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Description
Pictured here are some animal-equivalents native to Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.
For some unknown reason they get very active during the nights Jupiter shows a full face, running and jumping all over the place.
If they were Terran animals one would say they are euphoric, cavorting in the "air" (ackchually near-vacuum) out of the sheer joy of being alive. But being aliens, it's hard to tell what goes through their alien heads.

These bouts of frantic activity apparently serve no logical purpose: They don't aid in feeding or reproduction or social cohesion, it's what I mean to say.
Hell, individuals experimentally sedated during these periods show no adverse effects in their social or survival fitness afterwards.

Despite being known as "Gany chickeh" by the settlers, they don't taste like chicken. They are not even edible to humans: Ganymedean life is silicon-based and extremely though by Earthly standards, since they have to withstand near-vacuum, ionizing radiation, meteor showers and extreme temperatures. It would be like trying to eat some sort of soft robot.
The name was given merely because of their overall shape and their apparent dim-witnedess, although to be fair Ganymedean settlers aren't very familiar with Terran chickens, being most of their diet synthetic or derived from yeasts and algae.

They are a very common sight anywhere on Ganymede and so they are prominently featured in the moon's folklore ever since the times of the first colonies.
There's an old and common tall tale, which varies from settlement to settlement, but overall it goes like this: Once, a whole flock of them jumped so high they broke out of Ganymede's gravitational field and eventually fell on Jupiter.
They like to tell it to tourists and new immigrants just to get a laugh out of them if they manage to convince them it actually happened.

--------------------------------------

This piece and the lore around it were inspired by the treatment the Solar System is given in ancient sci-fi novels.
Recently (As of early September '23, the time of this drawing and writting) I have spent a considerable amount of time consooming that crap and I love the shamelessly tacky, retrofuturistic settings in which their predictable, formulaic plots take place.

My favourites are the ones where mankind is not interstellar yet, when they have just a firm grip on the Moon and maybe Mars/Venus, but there's still lots of fun, danger and adventure to be had in the cosmic wilderness beyond the asteroids, and also there's the promise of the stars for the not-so-distant future.

The collective of them paints the image of a wonderful never-never land where people is "space-happy", as a minor character in one of these novels described it.
Like, they are as obsessed with space as people in the Pokemon games are obsessed with pokemon (The latest I played was Pokemon Gold for the GameBoy Color, tho, so I don't know if later NPCs ever talk about anything else besides Pokemon and Pokemon-related activities/products) and literally everything in culture, politics, art, architecture, design and technology is inspired by or destined to space and space travel.

Strange, alternate time-paths where they have atomic rockets and interplanetary travel while at the same time being so quaint and hopelessly primitive, they still carry slide rulers in their pockets, and compact radios able to fit in a space helmet are a rare luxury that most spacemen have to do without one and are fine with that because they cannot imagine a different way and there's no choice anyway.

Whenever reading these, I always get this desire to get away from the focus of the story and just wander around the setting to enjoy and discover more of the everyday life and culture in that quaint future that never came.

Know what I'm sayin'? Like, just get away from the characters and take a stroll on my own around Marsport or Luna City 04, or whatever other spacey name the place has got.
Look at the variety of uniforms and everyday attires of the people milling around me, wondering at the origins and symbolism of each. Who knows? Perhaps there would be a visitor from Alpha Centauri among them!

Then I'd go to the commercial district to peer into the glassite displays of the shops, marveling (and ocassionally scoffing) at their quaint retrofuturistic merchandises and otherwordly imports. Later I'd go for a drink or a bite to some space-themed (so, basically any one) bar or restaurant while listening to whatever spacey music they've got there, preferentially if it's live, so as to feel the spacey and optimistic soul of someone born and raised in this wonderful universe.
And everything would be illuminated by primitive incandescent or halogen lighting and lots of "futuristic" neon, I bet. It would be so beautiful.

Afterwards I'd go to where the rocketships are parked, all of them pointing towards the stars and waiting for their crew to once again rise to that magic, secret place space is. Maybe I'd get to see some of them taking off and then I'd look at the unearthly glow of the stars and think about all the places humans have been so far, and all the places they are going to, farther and faster every time.
I'd see in my mind jagged peaks on Miranda or Umbriel illuminated by the glow green from Uranus, still untouched but already waiting for the first explorers a few years or decades from then. Then I'd fix my sight and mind beyond the Solar System and wonder about all the billions and billions of worlds waiting for us, knowing with certainity it'll be merely a matter of time before they also get explored and populated.

Description
Pictured here are some animal-equivalents native to Ganymede, a moon of Jupiter.
For some unknown reason they get very active during the nights Jupiter shows a full face, running and jumping all over the place.
If they were Terran animals one would say they are euphoric, cavorting in the "air" (ackchually near-vacuum) out of the sheer joy of being alive. But being aliens, it's hard to tell what goes through their alien heads.

These bouts of frantic activity apparently serve no logical purpose: They don't aid in feeding or reproduction or social cohesion, it's what I mean to say.
Hell, individuals experimentally sedated during these periods show no adverse effects in their social or survival fitness afterwards.

Despite being known as "Gany chickeh" by the settlers, they don't taste like chicken. They are not even edible to humans: Ganymedean life is silicon-based and extremely though by Earthly standards, since they have to withstand near-vacuum, ionizing radiation, meteor showers and extreme temperatures. It would be like trying to eat some sort of soft robot.
The name was given merely because of their overall shape and their apparent dim-witnedess, although to be fair Ganymedean settlers aren't very familiar with Terran chickens, being most of their diet synthetic or derived from yeasts and algae.

They are a very common sight anywhere on Ganymede and so they are prominently featured in the moon's folklore ever since the times of the first colonies.
There's an old and common tall tale, which varies from settlement to settlement, but overall it goes like this: Once, a whole flock of them jumped so high they broke out of Ganymede's gravitational field and eventually fell on Jupiter.
They like to tell it to tourists and new immigrants just to get a laugh out of them if they manage to convince them it actually happened.

--------------------------------------

This piece and the lore around it were inspired by the treatment the Solar System is given in ancient sci-fi novels.
Recently (As of early September '23, the time of this drawing and writting) I have spent a considerable amount of time consooming that crap and I love the shamelessly tacky, retrofuturistic settings in which their predictable, formulaic plots take place.

My favourites are the ones where mankind is not interstellar yet, when they have just a firm grip on the Moon and maybe Mars/Venus, but there's still lots of fun, danger and adventure to be had in the cosmic wilderness beyond the asteroids, and also there's the promise of the stars for the not-so-distant future.

The collective of them paints the image of a wonderful never-never land where people is "space-happy", as a minor character in one of these novels described it.
Like, they are as obsessed with space as people in the Pokemon games are obsessed with pokemon (The latest I played was Pokemon Gold for the GameBoy Color, tho, so I don't know if later NPCs ever talk about anything else besides Pokemon and Pokemon-related activities/products) and literally everything in culture, politics, art, architecture, design and technology is inspired by or destined to space and space travel.

Strange, alternate time-paths where they have atomic rockets and interplanetary travel while at the same time being so quaint and hopelessly primitive, they still carry slide rulers in their pockets, and compact radios able to fit in a space helmet are a rare luxury that most spacemen have to do without one and are fine with that because they cannot imagine a different way and there's no choice anyway.

Whenever reading these, I always get this desire to get away from the focus of the story and just wander around the setting to enjoy and discover more of the everyday life and culture in that quaint future that never came.

Know what I'm sayin'? Like, just get away from the characters and take a stroll on my own around Marsport or Luna City 04, or whatever other spacey name the place has got.
Look at the variety of uniforms and everyday attires of the people milling around me, wondering at the origins and symbolism of each. Who knows? Perhaps there would be a visitor from Alpha Centauri among them!

Then I'd go to the commercial district to peer into the glassite displays of the shops, marveling (and ocassionally scoffing) at their quaint retrofuturistic merchandises and otherwordly imports. Later I'd go for a drink or a bite to some space-themed (so, basically any one) bar or restaurant while listening to whatever spacey music they've got there, preferentially if it's live, so as to feel the spacey and optimistic soul of someone born and raised in this wonderful universe.
And everything would be illuminated by primitive incandescent or halogen lighting and lots of "futuristic" neon, I bet. It would be so beautiful.

Afterwards I'd go to where the rocketships are parked, all of them pointing towards the stars and waiting for their crew to once again rise to that magic, secret place space is. Maybe I'd get to see some of them taking off and then I'd look at the unearthly glow of the stars and think about all the places humans have been so far, and all the places they are going to, farther and faster every time.
I'd see in my mind jagged peaks on Miranda or Umbriel illuminated by the glow green from Uranus, still untouched but already waiting for the first explorers a few years or decades from then. Then I'd fix my sight and mind beyond the Solar System and wonder about all the billions and billions of worlds waiting for us, knowing with certainity it'll be merely a matter of time before they also get explored and populated.