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Description
I have been playing around with online art style sites and his is a variation of my Exitus Caeli book, Escape Velocity. My original image is a painted soft clay sculpt with leaves and twigs which I photographed and then imported to work on and manipulate digitally. The final step was adding paint effects. The left hand ray gun is drawn in and the radio transmitter-detonator was a sewing bobbin placed in the clay sculpt's "hand" to serve as a reference. I love to pencil and ink draw but camera and digital manipulation/drawing have become my medium in the past few years since my fingers are not as flexible or pain free as they were in my youth. I do use drawing in many of my efforts but my days of drawing whole-cloth, detailed pencil sketches are likely at an end (though I do draw reference pencil art quite often when I start).

It will feature Harry Houdini and an alien (a "Thuul"), sentient plant scientist who is trying to escape off-world in a newly invented spacecraft. In a race for time and with Harry's help he must as the project manager and chief engineer complete construction of the ship before the project is retired and he is given the governmental "honor" of being merged physically with a biological computer hivemind where he will "become one" with all the previous great scientists--each of which was retired just before their own breakthrough projects were completed.

The Thuul are a sentient and mobile plant species that begin as a single plant (a "stalk") then merge join with others. As stalks physically grow together, functions such as cognition, digestion, etc. slowly migrate to specific sections of the body. Most of these sections will retain no sentience but instead develop into neurological or physical elements such as organs, muscle and the nervous system. Only the most resilient "stalks" will merge to retain sentience and they gradually become a single consciousness by maturity with the dominant mental stalk forming the core personality and intelligence of the whole.

Thuul have a limited number of stalks they can add and a finite set of physical configurations in which they are arranged but possess a wide variety of possible combinations. Some Thuul end up becoming only semi-sentient of animal intelligence equivalence while others opt to maximize their mental potential at the expense of all else. In the median, most Thuul prefer to be individuals able to act, move, think and care for themselves independently.

Suicide and depression are practically unknown to the Thuul as they simply devolve mentally to the state in which they are not bothered by such things in their developmental growth. As Thuul age, they eventually "let go" of sentience and simply become "plants" though this is a very long process and can be successfully resisted for a nearly indefinite time by individuals with the highest intellects and a strong interest in life.

In my novel, the chief scientist will be one such individual--an exceptional plant version of an Elon Musk-like individual--who has no desire to "move on" and is fascinated by the dream of spaceflight--specifically to their nearby, apparently habitable sister planet with which they co-orbit. In the course of the story, the human mind of Harry Houdini is connected to that of the Thuul and together they must devise a way to finish the ship and ecape before the state apparatus close in on them.

Description
I have been playing around with online art style sites and his is a variation of my Exitus Caeli book, Escape Velocity. My original image is a painted soft clay sculpt with leaves and twigs which I photographed and then imported to work on and manipulate digitally. The final step was adding paint effects. The left hand ray gun is drawn in and the radio transmitter-detonator was a sewing bobbin placed in the clay sculpt's "hand" to serve as a reference. I love to pencil and ink draw but camera and digital manipulation/drawing have become my medium in the past few years since my fingers are not as flexible or pain free as they were in my youth. I do use drawing in many of my efforts but my days of drawing whole-cloth, detailed pencil sketches are likely at an end (though I do draw reference pencil art quite often when I start).

It will feature Harry Houdini and an alien (a "Thuul"), sentient plant scientist who is trying to escape off-world in a newly invented spacecraft. In a race for time and with Harry's help he must as the project manager and chief engineer complete construction of the ship before the project is retired and he is given the governmental "honor" of being merged physically with a biological computer hivemind where he will "become one" with all the previous great scientists--each of which was retired just before their own breakthrough projects were completed.

The Thuul are a sentient and mobile plant species that begin as a single plant (a "stalk") then merge join with others. As stalks physically grow together, functions such as cognition, digestion, etc. slowly migrate to specific sections of the body. Most of these sections will retain no sentience but instead develop into neurological or physical elements such as organs, muscle and the nervous system. Only the most resilient "stalks" will merge to retain sentience and they gradually become a single consciousness by maturity with the dominant mental stalk forming the core personality and intelligence of the whole.

Thuul have a limited number of stalks they can add and a finite set of physical configurations in which they are arranged but possess a wide variety of possible combinations. Some Thuul end up becoming only semi-sentient of animal intelligence equivalence while others opt to maximize their mental potential at the expense of all else. In the median, most Thuul prefer to be individuals able to act, move, think and care for themselves independently.

Suicide and depression are practically unknown to the Thuul as they simply devolve mentally to the state in which they are not bothered by such things in their developmental growth. As Thuul age, they eventually "let go" of sentience and simply become "plants" though this is a very long process and can be successfully resisted for a nearly indefinite time by individuals with the highest intellects and a strong interest in life.

In my novel, the chief scientist will be one such individual--an exceptional plant version of an Elon Musk-like individual--who has no desire to "move on" and is fascinated by the dream of spaceflight--specifically to their nearby, apparently habitable sister planet with which they co-orbit. In the course of the story, the human mind of Harry Houdini is connected to that of the Thuul and together they must devise a way to finish the ship and ecape before the state apparatus close in on them.