger on anything, it has to be that I still need to see where they really differ from us, other than in their apperance. What's their psyche like? When threatened, how do they react?
I am aware that some theories works with the idea, that civilized alien species will have more in common than not (read interesting io9 article here), but what if they for example communicated via chemicals? How would that effect their cultural and technological development? Stuff like that...
But that's minor details. I still find them more believable than the Na'vi... 

Alex Ries uses his Deviantart account both as a gallery for his brilliant art as well as as a puplic forum, where he posts thought for general debate and decision making on anything related to his works. 

For a short introduction to him, his works and his thoughts, don't hessitate to watch this wee video presentation made in connection with a course he gave at Phoenix Atelier in the fall of 2013. 

Origin of Life?

One of the questions that's been annoying me for years is this: What is the point with life?
Not "what's the point" in any general or philosophical way, but literally: What IS the point?
And don't bother bringing God into this. It's a whole other discussion, and I'd be happy to take that up later, but for now I'm on another mission.

Because what is the point with life?

Everything else in the universe seems to fall into some patterns or laws, which gives some kind of purpose. Gasses come together and form giant clouds that becomes structures that becomes stars and planets - all bound by laws of physics. The planets are kept orbiting stars, stars orbiting the galaxy etc. It makes kind of sense! It's there because it cannot not be there! It's a kind of universal evolution. I'm probably speaking against better knowledge, but then I'd love to be educated. Life doesn't seem to follow laws as such. It's just a byproduct - something that accidentally popped up on this tiny cockwheel in the universal clockwork.

So how did life come to be? Is it a physical reaction of chemicals and lightning, or a freak accident?

A young MIT scientist, Jeremy England (By the way - isn't that just the coolest name for a science guy ever?) has come up without very interesting thesis: Life evolved out of a necessity on an atomic scale:

"From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. 

Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by 

a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. 

This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life."   

He states that the origin and evolution of life are processes driven by the fundamental laws of nature — namely the Second Law of Thermodynamics. He's come up with a formula showing how a group of atoms, when driven by an external source of energy (like the sun) and when surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), can sometimes restructure itself as a way to dissipate increasing rates of energy.

So, according to the Jeremy England, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”

“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England continous.

The thesis has gained a lot of response from the scientific community - responses reaching from  "interesting" to "absurd" and "pure speculation."

I'd go with "interesting" here, because it kind of makes sense to me. 

Of course, this planet could for all we know be the only one with any kind of life on it. We might just have to face the fact, that we are alone in this universe. But it would be odd, wouldn't it?

I guess that if the theory of Jeremy England is true, chances on finding traces of life on Mars just got beefed up...

Wanna know more? //www.simonsfoundation.org/quanta/20140122-a-new-physics-theory-of-life/

Idolomantis diabolica

This bug is just... striking, I guess the correct term is.

It's the "Idolomantis Diabolica" - also depictured above...

An awesome little trooper.

It really is a huge universe...

I really haven't got a lot to say but this: It's an enormous clock, and we're but corner goo on a minor cogwheel...

What is a jellyfish?

Alien jellyfish is the 90'es equivalent of the 50'es bug-eyed aliens. They're still alien to behold, but sooo peaceful and tranquil. Like the hippies of the deep sea.

Having said so this little movie is quite a treat - and it reminds us just how strange these creatures are - and that a jellyfish isn't just any jellyfish. Our definition of "jellyfish" looks a bit daft after watching this, since said definition basically just is a large box containing whatever looks see-through and wobbly found anywhere near water. They aren't the same species for a start. So watch and learn. I'm amazed here. 

And here I haven't even been taking up on the Awwwww! factor. It looks awesome.

Enjoy the movie :)

Angels and Apes

I haven't blogged for quite some time now, primary because my wife is hugely pregnant, and secondly because writing a scifi story is like catching fish with oily hands. Whenever you finally get one thing straight something else turns on you.
I've come to realize that that's what this blog is mostly about. To straighten my path out, and giving me a broader perspective on what the Frag I'm doing!

I started out with a regular story (an old story I wrote a years ago)- it was a bit messy, and maybe a little more lightheaded than I usually like, but entertaining in it's own right. Now I want the universe the story takes place in to be whole and believeable in it's own right.
So I started collecting everything I knew and could find about space, evolution and life and threw that into the boiling pot. But the more I got into the science part, the wierder the fiktion part became. I had to find out more about means of travel, communication, aliens, future humanity, settlements, living in an ancient universe, and most important: Which solutions I wanted to use in the story! Questions like: Is there a thing like an alien civilization at all? And if so, is it in the story? And are there more than one?  (I decided to go "Yes" on those ones, by the way...)

I like Star Trek, but to me those aliens are rarely truely alien. And that's because Star Trek always are about human interactions, and never aliens. I want the alien to be truely alien and overwhelming. To keep the mysteries mysterious. And the more I thought about it, the harder it got. Because how do you describe something as strange as the unknown and unseen and on top of that make it interact with us, with humans? And wanting it to do so?
To quote Sir Arthur C. Clarke: 

If one considers the millions of years of pre-history, and the rapid technological advancement occurring now, if you apply that to a hypothetical alien race, one can figure the probabilities of how advanced the explorers will find them. The conclusion is that we will find apes or angels, but not men.

I love science - I do. And I find inspiration in it every single day. It has made me see how miraculous our planet must be, just by being here. Where ever you go - There's nowhere like here. It's unique. But there are other places as just wonderfull as this small planet. There has to be. At least that what science and mathematics has tought me.
So I have to walk a very fine line - and I may not succeed at all - of what I think I know there can be and of how my story wants to be presented. Science on one side and space opera on the other.

Captain Rob



I know flares are cheap - I just luv 'em so much an' wanna hug 'em for ever an' ever
an' squeeze 'em an' snuggle an' cuddle 'em...