Epona II

I discussed the Epona project in this blog recently, and stated that it was at its time the biggest and best-developed world of fictional biology. Here is a surprise; it might very well still be the biggest such project! The problem is that most of it was only visible to the few people taking care of the project, among whom Greg Barr was one the people holding it all together. The website never showed more than the beginning of he project, and did not even discuss the major life forms and their physiology. The good news is that part of the old website has now been restored (it was damaged by a virus or a hacker). So take a look there, and let's hope that more of the wealth of Epona data will yet appear for all to see.

Meanwhile, I can discuss a few glimpses. There is a Kingdom Myoskeleta. These organisms do not have a sketelon, neither on the inside nor on the outside. What they have is a set of extensile muscles without joints. That is right, extensile muscles, not contractile ones. There were no bones, hence no joints. By expanding on a specific site in a thick muscle rod, the rod could bend, stretch or spiral in any shape desired. This was no mean feat; the limbs of any creature with such extensile muscles acted a bit like tentacles. I remember writing a critique on these muscles along the same lines as later reappeared in this blog: there were four blog entries called 'Why there is no walking with tentacles': one, two, three and four. If you read them, you will find that I made a case for the development of joints in any limb destined for serious weight bearing. I think that the arguments hold for tentacles of any type, with contractile or extensile muscles. By the way, I thought that extensile muscles could perhaps be made to work in a roundabout manner, but that is perhaps something for another day.

The myoskelata basically consist of a barrel with a set of limbs at either end. There are five of these limbs, and in principle they branch into three 'fingers'. Here is such a basic organism:

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The Myoskeleta are divided into two phyla: the Myophyta, plants for all practical purposes (the other phylum is the Pentapoda; they're animals). Take the basic shape, drop one end into the ground to act as roots, and span a membrane between the five limbs: that is a basic Pagoda Tree. If you add a similar layer ('tier') on top of it, you understand the tiered appearance of a pagoda forest. You will be able to recognise this fivefold symmetry for most of the plants shown on the cover of the recent book on how to grow Eponan plants (see the Hades Publishing page on the Furaha website).

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In principle these 'trees' can still move a bit, for instance to direct their leaves towards the sun. Intriguing, aren't they? I will add a few images of such Eponan forests. They are in development together with Steven Hanly.

Ah yes, I showed an image of a flying animal in the previous post. It was modeled by Steven, and is a pentapod, meaning its basic anatomy is similar to that of the trees it flies over. The species is a Uther, and it is intelligent. Life on Epona has developed intelligence, unlike Furaha (and the reason why there are no 'sophonts' on Furaha deserves mention on its own, one day).

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A stream in the forest.

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Somewhere else along the same stream.

One year on

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I started this blog on April 22, 2008, or almost a year ago. Has it been a success? Hard to tell, really. How do you judge the success of a blog? by the number of readers? In that case I should probably write about religion, politics and sex, preferably in combination. That suggests it might be more to the point to ask how you judge success of a blog devoted to speculative biology from the viewpoint of one person's particular take on the subject? You can't; suffice it to say that so far I like the number of visitors, which is growing, and like writing entries.

There were 39 entries in one year, not counting this one. Not exactly once a week, but not bad, I think. On May 19 last year I made a list of things I needed to learn in order to produce a good book on Furaha. Here they are again, with some comments:

* Photoshop: I use it regularly now, and am getting better, but still haven't really used it to paint.
* Blender: Nothing yet...
* Indesign: Yes! I am getting the hang of it.
* More species: Yes, but nothing detailed
* Cladograms: No, and at present they do not strike me as very useful.
* Textures: Yes! The astronomy page is proof of that.

And of course there are some things I did not foresee one year ago:
* Interesting contacts with several people, not just in the comments, but behind the scenes as well.
* Working on the blog takes away time from working on Furaha; hmmm...

To finish off and to celebrate, I will throw in a few images. The image at the top of this post was made as an experiment for a forum heavy on map making. Just for fun.
And some more:

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This is an Uther, a sophont from Epona. There's something in the wind about Epona...


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Surely you did not think I had forgotten the Interplanetary Zoo by Edd Cartier? The store of brilliant images hasn't dried up yet.

South of Brussels; again...

With spring and all that, there is the garden to consider, so real biology took precedence over speculative biology this Easter weekend. Then again, New Hades Publishers just announced two new books on the Furaha website (one on Epona and one on Snaiad), so don't complain!

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Anyway, what I can do is to direct you once more to our French friends: stirred perhaps in part by the attention given to their work Marc Boulay has been working on a gallery of their future animals. Just go to his site, click on the image of the penguin-like head saying 'Creatief met Darwin' (now where did I see that picture before?) and you will have found it.

Do not worry about the French on the next page. There are four oval links at the top right. Clicking on two of the ones starting with 'ecosystème' should make you happy (the third should make you patient).

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Here is an appetizer: an Arthrodon, a shark with some interesting characteristics: the row of fins looks like an atavism, but the 'moustache' is a new development: they are electric and are used to stun prey by electrocution.

I really will have to ask them one day how they obtain these nice effects on their sites. Very neat.

Epona I

Over the last few weeks I have asked for other projects dealing with fictional biology. One project wasn't mentioned much, possibly because most readers interested in this kind of thing know of it already, and assumed others did as well. I am talking about the 'Epona project'. At the time, and this is about 1994, it was without a doubt the largest project of its kind, involving the most people. That may no longer be the case, but what many people may not know is that the little that can be found on the Internet only hints at the enormous amount of material accumulated. It did receive its share of the limelight: for instance, there was a session at a World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow (1994 if I remember correctly), and it made the cover of Analog in November 1996, with a story set in the Epona universe as well as an essay of the scientific backgrounds, by Wolf Read). At present the Epona project seems to be fading out of the public eye, which is a pity.

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Cover of Analog, November 1996.
The animal flying in the foreground is an uther, Epona's sophont.

The project started from a 'Contact Conference', in which one group of people had to come up with alien intelligence, building up the attitude of the aliens from their biological background. Another group played the role of human explorers, and then there is contact. Read more about the Contact conferences here; you will also find some information regarding Epona there.

It grew from there. What made it unique was that it started with a planetary system, devised by Martyn Fogg (who later was kind enough to design Furaha's solar system about one year ago, as an aside for his PhD studies on solar system formation). The planet's geology came next, and the biology built directly on that. I will not mention all names of the 31 people formally involved in the project. You can find their names and much more on the website of the Epona Project. The site looks its age, but is still quite interesting. The thing is that life on land on Epona is only 10 million years old. Oddly, Epona is an old planet, and life there has existed for far longer than it has on Earth. So why hasn't life colonised the land before? Well, it has, and not just once but many times. It died out as many times afterwards.

The reason for this curious phenomenon, which I think is brilliant, is that the planet's system of continental drift has come to a virtual standstill: the planet is losing heat due to old age, and the crust is solidifying. The lack of continuous volcanism ensures that CO2 levels gradually drop, causing the roof of the greenhouse to be opened, so to speak. It gets colder and colder, and life on land is impoverished until it gets to the dead or boring stages.

But every once in a while, say 100 million years, the crust convulses in a gargantuan volcanic shudder, spewing out enormous amounts of CO2. That creates an instant greenhouse effect: the glaciers retreat to the poles, and life crawls onto the beach once more. That is the setting of Epona at present. The last 10 million years have seen an outburst of adaptive radiation of life on land, filling it with an array of forms that at times look maladaptive and at other times look very fit indeed.

It is a pity that the website doesn't show you much of the wildlife that was devised there. Luckily, more can be found on the site of Steven Hanly, who, along with Wolf Read, did many illustrations. I will show a few here, with his permission (there are more on his site!). Looking at them now make you realise the enormous strides computer graphics has made in the last 15 years. The images on Steven's site date from that period, and were among the best that a nonprofessional could then hope to achieve.

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First, here is the image on Analog's cover, but larger and uncluttered

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Next, a single pagoda tree. Note that is has a fairly simple build. Life hasn't evolved anything like wood yet, so the stems are herbaceous in nature.

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A view of a landscape, with more pagoda's.

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A beautiful sunset view

So that's Epona. I do have more material on Epona's lifeforms, and will perhaps show some of it here later. But not everything about Epona is in the past. Together with Steven Hanly I have been trying to see whether we could produce some new images of Epona. Here is a test render done in Vue Infinite. It doesn't show many different species yet, but it is a beginning...

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Test render of some 2009 pagoda trees

A Natural history of Skull Island

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King Kong? King Kong?? Surely there's nothing there of interest for anyone interested in as serious a subject as fictional biology? After all, this is an American film script for an adventure movie from the thirties, so it is not likely to be consistent in any fashion, not even within the story. There is a sinking island, with lots of big dinosaurs on it that somehow survived the last 65 million years. Somewhat surprisingly there are also enormous gorillas there; their ancestors somehow made it from the Virunga mountains to a solitary island at the other side of the world and then quickly became gigantic. The only thing that is believable is that there are humans; humans are even more widespread than cockroaches after all, so that part does make sense. It's probably for the best that no-one decided to rectify all these issues when the film was remade, as there would be no point. The film would not be the same without Kong fighting off a tyrannosaur descendant. So, if you forget that the premise for the story is ludicrous, what's left? A large number of extremely well-designed and animated creatures, of course. Forget about the story, just look at the animals. I guess you may have seen the movie, but there is an interesting book to go along with it: 'The world of Kong. A natural history of Skull Island'. It can be bought directly from the people at Weta, but also through other channels such as Amazon. The authors did their best to come up with some information to fill holes in the logic, and do so rather well. Of course, suspension of disbelief is needed, but that is not difficult: the book is too much fun to be grumpy. I have had it for some time and still I leaf through it every now and then, simply to look at the animals. They are every bit as good as the Venusian animals shown in a previous post (there are a few I think less well painted, but that would be nit-picking). I will not show the big dinosaurs, so if you want those you will have to buy the book, but will focus on a few of the smaller animals.

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This is an Aerosaur (Aerosaurus verdens), an evolutionary experiment in flight. No doubt all of you are reminded of the dinosaurs in whom both the front as well as the hind legs provided lift. Here's another one. I really admire the liveliness of the painting.

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Some lovingly done mosquitoes. The middle one is Mortaspis. According to the text these various mosquito lookalikes are about two inches long, which is probably pushing the limit for blood-sucking insects. But with animals such as dinosaurs and Kong around, perhaps... I put this one in because I think the quality is really outstanding. The name seems to read as 'Mahy', but I could not find that name or anything looking like it in the list of illustrators in the book.

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Finally, some more carnivorous insects (the original is better; I had to manipulate the scans). If you have the impression that most of the illustrations deal with aggressive animals out to eat others, you would be right... But there are herds of herbivorous dinosaurs out there, so the food chain is not forgotten. By the way, a visit to the Weta website is recommended; they have some very creative people down under.

South of Brussels II

© Marc Boulay / Sylvia Lorrain - ADAGP Paris 2000-2009
© Jean-Sébastien Steyer - CNRS 2000-2009

Meanwhile, our French friends responsible for the Brussels exposition discussed earlier, not just once but twice, have updated their three websites (here, here and a new link here). As you can see they were happy with the attention drawn to their work on my site, just as I was to have discovered theirs. They are promising to open a gallery about their animals of the future. Worth looking into. Here's a Phoruschacos. I thought you might like to know.

By the way, I will probably have to come back to the blog slightly less frequently, or else there will never be any new Furaha work, nor the new books on Snaiad and elsewhere, nor the Galfloat page, nor the Eponan rinascimento, etc....

How much more Speculative Biology is there? II

Thanks to those who took the time to help prepare a list of other fictional biology systems. I will use the results to update the list of links on my Furaha page. I had hoped that there might be new worlds completely unknown to me, but so far it seems as if we have all found the same sites. Perhaps there is something interesting going on in Japan or China. If there is, please let me know!

Josh was quite right about the beast I showed last time: it is indeed a shallow-beaked Grogan from Venus. You can find it, and three others like it, on the website of the inimitable Dr. Grordbort. 'Dr Grordbort' is a steampunk subsidiary from Weta in New Zealand, the people famous for the special effects in King Kong, The Lord of the Rings, etc. Should you wish to, you can buy marvellous ray guns in steampunk fashion from Weta (although you may find them to be a trifle costly).

Last time I had erased the name of the shallow beaked Grogan from the image, as that would make it a bit too easy. To rectify that, here it is again. I cannot make out the name of the artist, which is a pity, as I would like to give credit where it is due. If you look at the other animals on the site, the number of legs seems to vary. The Grogan seems to have six originally, and the middle one is split halfway. Arthropods on Earth can have a biramous leg design, with one branch forming the walking leg and the other part can be something else, such as a gill. But the split occurs then very close to the body, so the two branches are completely separated mechanically. In the Grogan's case, the split occurs halfway down, which doesn't seem very handy, as the top branch, that seems to be there to grasp things, would wobble along when the animal walks. Still, the grasping legs are intriguing: could this be a Venusian example of Centaurism? (discussed here and here). The neck looks odd as well, but could work, I think.


Next, a lively image of a Grogan hunt. Steampunk adventurers don't go in for conservation, it seems, but prefer to view wildlife lined up in their sights. What ho!


By the way, a Weta is a large New Zealand insect. If you care to look closely at them, you will see has a pair of appendages at their rear end: cerci. In my musings on Centaurism, I wondered whether centaurism occur on the hind end of animals as well. StevenH came up with the earwig, with a pincer at its rear end. Wikipedia treats cerci as being derived legs, so, if that is true, there is 'posterior centaurism' as well. How nice to bring two threads together.

In the hope of uncovering unknown fictional biology from Japan or wherever, I repeat my question to let me know of any unknown worlds. Again, I will whet the appetite asking you for the source of the following image. It's from Weta, but you have to be more specific than that.

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