Dynamic Subspace

Author: Jason W. Ellis

  • Michael Bishop, Southern Science Fiction Writer, Has Passed

    I was sad to learn today that Michael Bishop, the southern science fiction writer, had passed away about a month ago on Nov. 13 in LaGrange, Georgia, a small town near the Alabama border–north of Columbus and southwest of Atlanta. I had the honor of moderating a discussion panel called, “Engineering the Future and Southern Fried Science Fiction and Fantasy,” at the 2009 Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA) Conference in Atlanta that featured Mr. Bishop alongside F. Brett Cox, Paul Di Filippo, Andy Duncan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Jack McDevitt, and Warren Rochelle. It was a lively discussion and I remember him being friendly and kind throughout the event where he was the Guest of Honor. The pictures above and below are from his GoH reading on Friday, June 12.

  • Anthropomorphic Cat Astronaut on the International Space Station

    Anthropomorphic Cat Astronaut on the International Space Station. Made with Stable Diffusion.

    One of my favorite kinds of images to create with Stable Diffusion are those involving anthropomorphic cats. Here’s a cat as an astronaut aboard the International Space Station. It required a lot of inpainting for the star field and the Earth’s curvature. SD 1.5 models often have trouble with keeping track of a line, of say a table or in this case a celestial object, bisected by a foreground subject. The final image here isn’t perfect but it was as good enough for me.

  • A Post-Apocalyptic Nightmare Made with Stable Diffusion

    A skeletal being with glowing eyes towers over a man in the foreground. Made with Stable Diffusion.

    I created this nightmare image of a skeletal being with glowing eyes in a post-apocalyptic landscape using Stable Diffusion and A1111 earlier this year. It required very little prompting to come up with this frightening picture.

  • Williams’ Moon Patrol Gameplay Transformed With Stable Diffusion

    Moon Patrol game screenshot transformed with Stable Diffusion.

    For the next few weeks, I’m going to be sharing some of the images that I have created using Stable Diffusion, an opensource generative AI text-to-image model created by Stability.AI. Today begins the series with images based on a classic video game.

    Earlier this year, I used the low-resolution screenshot of Williams’ 1982 Moon Patrol video game from its Wikipedia page and manipulated it with Stable Diffusion and Automatic1111’s stable-diffusion-webui tool. After many, many iterations with img2img and some inpainting, I arrived at the image above. The most difficult part of the image was creating the moon buggy with six wheels, something that most SD 1.5 derived models seem to abhor.

    Later, I took another stab at transforming the gameplay screenshot to a high resolution version. This time, I used controlnet to create the moon buggy based on the Alvis Stalwart. With inpainting, I was able to achieve great detail and lighting on the buildings.

    Wouldn’t it be cool to see a new Moon Patrol game with high resolution graphics and ray tracing? Layer on backstory, mythos, and a brooding protagonist and it could be the next Halo series!

  • Attack on Titan and Coeur de Lion MacCarthy’s War Memorial Statue in Niagara Falls, Canada

    Coeur de Lion MacCarthy's War Memorial Statue in Niagara Falls, Canada

    Y and I finished watching the Attack on Titan (2013-2023) anime series tonight. The character of Survey Corp Commander Erwin Smith reminded of this resolute WWI soldier bronze statue by Coeur de Lion MacCarthy at Niagara Falls, Canada.

    Considering wars past and present, AoT points out the irrationality and tribalism that propels these kinds of conflicts. It reflects the seeming inevitability of repeating past mistakes mired in violence and death. The rebooted Battlestar Galactica (2003-2009) covers much of this ground, too. Even though the subject matter and mythologies in these series are different, they are clearly in dialog with one another regarding the human condition, free will, tribalism/social structures, and propensity for violence over dialog and compromise. Both seem to say that we are doomed to repeat