When she was nine years old, Octavia Butler saw a sci-fi film called “Devil Girl From Mars” and thought to herself: “I can write a better story than that.” She went on to become the first widely recognized Black female science fiction writer, publishing 12 novels in all. She was the only sci-fi writer ever to be awarded a MacArthur “Genius” Grant, which she added to her Nebula Award, Hugo Award, and PEN Lifetime Achievement Award. She used fiction to tell stories of deep truth, imparting wisdom that transcends genre, gender, or race. Even as the times have changed, her stories continue to entertain and enlighten.
I haven’t paid much attention to the deluge of content that has been generated lately by AI machines, but something about the Summer Island project captured my attention. Summer Island is a comic, with all the artwork generated by Midjourney AI. To my untrained eye it looks like it was created by professional human illustrators. The fantasy/horror comic is a Free Download and well worth a look. It’s the brainchild of writer Steve Coulson who shared about his process and motivation (below). Even if the genre is outside of your wheelhouse, I encourage you to check out the work.
“I’ve loved comics – and been an avidreader – since I was five. Now I’m 57. So it’s taken me half a century to get around to creating my own comic story. And they say you can’t teach an olddog new tricks! The problem has always been – I can’tdraw, which is a bit of setback in a visual medium. And I had no friendly artistic collaborator who trusted me enough to take on a project like this (wisely).But now there’s MidJourney, one of the new crop of Artificial Intelligence image generators. All the illustrations in this story were created by MidJourney,based on written prompts I supplied, and while I’ve tweaked a few things here and there in Photoshop, what you see here is basically what you get (if you ask it nicely.) The story itself started life as a photographic exploration, using Midjourney to create an essay in the style of the 1973 movie, The WickerMan (which you can also see in the following pages).After I’d finished the essay, I wondered- could I use MidJourney to tell thes ame story in a completely different visual and narrative style? SUMMER ISLAND is the result. Do I think MidJourney will replace the comic artists I grew to love over the years? No, of course not. Those geniuses have an eye for dramatic composition and dynamic narrative that I strongly doubt machine learning will ever be able to match. But as a visualization tool for non-artists like myself, it’s a hell of a lot of fun. And when MidJourney spit outsome of these panels, I found myself doing a double-take at the quality it could already produce. And as a goodfriend of mine used to say “And Steve- this is the WORST it will ever be!” I hope you enjoyed your visit to SUMMER ISLAND.It’s just one small corner of a world grappling with a monster problem. So perhaps we’ll return one day. Meanwhile, I’d love to hear what you think. – SC Email:scoulson@campfirenyc.com”
The news that a streaming TV network has announced the upcoming release of a series based on a novel rarely rouses much interest here at Travel Between The Pages World HQ, however the drop of a teaser-trailer for The Peripheral, the sci-fi series adapted from William Gibson’s 2014 sci-fi mystery thriller of the same name grabbed our attention. If you haven’t read the novel yet, I highly recommend it.
The Peripheral centers on Flynne Fisher, a woman trying to hold together the pieces of her broken, dysfunctional family in what we affectionately call a shithole region of the United States. Flynne is intelligent, ambitious, and on a collision course with the future.. The Peripheral is master storyteller William Gibson’s dazzling, hallucinatory glimpse into the fate of humanity — and what lies beyond.
Flynne Fisher lives in a near future rural American South, working at the local 3D printing shop, while earning much needed extra money playing VR games for rich people. One night she dons a headset and finds herself in futuristic London—a sleek and mysterious world, alluringly different from her own hardscrabble existence.
But this isn’t like any game she’s ever played before: Flynne begins to realize it isn’t virtual reality… it’s real. Someone in London, seventy years in the future, has found a way to open a door to Flynne’s world. And as utterly beguiling as London is… it’s also dangerous. As Flynne searches to discover who has connected their worlds, and for what purpose, her presence here sets dangerous forces into motion…forces intent on destroying Flynne and her family in her own world.
The series stars Chloë Grace Moretz as Flynne Fisher. The first 8-episode season will premier on Amazon Prime on Oct. 23.
NB: If the video trailer doesn’t launch, please visit our home page.
I recently discovered this wonderful illustration titled Bookaholic and Bibliophile. Created by Ukrainian artists Romana Romanyshyn and Andriy Lesiv, it features two charming, whimsical creatures embracing each other while maintaining engagement with their books. Cat-like and bird-like, one in high heels and one barefoot, one with a long tail and prominent ears and one with tail feathers and no visible ears, both with beaks, and both with books.
Romanyshyn and Lesiv are both natives of, and continue to live and work in Lviv, Ukraine. After meeting in art school, together they started Art Studio Agrafka in Lviv where they produce award-winning books and illustrations.
I’ve been a fan of the Symbolist painter Hugo Simberg (1873-1917) since I first saw his work in his native Finland decades ago. His best known work The Garden of Death (above) was created for the Tampere Cathedral along with a series of frecos. I don’t know why Simberg’s painting get so little attention, so I was surprised to see images of his work pop-up on two unrelated blogs this week.
The Kansallisgalleria (Finnish National Gallery) in Helsinki maintains an extensive archive of Simberg’s graphics and paintings, but it’s rare to discover his work elsewhere. Many of his paintings take an unflinching, if humorous, look at death and dying. Here are just a few from the series. A brief biography on the artist can be found at wikipedia.
I thought the earth
remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
by Mary Oliver
from News of the Universe
Poems of Twofold Consciousness Sierra Club Books, 1980
I recently discovered a wonderful series of Youtube videos that were filmed for the Favorite Poem Project. The collection of 50 short video documentaries showcases individual Americans reading and speaking personally about poems they love. During the one-year open call for submissions, 18,000 Americans wrote to the project volunteering to share their favorite poems — Americans from ages 5 to 97, from every state, representing a range of occupations, kinds of education, and backgrounds. The video below features one of my favorite poems written by W.H. Auden. You can discover more about the project here.
About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Brueghel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
NB: If the video does not play in your email version of TBTP, please click on the link for our home page here.
After a vote at their 26th general conference on August 24th, the International Council of Museums (ICOM) has refined their official definition of the term “museum,” that they previously established nearly half a century ago. The updated definition—which now incorporates the terms diversity, sustainability and accessibility—was finalized after 18 months of commentary and four rounds of consultation. 487 members were in agreement, while 23 voted against it and 17 abstained. ICOM’s president, Alberto Garlandi, notes that it’s a “great step forward,” though recognizes that it’s not perfect. Here’s the new definition:
“A museum is a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. Open to the public, accessible and inclusive, museums foster diversity and sustainability. They operate and communicate ethically, professionally and with the participation of communities, offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”
It seems to me that many institutions will have to make serious efforts to live up to this definition of what it means to be a museum. These days so many museums have priced their admission fees so that the average visitor can not afford the cost.
Regular visitors to Travel Between The Pages are well aware of my fascination with public transit systems and their maps. So it will come as little surprise that I am mildly obsessed with the hypnotic website Ubähnchen which is a terrific new transit map that simulates the movement of trains on the Berlin underground train network based on the scheduled timetable.
Ubähnchen also offers an option to switch to a more geographically accurate map. This map also allows you to view S-Bahn trains in real-time.
The Ubähnchen Statistics section, which includes lots of data from the Berlin subway network, including the avarage daily train activity per line and the number of daily stops at each station on the network.
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