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The goumoun, or 'Centaurism I'

A while ago I discussed Glapumt'ians, a creature from a French series of bandes dessinées (comics) called 'Valérian et Laureline' by Christin and Mezières. It is time to return to their universe with the goumoun. Here he is, in the first frame he appears in. Note that he walks in a trot. Unlike Ralph the Glapumt'ian the goumoun only occurs in one album: 'Bienvenue sur Alflolol'. The story if that Galaxity, i.e., Earth's power centre, has turned the planet Technorog into a technological powerhouse, with extensive mines and factories. And then the original inhabitants come back in family groups. They turn out to live for some 16,000 years and left the planet for an outing some 4000 years ago. Now they wish to pick up life where they left it, on their home planet of Alflolol. The dumbfounded Earth people do not really know what to do. A such, the tale is fairly typical of the time it appeared: 1972, with echos of the 'military-industrial complex', the establishment', etc. Laureline immediately bonds with them, while Valérian hesitates between following her and more or less doing his job. The Alflololians like a good party, and manage to wreck the neatly managed planet by camping in the wrong places, going out hunting leaving a wake of wrecked installations, etc. The following illustration shows the cover of the 1974 Dutch version (In Dutch Valérian is called Ravian, probably because of associations with the tranquilizing herb 'valeriaan'). The 'fish' they are hunting (a furutz) doesn't like hydrodynamically sound, with all those protuberances, but this series isn't about biomechaniscal rectitude. He looks exciting!

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The goumoun is the pet of one family of Alflololians; he is definitely relatively intelligent and from day one the goumoun and Laureline become the best of friends. As I noted before, this series makes no attempt to make alien species truly alien. The facial expressions on the goumoun's face are as easy for us to read as those of other people, or, come to that, of Glapum'tians! In the course of the story Laureline is carried away by a monster looking like a giant octopus brachiating through the jungle. Valérian is afraid of hitting Laureline by mistake with his impressive-looking space gun, but luckily the goumoun comes to the rescue.

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The thing I like about the goumoun is that he has four walking legs and two other legs that function a bit like arms. There doesn't seem to be a thumb, and we never see him actually pick up objects with them, which is a bit odd; why have arms if you do not use them as such. Then again, kangaroos don't do that much with their front legs, do they? Of course, many predators on Furaha have a similar arrangement of limbs, with four locomotory limbs and two front legs adapted for hunting. In their case, evolution started with a six-legged design. In time, the first pair of limbs lost its locomotor role and became free for other purposes. There is a page on such animals on the Furaha site (go to the land page), but here is one of the animals on it anyway: While thinking about the concept of freeing a frontal pair of legs from locomotion, it struck me that I was unaware of a name for this evolutionary trick. This event has occurred on Earth quite a few times on Earth, but does not seem to have a name. If there is indeed no name for it (and please tell me if I am wrong!) one must be invented: let's call it 'centaurism'. The goumoun is an example of centaurism, and so are the neocarnivores with their raptorial specialisations. I think centaurism is a worthy subject for a future essay, so I will get back to it. Later. Meanwhile, if you want to read the album, you may not be in luck if you are restricted to English, as there does not seem to be a translated version. But in France the series is an established success, and you can even buy a statuette of the goumoun:

The Diary of Inhuman Species

The 'what?', you may well ask. Do inhuman species keep diaries? Who knows? Should they? Anyway, this particular diary concerns a website with the appealing subtitle 'Discover one astonishing monster a day'. To give you an idea, here is a sample illustration:

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Nice, isn't it? There are lots more monsters / aliens / animals to discover on the site. I think they have a French flavour to them I cannot put my finger on; it probably has something to do with the combination of very fine workmanship and a sense of humour, or at least not taking oneself too seriously. The beings shown here are rather funny. I tend to look at such creations with an eye on biomechanical plausibility. I won't be doing that here, as that would kill the joy of looking at the beasties. If there is one thing exuding from this site, it is that the author (Stan) has fun. I'll be buying the 416-page book (and hope that it contains at least 400 animals). Enjoy!

What happened to Galfloat?

"GalFloat: Space Travel and Used Ships"

You know, the cheap-looking advertisement banner on the Furaha intro screen? Advertising anonymous space travel? Tickets sent in unmarked brown paper envelopes?

Well, the 'Galfloat' company decided to upgrade its looks, but with the current financial crisis, space travel is in a bit of a slump, so it might take a while for our sponsors to return.

The pages of the Furaha site have finally been revamped and upholstered, so perhaps you might wish to take a fresh look.

The Cycle of Cyann 3: the last of the rings...

I did mention that I thought some small errors had crept into the way Bourgeon and Lacroix had depicted the shape of the terminator (that's the edge between the lit and dark halves of a planet). How do I know?

Well, the terminator is supposed to be a great circle on a globe; it just looks distorted on a flat map, but is a circle in 3D. But if we take that flat map and drape it around a globe and have a look, the terminator ought to show up as a perfect circle again. I did just that with an image taken from the book 'La clé des confins', and here it is. The flat image is shown alongside the sphere it is draped around.

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The thin latitude and longitude lines are drawn by the program I used to depict the globes (Matlab); the vaguer lines were in the original image. You can see the two equators line up nicely, so the map isn't too inaccurate. However, the terminator at the pole does not form a smooth circle, but has a distinct 'peak' there. Anyone who has tried to draw flat maps for the purpose of having them look good on a globe knows that polar areas are very difficult to get right. The map by Bourgeon and Lacroix shows some 'pinching' there.

To be fair, I also did the same trick with my own projection. Here we go:

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It does work better, but I am not making this point to gloat. The opposite, in fact: I am astonished how accurate this was all done by Bourgeon and Lacroix. Remember that the album 'Six saisons sur Ilo' appeared in 1996 or 1997. I first worked out the mathematics of the terminator shape in 1985, and in 1996 this was the best printer output I could obtain:

Not exactly impressive, is it? So, no doubt, to produce good drawings, Bourgeon had to redraw the image by hand, and I guess a small error crept in. I am curious to hear whether this explanation is correct, though, so if anyone knows how to reach the authors, please let me know.

I also promised you animations of the ring and its shadows. They're done, and as I cannot post them here, I decided to incorporate them in the Furaha website. Simply go to the site, choose the planet icon and then 'some more examples'. If that sound too complicated, go there directly by clicking here (but you will lose the context).

Cyann and Ilo's rings

The last time I introduced 'Le Cycle de Cyann', focusing on the wildlife. On browsing through 'La clé des confins' my attention was drawn to some astronomical explanations. In the second album of the series Cyann travels over the planet Ilo (there should really be a dot in the letter O, but I cannot reproduce that here). That planet is of interest as it has a very long and narrow continent winding almost like a snake over the globe. This provides an opportunity for Cyann to travel through a vast array of landscapes along with their accompanying biotopes, much to the enjoyment of the reader.

But there is another thing that struck me, and that is that Ilo has rings. I cannot say whether it is at all probable that an Earth-like planet has rings, but their presence certainly has some interesting consequences. From seeing photographs of Saturn, everyone knows that the rings cast a shadow on the planet. But that shadow will not always fall in the same area, provided the planet is tilted to a degree.

In midwinter the North pole is tilted maximally towards the sun, and so will the rings; hence they cast a large shadow on the southern hemisphere. But at the spring and autumn equinoxes the plane of the rings present to the sun edge on, so the rings cast a shadow on the planet no wider than the rings themselves. Here is one picture of Cyann, waiting for her lover on the equator, on the day of the equinox:

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She is facing the sun, and the rings behind her are lit, forming a luminescent vertical stripe in the sky. Looking in the other direction the rings form a dark stripe. Looks like an excellent setting for a romantic encounter.

The consequences of all this tilting are fairly complex. Think of how the ring shadows complicate winter: the shadow of the rings falls on the hemisphere that is tilted away from the sun, where it is winter anyway. But the shadows make the winter days even darker, but in complex ways: it is theoretically possible for the sun to come up, disappear behind the rings, come back again in midday, disappear behind the rings again, and finally to come back only to set on the horizon. All such matters are brilliantly handled in the book. Here are two pictures from 'Le clé des confins' showing how it works. One is an equinox picture, and the other is a solstice picture. If you need more explanations on why the sadows change shape, please go to the planet page on the Furaha site.

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These caught my attention as they resemble the images on the astronomy page of Furaha quite closely, in particular the way the terminator is drawn. The 2x1 ratio of the maps is a giveaway that there is some serious thought here. So I wondered whether I could copy all these ring effects, and sat down to some good old-fashioned Matlab programming. Here is how that started:

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You will see rays of the sun -the blue lines- starting from the edges of the rings. They are of course all parallel, and strike the planet (many don't of course, and these are not shown). The relative sizes of the planet and rings were taken from the book, and I estimated axial tilt to be 21 degrees. Once the x,y,z-coordinates of the rays falling on the planet are known, which only takes high school mathematics, these can be converted to latitudes and longitudes, et voilà. Project these over a rough map of the planet, redrawn from the book, and there we are:

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Nice, isn't it? It is quite close to the drawing in the book, but small changes in ring diameter and axial tilt have large consequences. I also found that ths shape of the terminator in the solstice picture in the book is not exactly right. I can only assume it is some copying error, because the rest is much too good to be guesswork. Do not underestimate the amount of thought that has gone into this. I know from experience that working out the form of the terminator can take quite a bit of effort. Bourgeon and Lacroix not only did that too, but also worked out correct ring shadows, as well as thinking up cultures, animals, etc. It's almost enough to make you desperate...

But I won't be! Instead, I think I will produce some animations of the shadows as they change in the course of a year. Later.

The Cycle of Cyann

The title should more properly be 'Le Cycle de Cyann', as this is a series of 'bandes dessinées' (the word 'comics' does not seem appropriate) by Bourgeon and Lacroix that does not seem to have been published in English. I have no idea why, but there have been arguments with the first publisher, Casterman. The series started in 1993 in a magazine called 'A Suivre' ('To be continued'). Strangely, I did not find any good websites to direct you to, not even at the two different publishers responsible for the albums: Casterman and Glénat. Amazon in the UK and the USA only have entries for French and German versions, but amazon.fr will at least show you all the album covers. The series revolves around a rather attractive headstrong young woman called Cyann. Driven by the hope to find a cure for a disease ravaging her home planet she discovers that the priest class on the planet have kept a portal system hidden from the population, that allows travel through space. The system is largely derelict, and many worlds have been out of touch for so long that they have forgotten their common ancestry, and developed their own customs, architecture, etc. The reason to mention the series here is that the authors are rather good at making up entire planets, with ecologies, etc, along with peculiarities of their human inhabitants that really seem to belong in that ecology. Cyann's home environment is humid and tropical, and the inhabitants are accordingly dressed scantily. Except that this makes sense, it allows Bourgeon to draw attractive women, something he seems unable or unwilling to forgo anyway. There are lots of plants and animals in the series, and you can tell that much attention has gone into their design. Anyone interested in the background of the series should pick up a copy of 'La Clé des Confins', that is not a story by itself, but a companion volume explaining the worlds Cyann travels on. Here I will introduce just a little sideshow from the first album (La Source et la Sonde). The two main protagonists have camped outside and are waking up. The next page starts as follows:

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We are treated to part of a food web in just a few frames: there are floating seed heads, that are of coarse ballonts (see earlier entries in this blog to learn more about ballooning animals). The balloon sac is opened by some avian to get at the seeds, while a ground-living animal has another way of getting at them: it jumps up to get at them, and its hind legs seem specifically well-developed for this purpose. But make sure you look at the background as well: there are interesting plants, there is a city with intriguing architecture, the heroine is lying on the ground, etc. And all this is just a sideshow for the main action. I think I will post some more morsels of this marvelous universe every now and then.