#nemo ramjet

[vandeeartist]

I think both of them would have something to talk about

[astrocorvus]

New Machine.

[ancient-tree-with-deathwish]

All Tomorrows is the perfect mix between the indomitable human spirit and eldritch horror.

humanity climbs into the stars, discovering new wonders and creating a galactic utopia... only to be wiped out by an unstoppable and sadistic alien threat.

but then, from the most pathetic scraps of what was left behind - new human species formed, with all the same beauty and wonder and curiosity and hope within them.

...until, again, they were wiped out. and this time they were contorted into even more abhorrent and aberrant forms.

but this time, the murderers of mankind would not go unpunished. a galaxy rending, multi-million year long war would spell the end of the mechanical tyrants.

and then, by a miracle of incalculable magnitude (that is barely even touched on by the book) humanity comes back once again. they somehow regained sentience and civilisation, they did the impossible again.

they even managed to redeem some of the machines. they are human too, after all.

in the end, mankind went extinct.

but it doesn't really matter. because there was somebody left to continue our legacy.

[kid-az]

All Tomorrow’s: Vanga Vangog’s Processor and Asteromorph’s HC’s

The grand finale of this saga of Vanga’s posthumans, and this one is on one of the saddest stories among the posthumans, the Mantelopes! In canon they had been born in bodies that made them unable to meaningfully interact in the world inspite of their sapience, and this would disappear quickly in a few thousand years as their songs of sorrow turn into regular mating songs and bellows.

Of course, that had not happen in Vanga’s timeline. Instead, the Asteromorph’s took interests on these posthumans due to the realization of their high intellect. This process, at first merely one of master and servant, would become a symbiotic one for both parties, with the Processors acting as the Asteromorph’s brains and memory-keepers, and the Asteromorphs the Processors hands and (Relative) brawn.

You can do a surprising amount with just a brain, and the Processor’s are the penultimate conclusion of that question, their relationship with the Asteromorphs making their empire far more technologically advanced and powerful than in canon, ironic considering the Asteromorph’s themselves wouldn’t become bigger brained.

-Their curious minds and natures made Processor’s extremely excited and interested on learning new ideas and things, to the point that they and the Asteromorph’s would make earlier contact with the Second Empire in this timeline, learning about all of their cultures and sharing some of their technology and ideas. This also had the benefit of stopping the Gravital’s from killing everyone.

-They kept their ancestral traditions of singing songs, their laryx (Voice box) being the only thing other than their brain to grow in size. Only instead of singing exclusively sorrowful songs, they instead sung songs of hope, rage, and so many other different emotions, including those only they can feel. Their laryx were so developed that they could mimic a ton of different sounds we couldn’t, including metal guitars, chainsaws, plane jet engines, and stuff that is beyond our hearing range.

-Most Processors are born offworld in the zero-gravity habitats of their Asteromorph Symbiotes, though there is still a very sizable trillions of them living in their home-Star system. This birthplace is effectively their version of Mecca, as almost every Processor visits once to several times during their lifetime. (With help from Asteromorph’s of course.)

-The Asteromorph’s are much less reclusive than in canon, and in fact a sizable amount of the population are now living in space habitats or even low-gravity worlds of other posthuman species. The highest populations of them live alongside the Modular People, Stickmen, Pterosapien’s, and the Satyriac’s .(Even they need to cut loose and party!)

-The Asteromorph’s knowledge of their ancient history, alongside the Processor’s general intelligence and assistance from the Second Empire, allowed them to find their ancestral homeworld earth far earlier. No one would inhabit the planet however, instead deciding to seed the almost deserted planet with new life from each of their worlds and millions of years later, when the sun threatens to blow up, they safely move earth into a new star system, allowing the introduced, establish and possibly sapient life to flourish.

-The Asteromorph’s and Processor’s of later times treat eachother like friends or even siblings, with an eachother being paired so long as they get along very well.

-After reaching connecting eachother’s consciousness’s, the Processor’s would offer their Asteromorph and other posthuman brethren the ability to do so as well, with them being able to agree or decline however they see fit.

-Once finding the Qu, this Posthuman empire would not horrifically mutate or kill every last one of them, instead deciding to strip them of all of their biotechnology, take down their leadership, and having them live alongside as equals….. the posthuman’s unwilling to stoop down to their abusers level.

-Like in canon, they would all disappear from this galaxy, but instead of it being a relatively ambiguous fate, the Author’s species would discover what had truly happened to humanity……… in that they had reached apotheosis and have left this universe altogether, instead deciding to seed new universe and life, so that they may love today, and seize all tomorrows.

[noovorous]

"Even now, it is sickeningly easy for beings to get lost in false grand narratives, living out completely driven lives in pursuit of non-existent codes, ideals, climaxes and golden ages. In blindly thinking that their stories serve absolute ends, such creatures almost always end up harming themselves, if not those around them.

To those like the misguided; look at the story of Man, and come to your senses! It is not the destination, but the trip that matters. What you do today influences tomorrow, not the other way around. Love Today, and seize All Tomorrows!"

All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet

[stuckinotherplaces]

All Tomorrows: The Myriad Species and Mixed Fortunes of Man by Nemo Ramjet

Genre: Science Fiction

Pages: 111

Publication date: 2006

All Tomorrows follows the future evolution of humans after an intelligent alien race, the Qu, genetically modifies humans and leaves them on other planets across the galaxy. Some of these new human evolutions have better luck than others.

I really loved this book and my only complaint was that it was so short it left me wanting more. There isn't much to say about it other than it was really, really interesting. It was well written and the drawings added so much great context to the way things were described and the things that I was reading.

There were some human evolutions whose entire life was nothing but suffering, and there were other's whose entire life was nothing but hedonistic pleasure. There were so many different things that were explored in terms of how hostile planets might change the way that things evolve and it was all done really well.

5/5 stars

Finished reading December 15, 2023

[empuratapatient]

cool things

[trans-formers-n-stuff]

you know what screw it im not scared!!!

RAMSTORM MY BELOVEDS!!!! they're so silly to me :33333

[spyglassrealms]

Spy's Spec-Bio Essentials

I honestly didn't mean to write a full-on essay, but I couldn't help myself -I love specbio, and the recent revival of interest in it makes me very happy. If you wanna just get right to the meat: normal links are highlighted blue, YouTube links are highlighted red.

Speculative biology has its roots as far back as Pliny the Elder and his Natural History, though most consider H.G. Wells to be the true grandfather of the genre with works such as War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and Man of the Year Million. However, any speculative biologist worth their salt credits Dougal Dixon as the father of specbio as we know it today –especially since he is the man who coined the term! Dixon's books After Man, Man After Man, and The New Dinosaurs are considered the foundational works of modern specbio. So too is Wayne Barlowe's book Expedition.

While the original printings of these books are very expensive to acquire, After Man recently received a Kindle version, and Expedition has a very good documentary adaptation available in totality on YouTube. Another important work of early speculative biology was the Discovery Channel limited series The Future Is Wild, a documentary show exploring the possible futures of life on Earth in several million years' time.

With the rise of the internet, people interested in speculative biology –those few and far between– could share their thoughts and amateur works with each other. Online specbio hit its first height around the mid-aughts to early tens, featuring many notable works that were very influential to me personally when I joined the scene circa 2014. Unfortunately, right around when I joined there was a notable "mass extinction" –many of the more active and prominent figures of the specbio community left the web behind for various reasons, and thus the golden age ended.

In recent years, partially thanks to certain YouTube video essays on the classic projects, interest in speculative biology seems to have increased dramatically! I've taken to calling the current era the "specbio renaissance," and it makes me so happy to see new, younger people interested in this unique facet of creativity. In light of this I've created this master post of my personal recommendations of essential specbio works for new "speccers" to enjoy!

The specbio community has congregated on forums for decades. I personally joined the community via DeviantArt right around when the old ZetaBoards forum underwent a massive host shift and never participated on the forum all that much, but fortunately the old Speculative Evolution Forum is still up and still active!

For those who'd prefer a simpler way to keep up with current events in the specbio community, Astrovitae is a free e-magazine dedicated to contemporary spec. A product of the recent specbio renaissance, Astrovitae only has a handful of issues thus far but is already becoming a staple publication in the field.

I made this post to provide what I think is key information and important resources, but the SpecBio Wiki is a far more thorough companion to your journey into the world of speculative biology. As always, though: beware ye old Wiki Rabbit Hole!

Biblaridion's Alien Biospheres video series is an excellent entry point for anyone looking to learn the basics of specbio. It's a demo xenobiology project, with a heavy focus on the scientific concepts used in building up the world and its ecology.

Curious Archive's Alien Worlds video series is an excellent collection of bite-size examinations of various specbio projects, including several on this list!

Nemo Ramjet (C. M. Kösemen)'s Life on Snaiad is universally considered a classic work of speculative biology, started in the early days of the golden age of internet specbio. Snaiad is an alien planet, in its early days of human habitation, filled with strange lifeforms bearing two "heads."

Kösemen's other well-known classic work is Alltomorrows, a short ebook exploring hundreds of millions of years' worth of possible human evolution. Readers, be advised: this work contains extensive body horror and discussion of human extinction, both circumstantial and deliberate.

Sagan IV, originally created by Hydromancerx, is one of the oldest and most extensive specbio projects. Started as a simple artistic exercise on a forum in 2006, Sagan IV has evolved into a large, highly collaborative vision of an alien world inspired by the works of Carl Sagan. It is still ongoing today, and you can participate in their regular contests and activities!

Gert van Dijk's Furaha is another of the well-known classic specbio projects, and one of the few from the golden age that is still fully active. Furaha itself is an alien world orbiting Nu Phoenicis which harbors a fascinating native biosphere, built upon carefully-researched biomechanics. The site itself is laid out much like an encyclopedia, and the accompanying blog is a treasure trove of specbio know-how and community history!

Sunrise on Ilion, a xenobiology project by @supermalmoworld, is a personal favorite of mine. Ilion is a planet tidally locked to a red dwarf star, and its endemic lifeforms often challenge our expectations for Earth-like ecology. The website boasts extremely detailed information on the setting and its inhabitants, as well as in-universe articles and logs of the various human expeditions to this fascinating world. The project is still active on a very sporadic basis, at least as per blog entries.

Nereus is a xenobiology project created by Evan Black; another reasonably well-known golden age work but one that is unfortunately no longer active. The world of Nereus, orbiting the star Achird, teems with life unfamiliar to the humans which seek to adopt it as their home. Like many specbio projects it adopts a documentarian style, but there are plenty of nuggets of story tucked in the articles.

Serina is a contemporary speculative evolution project created by the legendary Sheather; it is what I would consider the holotype of the "seed-world" branch of specbio. Serina is a planet populated only by the descendants of the domestic canary (and a few other organisms like guppies, snails, ants, sunflowers, bamboo, algae, etc). The project digs deeply into the various unique niches of the world and the organisms that evolve to fill them, and in doing so mixes nature-documentarian style with some of the most compelling and emotionally engaging storytelling I have read in years.

These are just what I think are the essentials. There are numerous other fantastic projects, both contemporary and from years ago, that I would highly suggest investigating! Contemporary honorable mentions that personally inspire me include @alexriesart's birrin, @iguanodont's birgs, @jayrockin's Runaway to the Stars, Christian Cline's Teeming Universe, Keenan Taylor's Kaimere, and my friend Mičkin's Temere!

[carmineduchess]

just finished reading All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet

so if somebody from Amnesia fandom have read this book

watcha think about Zerzurians being some kind of local analogue of The Qu in Amnesia (multi)universe?

[random-thought-depository]

Tag 9 people to get to know better

Tagged by @the-world-annealing. Sorry I took so long to get around to responding to this!

3 ships / First ever ship: Um, I don't really process fiction through that lens very much? I have plenty of ideas for fictional romantic/sexual relationships but they mostly involve original characters.

Last song: Lately I have been listening to a bunch of Ana Alcade's songs on Youtube! Here are my favorites:

I can only understand a handful of words in there so I have only a very fragmentary idea of what she's saying, but it sounds cool!

Last movie: The Birdcage was on PBS last night and my mom watched it, I watched part of it while eating dinner but I'd already seen it (or at least most of it) before and I spent the last 40 minutes or so of it surfing the internet and listening to music with earphones.

Currently reading: I recently re-read Nemo Ramjet's All Tomorrows. More recently I enthusiastically read the parts of Barbara Ehrenreich's Blood Rites I could find free on the internet, it seems super-interesting and I would like to read the whole thing but my local library doesn't seem to have it and my family's financial situation is not great so I'm reluctant to spend the money to buy it.

Currently watching: These days I don't have much money so I mostly just watch whatever is on free broadcast TV. The most recent thing on TV I watched from beginning to end was an episode of Magpie Murders.

Currently consuming: Uh, normal basic survival and comfort stuff (water, food, electricity, etc.), I guess.

Currently craving: Right now the biggest things I don't have and would like are: a bigger home for me and my family (one big enough that I can have reliably available options for privacy inside the home besides the bathroom), more money, and an erotic life that sometimes involves having sex with one or more other people.

Tagging: @fregolious, @multiheaded1793, @aurpiment, @voyaging-too, @aksemmi, @loving-n0t-heyting, @earlgraytay, @echofromtheabyss, @fierceawakening.

[vandeeartist]

All... ARE RICH!

[optimistic-mantelope]

I have a hard time believing Mantelopes call themselves ‘Mantelopes.’ I bet Nemo Ramjet and other xenoarcheologists just came up with the term based on fossils and what they gleamed from surviving Qu records. The quadrupedal posthumans would have a completely different name (or several) for themselves.

[pleistocene-pride]

Eoraptor is a genus of basal sauropodomorph dinosaur, and one of the earliest known dinosaurs to exist, which lived throughout what is now South America during the Carnian stage of the Triassic Period some 231 to 228 mya. The first remains of Eoraptor consisting of a partial articulated skeleton were unearthed in 1991 from the Valle de la Luna and the Cancha de Bochas Member of the Ischigualasto Formation in Argentina, by paleontologist university of San Juan paleontologist Ricardo Martínez, during field work conducted by the University of Chicago and the University of San Juan. The specimen was then shipped to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago for preparation by William F. Simpson and Bob Masek. It was then described by Paul Sereno, Catherine Forster, Raymond R. Rogers, and Alfredo M. Monetta in 1993. Who named the animal Eoraptor lunensis meaning dawn plunderer from the Valley of the Moon. Said holotype was later returned to Argentina where it remains on display at the Museum of Natural Sciences. Today three mostly complete Eoraptor remains have been recovered along with other isolated elements such as teeth. Reaching around 3.3 to 5.7ft (1 to 1.7m) in length and 11 to 22lbs (5 to 10 kgs) in weight, eoraptor was quite small and lightly built compared especially compared to its titanic descendants the sauropods. It was a bipedal animal, capable surprising speed and agility, with flexible 5 fingered hands which sported 3 large claws likely used to help capture prey. Combined with its distinctive lightly built skull, these features caused scientists to first assign eoraptor as a theropod. However over time certain skeletal morphologies and its leaf shaped teeth lead it to reclassified as a sauropodomorph. In life eoraptor would have been an omnivore feeding upon ferns, cycads, seeds, horsetails, conifers, insects, fungi, and small vertebrates.

Art Used can be found at the following links:

[kid-az]

All Tomorrows: Vanga-Vangog Stickmen Hc’s

Say hello to Vanga’s Stickmen, the descendants of the infamously tall and frail Strider’s. Unlike in canon where they would all be devoured mercilessly by giant chickens, the Stickmen’s ancestors managed to survive by climbing and living on the giant, skyscraper-like trees of their world.

Although a little less tall than the Stickmen, they are much sturdier due to needing to jumping across different trees and survive falls. They communicated visually via the rapid changing of colors and shapes of their leaf-like growths and sign language, and their culture emphasized coexistence, patience, and pacifism.

As philosophical as the Pterosapien’s yet opposite in their overall message, the Stickmen are one of the most interesting fanmade species I’ve seen yet, and I wish to post my headcanons about them like I did for the others.

-Because of their very low metabolism’s and the wonders of medicine, Stickmen were among the longest-lived posthumans in the second empire, capable of living hundreds if not over a thousand years! Friendships with other, shorter-lived species would last long after death, with the Stickmen befriending their friends children and grandchildren, giving them sagely advice and wisdom or just cheerfully, casually talking to them.

-Because of their arboreal lifestyle and pacifism, the Stickmen did not have the same domestication process as other posthumans. They did not domesticate a wolf equivalent nor any grazing animals, instead domesticating giant, eagle-sized colonial bees for honey and other byproducts, giant pigeon descendants for the harvesting of feathers, infertile eggs, and as message carriers, and even a species of giant, flying pig descendants larger than the Quetzalcoatlus, who were often used to protect these pigeons and bees from any predators. Also domesticated colonial spiders for their webs, which they used to make ropes and clothing.

-Their domesticated plants were also different. They would carefully tend their trees for the harvesting of boulder-sized fruits and tree nuts, grow mushrooms via large, house-sized stacks of logs from trees which naturally passed away, and also grow algae in vast pools of shallow water. Outside of the algae, their foodstuff was bigger due to it having naturally evolved that way.

-Due to their need of visual communication, their clothing was usually light, never covering their heads, shoulders, or forearms. Their clothes would be made from mycelium threads, feathers from their domestic pigeons, and webs from their domesticated spiders. Yes, their shirts were always off-shoulder tops, teachers hate them!

-A running theme for these Hc’s is that they never developed capitalism, and the Stickmen were no different! In fact, most of their goods were handmade, carefully and delicately made over weeks or months to be as high of quality as possible, and gifted to close friends and family. Only absolute necessities such as medication, infrastructure, and purified water would not be homemade, and it would still be a careful process that emphasized the lack of harm to anyone, both their own and other species.

-This included movies and videogames, with practically zero in the way of crunch or abuse. The former of which would last hours if not days, and the latter would often resemble that of animal crossing, a tactical rpg ala Fire Emblem, or literally just Minecraft! No joke, they remade Minecraft on complete accident!

-Their art was primarily that of tattoos and body modifications to distinctive themselves, large-scale land art made from specially grown plants, fungi, stones, or non-toxic paint, meant to be appreciated fully from the top of treetops or skyscrapers, and gardens that allow for peaceful meditation. They had little music however, as sound travelled poorly in their world.

-They are one of the four founding species of the Second empire, along with the Satyriacs, Killer Folk, and Rot Eaters. They were stereotyped as spaced-out, yet extremely wise and peaceful, thought of as the mediators of the other 3 species. This, of course, was a stereotype, one that many Stickmen found a little insulting.

-Because of a culture emphasizing patience and the fact high gravity worlds would kill them, they decided on the extinct Lopsider’s idea of creating an artificial race to colonize the stars. Unlike with the Asymmetric’s however, it wasn’t a rash, cold-hearted process meant to create slaves to do dangerous, dirty work for them, but instead a slow, caring process that would go into the centuries, meant to be sure the Stickmen’s descendant species would have lives much better than their own, not struggle in the colonization of new planets, and modified to be superior in every way outside of height. (A given due to square-cube law) These people would be allowed to live free, independent lives from their parent species, and would pick a name for themselves. This name? The Sproutlings.

[arataka-reigen]

I'm not putting Frankenstein in this list because I already made up my mind to participate in Frankenstein weekly anyway.

Again, I reserve the right to go against the results of this poll but I will still try to be faithful to it

Brief synopsis for each of these books if any of you are interested in knowing more about it (probably not, but, oh well):

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber's son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming "unstuck in time."

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born -- a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam -- and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity.

The Witcher - The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski (it's the witcher. idk what else to say)

Wayward Children - Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire: Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children. Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced... they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: it views a world of great beauty and savage inequities through the eyes of a young girl, as her father--a crusading local lawyer--risks everything to defend a black man unjustly accused of a terrible crime.

All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet: The story begins in the near future, as burgeoning population pressures force humanity to terraform and colonize Mars. After a brief but violent civil war between the two planets, the genetically engineered survivors begin a new wave of colonization, spreading across the galaxy. Everything is looking up for the human race... until the colonies encounter the Qu, technologically advanced aliens on a religious mission to remake the universe. Although humans fight valiantly, the Qu easily overpower humanity; as punishment, the aliens decide to genetically modify the survivors, turning most of them into mindless, animalistic creatures before departing.

The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin - After her best friend dies in a drowning accident, Suzy is convinced that the true cause of the tragedy must have been a rare jellyfish sting--things don't just happen for no reason. Retreating into a silent world of imagination, she crafts a plan to prove her theory--even if it means traveling the globe, alone. Suzy's achingly heartfelt journey explores life, death, the astonishing wonder of the universe...and the potential for love and hope right next door.

PJO - The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan (reread) - This would be a reread, i'm gonna do it sooner or later, but you get to decide if i do it sooner than later.