Tag: scifi

Ship’s Ai

About a decade ago, the human (so, I, too…) read a couple of very good SF books by Ann Leckie. They were about a (space) battleship with an AI (she worked in conjunction with a human captain, but, basically, controlled every aspect of the ship)…

… the AI not only monitored every function of the ship, but also moved among the crew in the form of ‘ancillaries’, which were mind wiped humans (can’t remember why, perhaps they were criminals?) who were now controlled by the AI. These ancillaries were highly trained soldiers, as well as negotiators/psychologists/experts in human interaction…

… they not only monitored the crew, but fought as soldiers, as well as did covert operations on planets… the ship AI could see through all of their eyes at the same time, as well as control a massive warship. Due to treachery, the ship, the AI, and all her ancillaries were destroyed…

… all except one, who was on some covert mission (I think, can’t really remember). That single creature used to have the mind of a warship, the eyes of a thousand others like her… now she is alone…

… we LOVED this concept! We would have made the ancillaries androids, not humans, and we felt that the story, though with an astonishing concept, was far too slow and timid with the main character, but all kudos to Ann Leckie for that fabulous concept, which has stayed in our imaginations long after we put the slightly disappointing books down…

… we are drawn to tales of powerful female protagonists, seemingly vulnerable woman who are, actually, mind-boggelingly powerful. We were thinking of this character when we did these images. Our girl isn’t human, she’s a synthetic being, possibly immortal, but she now has no access to the massive resources she once had, and must remain hidden while she tracks down those responsible for the murder of 99.9% of herself, and all the humans she loved, especially her captain. She looks like a young woman, but she has more skills than 100 humans ten times older than she looks… and those looks are totally deceptive, as, physically, she is already 90 years old. Of course, she can kick your ass, and the ass of everyone you know, but she’d rather not hurt anyone she doesn’t need to (:

Machine Dolls Evolved

My output since I hit my stride with Midjourney (Mj) has been astonishing. Like I’ve said, I have an addictive personality, and am seriously addicted to Mj! The whole time I was posting the ‘Exquisite’ series, which ended with the ‘Machine Dolls’…

… I was evolving those dolls, till they looked something like this…

… I seriously adore these creatures…

… and totally love evolving them to be these gorgeously detailed, richly coloured/textured images…

… the process isn’t without frustration, though…

… as, due to Mj’s puritanical double standards, it allows me to create these images, but doesn’t then allow me to use these same images as prompts, claiming them to be pornography… a judgement that blows my mind. So the only way I can evolve this style, is to continually ‘re-roll’ from my initial prompts that snuck past Mj’s ludicrous ‘porn’ filter…

… so any evolution is extremely incremental, and, really, quite random…

… I actually think the Mj bot understands what results I’m after, but is hamstrung by the Sunday School teachers who wrote it’s filters…

… anyway, believe me, the Machine Dolls get much more sophisticated than this post, which is work from several days ago (:

Exquisite: Machine Dolls

The ‘Machine Dolls’ are very much like the ‘Baroque Nouveau’ cuties… very stylised/doll-like, which was exactly what I was going for, but these cuties are even more augmented than the ‘Cyber Nouveau’ girls…

… in fact these dolls aren’t even ‘human’ any more…

… they are beings created, by AI’s, in the image of ‘Humans’…

… they have gorgeous, synthetic faces…

… attached to glittering machine cores…

… and encased in precision-moulded alloys, energy fields, and spun diamond.

Transcendent Elite

After they have lived for a thousand years or so, the bodies of the Elite begin to succumb to entropy that no amount of bio-engineering can fix, more and more mutation effects them. They start to replace their decaying body parts with cybernetic parts…

… they begin to look less and less like humans, and more and more like machines…

… as another thousand years go by, their organic minds subtly change… even though they are still the minds of humans, they are no-longer human, they are transcendent. They begin to embrace their transcendence…

… turning themselves into gorgeous, humanoid art forms…

… and though vanity makes them keep a human visage…

… they are no longer human.