Extraterrestrial – Ámaris Wen

Aquatropolis – The futuristic city

The city of Aquatropolis is the New York of the planet, the London of the confederation, the most powerful city of the Realm.

The one that rules Aquatropolis rules the planet of Osiris B-1, and every planet within its grasp.

While every force in the Realm schemes for their opportunity to take control over the monster of a city that could give them unfathomable power, the ways of three humans meet, their fates intertwined by the “water-town”, seeking their part in the emerging war for the predominance of Aquatropolis.

The futuristic city – by Ámaris Wen

I love cities. I am fascinated by the way cities evolve.

Some of my favourite books are about cities. One of the central inspirations for this story was Morus‘ „Utopia“, and the question whether such a city could be possible in the future. And if yes, what it would look like.

Guessing what the world will look like in the future is a central influence for science fiction, and I am positive that the more realistic the worlds in those stories are, the more intriguing they become.

„Aquatropolis“ is a futuristic city with a billion citizens, on a planet called Osiris B-1, a thousand light-years away from the Earth.

Why on an extraterrestrial planet? Because I thought that some kind of distance between the story and the Earth allowed me to concentrate on being creative, and on the story of the city, without having to compare to the appearance and development of actual urban centres on the Earth, that it doesn’t matter where the city is located. I felt that this would allow me to be more creative with the appearance of the city and its story.

Why a science fiction book? I started to seriously work on “Aquatropolis” with 23, and worked more than 3 years on it. I had lived with fatigue because of thyroid problems for 23 years. And although I started to work as an actress with 19, and started to make music even earlier, the fatigue always pulled me back. You cannot treat it, all you can do is to rely on medication to give you the energy that you would not experience otherwise. I guess that is what made me want to do more than “only” being a musician. And maybe that is another reason why I’m so into progress—without it, I would probably not be able to do what I do.

„Aquatropolis“ will be published this month.

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How to draw an extraterrestrial👽

When it comes to world building, one of the questions you have to ask yourself is: How do the people in your story- and on your planet- look like? And why do they look like that? Are their eyes bigger because their sun isn’t that bright? Is their skin darker because their sun is very warm? Are they monsters with tentacles or do they resemble humans? Why are they wearing that cloak, or that hairstyle? You should have a story behind each of these questions. And drawing your characters might help you build your world.

I just wanted to share a little guide as to how I am drawing my aliens. This drawing does have a bit more than 70 layers, and two extraterrestrials from The Chariots of Orion.

1. Sketch

When you have an idea how the drawing should roughly look like, dedicate the first layer to make a sketch. Don’t worry about the background just now, you can add that layer later. Note that I have also sketched the body parts that are not visible in the drawing. This is to make sure that the clothing fits the outlines of the bodies.

2. Outlines

Once you have decided what your drawing should roughly look like, and sketched the shapes of the bodies, switch to black ink to draw the outlines of the drawing, such as clothes and hair. Leave out complicated parts like hands, or hair (as in this case, Arikmé’s pompous hairstyle), and dedicate individual layers to them, in case you have to redo them several times. This sketch already does have separate layers for both figures, and for body parts such as hands.

3. Faces

It is time to draw the faces! Facial expressions are hard to draw, so you’ll want separate layers for them. Now you ought also determine the body language of the characters. How’s their relation, what are they talking about? Note that Dagon (on the left) is a higher official than Arikmé, and that he is slightly shorter than the warlord, but he doesn’t seem to look up at him. Arikmé is (as the ones among you that have read the book may already know) very proud, and whilst he reports to Dagon, he will still keep his attitude.

4. Filling and clothing

When you have done the outlines and the clothing, you can start to fill. The colour of the officials is black, and a golden and a silver belt signal a very high official, so both men are wearing black. Dagon wears a white cloak, not only because he is a higher official, but because the colour white is reserved for the king. Also, his headdress indicates that he does have more power than Arikmé. Being a warlord, Arikmé wears a cap on his head. This cap does have more than five layers, each for every colour. Note that I still haven’t done the faces.

5. Faces and hands

This is the hardest part. I first did a few layers with the eyes, and later created a layer for the skin colour, and pulled that layer under the previous layer. It’s less distracting when you can draw the eyes on a plain background. The skin colour is always hard. It’s best to try several shades until you find one that fits. The Alonians don’t really have only one type of skin colour, but they all have a shade that is rather tanned (think North Africa, South America).

Now, also Arikmé’s hair is drawn.

6. Finishing touches

Now you can draw things you forgot or want to add. Arikmé got piercings, his crown, and a sword. Dagon got some outlines for his cloak and jewels for his crown. The sign shown on Arikmé’s crown and on his robes is the character Yaxal, which stands for serrated rock, strength, and cleverness, and does have the sound “y”. There is also a female form of the character with the same sound, but a slightly different form.

7. The background

Now you can draw the background. It is easier to create the landscape after you’ve drawn your characters. I went for the city of ancient Meryo in Alonia, with the river and the desert in the background.

I hope you had fun reading this guide, and that it helps you start with your own aliens👽

Analysis: Sunburns, evolution, and aliens

Last week I was sitting there, covered in cooling ointment, my arms (and my face) completely red. How come? I caught a bad sunburn after spending the day outside with my bro, doing research for my novel.

How is that possible? How do you get a sunburn when you actually are climbing about rocks and boulders, and you’re surrounded by fog?

It seems as though our bodies are just not capable of dealing with so much sun. But, wait- we are a species that evolved on a planet with a sun, right? Have you ever seen a giraffe complaining about sunburn? An ape? A jellyfish? So, how come animals can deal with the sun, but we can’t?

Aren’t our bodies used to the sun anymore? Were our ancestors not always outside? OK, troglodytes were supposedly dwelling in caves, but they did come out of them from time to time, didn’t they? So, what’s the deal?

Apparently, we lose abilities if we don’t train them. I for example was thrown out of ballet classes in drama school because I didn’t train enough. So, could this apply in evolution? If we only use dictation and autocorrect to write, could we actually lose our ability to write? Could our hands shrink? If we look up everything in the internet instead of learning it from books, could we damage our ability to actually learn things?

And if we were to invent devices which would allow us to communicate telepathically, would that mean that our ability to hear, and to talk would suffer?

I could very much imagine an alien species that has become so intelligent that they literally only need their brains to steer computers, which steer AIs, which steer, I don’t know, anything from administrating the society to provide food (but then, would such a species need food? Or would brain food be sufficient?), to choosing your outfit (maybe caps would be a trend).

If we had AIs doing everything for us from tidying up our kitchens to working for us, could that mean that we might lose the ability to…you know, everything? We would be nothing but brains, but unable to do anything without the help of our AIs, because we would have no limbs, no abilities left, and we would have forgotten everything about how we built all of this because our AIs are storing the information, not we. We couldn’t even talk, because we would use the AIs to speak.

So should we stop using sun lotion, to prevent evolution from taking away our ability to speak? Literature (and every physician) advises us not to. It might not be such a good idea.

And maybe, if we were composed only of brains, we would at least have become intelligent enough to invent a treatment against sunburn, because that really hurts.

Conclusion: You should really use sun lotion.

Would extraterrestrials really try to contact us? A few thoughts on the WOW Signal possibly debunked

With the WOW Signal possibly debunked, this leads us to a few questions.
The most important question is: Was it aliens? The narrowband radio signal – the ‘Wow Signal’ – that reached Big Ear telescope of the Ohio State University in 1977, was so strong that astronomer Jerry R. Ehman commented “Wow!” at the side of the printout of the measure. The signal had been received during a search for extraterrestrial intelligence project. Therefore it was reasonable that scientists thought that it might have been an attempt by extraterrestrials to contact us.

Now, the signal seems to have been finally decrypted, and scientists said that it had transpired to be no message from extraterrestrials after all. Instead, scientists were cited to have discovered that that the signal most likely was caused by a comet.

But this leads us to the question: Would aliens really contact us using radio bursts or radio signals? And would they accept that leakage of their technology could cause them being discovered by another civilisation?

Could other civilisations discover us humans because of our technology leakage? Well, yes, they could. The question is, do we want that?

I imagine that other species possibly would tell us, ‘Hey, are you mad? Do you know what kind of civilizations there are out there in the universe? Do you really want to lure them to the earth?’ If we imagine species like Giger’s aliens (you know, the ones from the Alien movies), I guess we really do not want to lure them here.

Stephen Hawking even warned that we ought not try to get the attention of other civilisations, because there could be evil civilisations, that could try to conquer the earth. We know that this is not so far-fetched, because we know that this is possible; we only have to look at earth’s history. When the Spanish discovered America, they conquered the continent and subdued the native people there. An alien species, especially a species that is very developed, could do the same to us. We know the way the native people in America were subdued; we do not want to find out what a civilisation, hundreds of thousands of years older than the humans, and way more advanced than the humans, could do to us if they’d attack and conquer our planet!
What if an extraterrestrial civilisation might think exactly like this? What if they are afraid of being discovered and subdued by an evil alien species? They would use some kind of contraption to avoid leakage of their technology. And then we cannot be sure that an extraterrestrial civilisation would use exactly the same technology. It could be possible that they do not use radio signals. Imagine a civilisation communicating using quantum communication. There wouldn’t be any leakage for us to examine, and maybe, there could be an alien civilisation near us and we wouldn’t notice. All we could examine would be the way the atmosphere is built up and whether the planet is in the Goldilock’s zone, and therefore could support life, or not.

If a species would attack this planet, they would not expect a developed civilisation, so the extraterrestrials there could use this as advantage. If they’d attack the earth, on the other hand, they’d know quite a lot about us, as we have sent years of tv programs, radio and other signals out into space. We might want to consider if we really want to have other civilizations know about the earth, or if we want to listen to Stephen Hawking and not try to lure alien conquerors near the earth.
What we can be sure, I guess, is that either way, if the extraterrestrials know about us and want to contact us, they will contact us.

Could Fast Radio Bursts really be leakage of an advanced alien spacecraft?

Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) have led to many discussions about whether or not we might be on the verge of finding evidence for an advanced civilisation in a far away galaxy—as scientists still couldn’t discover where exactly the FRBs came from, the theory was risen that the bursts might have been emitted by a neutron star; or, that they actually could have been caused by some sort of humongous radio transmitter that was artificially created to power an alien spacecraft (https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-09?utm_content=bufferc5af4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer). Which is, I’ll admit, quite the cooler theory. But let’s look at what scientists say.
As we discover more and more exoplanets, some of them even in Goldilocks’ zone—meaning that their distance to their home star is such that they could bear liquid water and even support life, you know, like, not too warm but not too cold, either—, more people start to think that we should als discover alien civilisations on some of those exoplanets. OK, it might seem more realistic that we’d find bacteria on an exoplanet instead of an ancient, advanced civilisation building humongous sailing spaceships, but let’s say it could be aliens; we’d have to examine a few things.

Where is the source of the FRBs?

That’s the problem; scientists were not able to find the source of the weird signal yet, even though we know that the bursts came from a far away dwarf galaxy. Which leads us to the next problem: What or who ever might have caused the signal; scientists stated that the signal could have travelled for about 3 billion years (https://www.cnet.com/news/frb-121102-fast-radio-bursts-aliens-seti-meti-galaxy/). That means, if it were aliens, then we would see them flying through their galaxy 3 billion years ago. In the meantime—unless their spacecraft is really, really slow—they would have likely moved on to a different part of the universe.

Why would aliens use that sort of power?

The idea of powering your spacecraft with radio emission isn’t so bad, but it might not be as easy as it sounds. First, you’d need a transmitter big enough to power your probably huge (and heavy) spacecraft even if you’re far away from the transmitter. That would suggest that you’d have to build a gigantic transmitter; some scientists even suggest it would have to be about the size of the earth. I mean, this might be less harmful to your planet’s environment than using fossil fuel, but then you would need just a lot of energy. I’d suggest that such a device might be built by a civilisation that doesn’t have a home planet any longer, so they have to build a transmitter in space. Maybe they built a transmitter to find a new home planet. To build such a device would mean that the aliens that built it are very, very advanced, way more advanced than our civilisation.

But what if the aliens actually tried to contact us?

Could the signal have been sent by an alien civilisation to contact us? OK, it could be really the attempt of an advanced alien civilisation to contact our planet. But why should they contact us using FRBs? Wouldn’t there be a way that wouldn’t need that much energy and would be easier to be decrypted? It is more likely that the signal actually was caused by a gigantic alien spaceship, or that the aliens didn’t mean to contact us; however, we will have to find out where the signal came from before we can determine whether or not it was aliens. But we should mind that it might also be a neutron star—or, who knows, maybe an astronomic object we still have to find out about.

Sources:
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-09?utm_content=bufferc5af4&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

https://www.cnet.com/news/frb-121102-fast-radio-bursts-aliens-seti-meti-galaxy/