A Vision From a Different World

By Jan S. Gephardt

To a certain extent, every piece of fiction opens a vision from a different world. But in works of science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction, the idea of “a different world” is often more front-and-center.

Hildie on a Balcony in a Saree, 2022. Ready for a special event, Hildie poses on an outer balcony of Feliz Tower. (Painting © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

But translating that into visual art can be tricky. As I’ve described in the last two blog posts, “Visualizing a Character” and “Portraying Hildie,” this winter my friend Lucy A. Synk and I undertook a multi-painting project. We sought to create what are called “developmental” images of several important characters from my books.

Lucy has the painting skills and the “eye of an illustrator” I am disappointed to report that I lack. But I have a cast of characters I need to portray. I’m continually finding new ways to use them for advertising, my newsletter, on the website, and, of course, here on my blog. For me, they’re well worth the investment to bring Lucy’s talents to bear!

In last week’s post I explained why we chose to start with Hildie Gallagher first. And while I was more focused on Hildie herself, savvy illustrator Lucy knew from the start that these paintings would also have to “read” as science fictional.

Hildie Gallagher at Work, 2022. Our first glimpse of Hildie (in What’s Bred in the Bone) is in action, on the job, saving lives. Here she goes again. (Painting is © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

A Different World: We’re Not in Kansas (or Kolkata) Anymore

That wasn’t a problem for the “Hildie at Work” painting. Hildie is an experienced paramedic assigned to the Emergency Rescue Team at Rana Station’s “Hub,” a microgravity environment. I’ve relied a lot on studies and videos from the International Space Station to add verisimilitude to my descriptions of that environment. And the first painting, which shows Hildie floating through a maintenance tunnel toward a patient, is clearly in a science fictional setting.

But Hildie’s life is more than her job. And once again, Lucy had a clear idea from the start about how to show another side of this character. The objective was not only to portray Hildie. It also was to show the plantings around her (a big deal on Rana Station) and the toroid geography of the Sirius River Valley behind her.

If you’ve read A Bone to Pick, the second book in the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy, you’ll understand why portraying Hildie in a red-and-gold saree for her “civilian” painting seemed like a no-brainer. But Lucy remained determined that what could be seen as a painting of a pretty Indian woman on a balcony needed a science-fictional element. Thus, that glimpse of the Sirius River Valley that we see over Hildie’s left shoulder is extremely important. It’s clearly a vision from a different world. And it makes it clear that in this painting we are definitely not  in Kansas (or Kolkata) anymore!

Three steps in the concept-development process for the painting. Yes, that’s even a piece of Jody A. Lee’s cover for A Bone to Pick in the middle collage's background. (Concept artwork © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

Oh, Those Balcony Plants!

One clear objective, beyond beyond the character herself, was to show the profuse plantings common on Ranan balconies. It’s an important element in this vision from another world. The plants are also one reason why the saree is plainer than most traditional sarees. It’s to give viewers’ eyes something of a break (and also because Lucy hates painting fabrics with repeating patterns on them).

As longtime readers of this blog know, I have strong opinions about feeding people in space – and about agriculture on Rana Station in particular. What you don’t see in the sketches and mock-ups is the conversations we had, sometimes by phone and sometimes via email or text, about the most likely and visually attractive plants to put on that balcony. You may notice in the montage above that the plants on the balcony changed in some way with every step in the visualization process.

L-R: Nasturtiums, cherry tomatoes, and morning glories, our "Balcony Finalists." (See credits below).

Flowers or Vegetables?

Lucy wanted flowers. She argued strongly for their undeniable aesthetic benefits. I wanted vegetables, mindful of the millions of mouths to be fed on Rana Station’s limited landmass.

But I know the results always turn out better when my illustrators make their own independent contributions to the vision. After all, they’re the ones who ultimately have to make that visual magic happen! And Lucy really, really wanted a flowering vine coming down from above in a certain, strategic spot. She sold me on morning glories when she discovered they’ve been used in herbal teas for centuries.

We eventually settled on two more plant species. Cherry tomatoes are as decorative as they are edible, with their complementary-color contrast of red and green. And nasturtiums, on the railing adjacent to the tomatoes in the final painting, make good salad ingredients. Bonus: they are an outstanding companion plant to match with tomatoes. We spent a chunk of one evening on the phone, mutually researching them. By the end I had become so enthusiastic about nasturtiums that I bought some for my garden this year!

The Saga of the Sirius River Valley

But by far the most challenging aspect of creating this vision from a different world came from a small section in the background. That little corner of the painting became a very big deal. Rex put his nose right on the problem in the first line of What’s Bred in the Bone:

“Damn it, no horizon should bend upward. . . . It was freaky-unnatural for a river to run down the wall at one end of the vista, as Wheel Two’s Sirius River did. Even worse for it to run back up the wall at the other.”

- "What’s Bred in the Bone"

There’s no getting around it. The perspective inside a toroid space habitat is just damn weird (though, to my mind, not as weird as the inside of an O’Neill Cylinder). Add in the “undulating, terraced hills of the Sirius River Valley,” and the portrayal just gets more and more difficult.

Visions from 1975, of the inside of a Stanford Torus. (See credits below). 

 

Most Definitely A Different World

The more I work with illustrators trying to wrestle that “from a different world” perspective into submission, the more admiration I have for Don Davis and Rick Guidice. They’re the two NASA artists who made it look easy to portray the inside of a Stanford Torus in 1975 (hint: it’s way NOT). You can read more about the long, angsty process Jody A. Lee and I went through creating the cover of A Bone to Pick on my blog, if you’re interested.

Lucy respected Jody’s rendition on the cover of A Bone to Pick, but she had a slightly different concept. If the terrace walls are 90-plus years old, she thought, they’ll have had time to weather, grow moss in the night mists, and undergo other changes. Also, why waste all that vertical space when even today we have “green walls” and “green roofs”?

So she set out to create more plausibly green primary terraces in her vision of a different world on Rana Station. She drew some inspiration from paper maquettes I’d made several years ago and photographed on an incline to simulate the torus’s curve. She also used my clumsy attempts to capture the view, Jody’s painting, and other resources to create her mini-painting. Then she isolated the landscape and scanned it, so I could use it as a separate piece of artwork/illustration, before she painted Hildie over part of it.

The Sirius River Valley: It’s hard to imagine the years of hard effort by a surprising number of people that lie behind this peaceful-looking landscape. (Painting © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

A Note About the Saree

Some people may think a saree is a startling thing to see anyone wearing on a far-future space station. How could that possibly fit into a vision of a different world? The answer lies in the culture and history of Rana Station. In the universe of the XK9 books, we humans managed to avoid destroying Earth. The Chayko System is two jump-points away from the place Ranans call “Heritage Earth,” but they maintain ties, communications, and some trade.

Moreover, as I’ve noted in past blog posts, Ranan culture is centered on families. It is perhaps natural that family-oriented people might grow curious about their ancestry. During an introspective moment in A Bone to Pick, major character Charlie Morgan reflects on a period in (from his perspective) Rana’s recent past:

“About a generation ago, Rana Station had gone through a period when seemingly everyone was exploring their ethnic backgrounds. The Human Diaspora had drawn people into space from all over Heritage Earth. During the early decades of space expansion, many cultural practices had been lost. But a few generations after its founding, family-oriented Rana Station had collectively decided they must 'reclaim their roots,' in an effort to 'fully embrace the nature of their being.' Or something like that.

“People all over the Station suddenly yearned for knowledge of the cultures they’d descended from. Religious and cultural festivals, ethnic foods, and traditional clothing all became important preoccupations.”

- "A Bone to Pick"

 

Hildie on a Balcony in a Saree, 2022. Ready for a special event, Hildie poses on an outer balcony of Feliz Tower. (Painting © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

My Multicultural Vision From a Different World

You can also see my fascination with the many and varied cultures of Earth in another passage, from a scene that comes near the end of What’s Bred in the Bone:

“Orangeboro officials began to assemble on the wide flat area at the top of the steps outside OPD Central HQ. The Borough Council emerged first, resplendent in formal attire. There was Rona Peynirci, in a deep red and shimmering gold saree. Charlie spotted Beatriz Chan in green and silver robes, with a matching turban and a stunning emerald necklace. Mayor Idris wore a blue silk wrap. The men, similarly glamorous, wore silken jackets, hanbok, kente, or kilts.”

- "What’s Bred in the Bone

In light of all that, it shouldn’t be surprising to find a saree on this particular space station. As Charlie says to Hildie at one point in A Bone to Pick, “A saree is timeless. It’s always in fashion.” And Hildie’s saree becomes symbolic of larger themes, in that sequence.

Lucy and I are not finished with our projects started this winter. Hildie is the first Ranan human to get character development illustrations. But the XK9s have many human friends. And as Lucy helps me fill out this vision from a different world, I’ll share their stories here (although Newsletter subscribers always get first looks).

IMAGES and Other CREDITS

Most of the imagery in this post is ©2022 by Lucy A. Synk. There’s a glimpse of a detail from Jody A. Lee's cover painting ©2020 for A Bone to Pick in one of Lucy’s “working image” photo-montages, used for her reference.

The photos of garden plants are courtesy of three different online seed and plant sales sites. The nasturtiums photo is courtesy of Bonanza, the cherry tomato shot came from Grow Joy, and the morning glories are courtesy of Park Seed. Many thanks to all! (check out their gardening offers!).

The 1975 visions of the inside of a Stanford Torus are ©1975 by NASA. They were painted by Don Davis (torus interior landscape) and Rick Guidice (cutaway view). I am deeply grateful that NASA has made this resource so freely available.

The excerpts from What’s Bred in the Bone are ©2019 by Jan S. Gephardt. The excerpts from A Bone to Pick are ©2021 by Jan S. Gephardt. All rights reserved.

Portraying Hildie

By Jan S. Gephardt

Portraying Hildie Gallagher has been a rewarding collaboration Lucy A. Synk and I tackled this year. Each winter since 2019, my artist friend and I have combined our visions to create illustrations showing aspects of my XK9 “Bones” Trilogy. The books comprise a science fiction mystery series about a pack of extremely intelligent police dogs who live with their humans on Rana Habitat Space Station.

Last week’s post addressed the considerations that go into visualizing a character in general, a process all fiction writers tackle in one way or another. I ended that post with a look at this winter’s two finished paintings. Winter in the Northern Hemisphere may mostly be over, but my 2022 collaboration with Lucy isn’t. I have two paintings portraying Hildie that I plan to talk about – one this week and one next week. Lucy and I also have more works-in-progress, so stay tuned for additional future blog posts later this summer (or get advance views even sooner with a subscription to my newsletter).

Hildie Gallagher at Work, 2022 (Painting is © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

 

Who is Hildie Gallagher?

If you haven’t (yet) read my novels, or if you’ve only just started them, you may be wondering who this Hildie person is. Her name doesn’t come up in the book descriptions, so what’s the point in portraying Hildie? Those book descriptions necessarily focus on the Trilogy’s protagonist, XK9 Pack Leader Rex Dieter-Nell (he’ the big black dog on my book covers). The descriptions mention Charlie, Rex’s human partner, but only in passing. And they barely hint at the rest of their world.

But the ten XK9 members of Rex’s “Orangeboro Pack” all have human partners. Charlie may speak ruefully about being Rex’s “on-call opposable thumbs,” but in truth the humans play important roles in their XK9 partners’ lives. Moreover, these humans and XK9s live embedded in a complex society on Rana Station. They all have families and friends. As any society would, this matrix of associations deeply affects how they live, the work they do, and the influence they are able to gain.

Rex Dieter-Nell, ©2019 and 2020 by Jody A. Lee for the first two book covers in the XK9 “Bones” Trilogy, and ©2020 Lucy A. Synk. (See complete credits below).

 

Hildie Gallagher is one of that matrix of associations who becomes very important in the stories. It’s probably not much of a spoiler to say she’s introduced as Charlie’s old friend and becomes his current “love interest.” But she’s much more than just a pretty face or “arm candy.” Indeed, she’d be deeply insulted anybody might think that.

Considering our Options

So, then, how did we decide on portraying Hildie first, out of all the possibilities? Lucy and I finished a long series of XK9 portraits in 2020-2021 (To be clear: she painted, with considerable skill and sophistication. I kibbitzed, and also funded the effort). But that meant twenty different paintings of dogs. After all of those dogs, Lucy – a confirmed animal lover, but at heart a “cat person,” was ready to paint something else!

Top row L-R: Razor, Elle, Crystal, Petunia, and Cinnamon. Bottom Row L-R: Scout, Victor, Tuxedo, Shady, and Rex. (All paintings are ©2020-21 by Lucy A. Synk).

 

Fortunately, there are lots of other options for things and people to paint on Rana Station. Not only are there humans, there’s also a large population of ozzirikkians. Ozzirikkians are a non-terrestrial species of Ranan citizens, without whom the station couldn’t have been funded and built.

Moreover, there’s a small resident population of Farricainan AIs. They are autonomous, highly intelligent, cybernetic entities. The XK9s become acquainted with one of these entities named Dr. SCISCO-3750, a local professor. The Farricainan AIs use android “focal objects” to interact more comfortably with “corporeal entities.” More comfortably for the humans and XK9s, that is.

We have plans to create paintings of both one of Dr. SCISCO’s androids and at least one ozzirikkian (we'll possibly start with Vice Premier Kizzitikti Zhokittik) in the future. But portraying either of them presented multiple, time-consuming challenges. A much more obvious next step was to portray some of the humans. We decided to create paired portraits, at least for the main characters. One would show the person in work clothes. The other would portray them in a civilian context. But we immediately ran into problems there, too.

The Uniforms of Law Enforcement on Rana

We are still working on exactly how the uniforms and other official garb of the Orangeboro Police Department and the Station Bureau of Investigation look. In this particular fictional future human bodies have not changed much. But fashions, fabrics, and customs inevitably must have. Lucy correctly points out that in a painting, science fictional elements such as costumes have to read as science fictional.

We have a wealth of ideas to use in developing the official law enforcement uniforms on Rana Station. This is a tiny sample. (See credits below).

 

For instance, will men still wear ties in the Twenty-Fourth-And-A-Half Century? More to the point, will police detectives wear them? Lucy doubts it. I’m still considering the matter, based on all the various permutations of “cloth around the neck” that history has seen. Constructive, on-topic comments are welcome if you’d like to weigh in, in the comments section below!

Other clothing options, such as embedded LEDs and shape-shifting fabrics may be flashy and “futuristic-looking.” But in a society where nearly every family is engaged in agriculture, durability and practicality are likely to prevail. Can those qualities mesh well with any of the futuristic fashions we’ve seen in entertainment media?

With no firm, final decisions yet hammered out about uniforms for Ranan officers, we also weren’t ready for portraits of most of my main characters. Especially for Charlie, who makes several appearances during the Trilogy wearing his OPD dress blues, we needed to know what OPD uniforms look like! Similarly, major characters Pam Gómez, Chief Klein, and Elaine Adeyeme pretty much all needed to be portrayed in uniform or some kind of regulation garb. In the winter of 2021-22, we weren’t ready to pull the trigger on those yet, either.

Portraying Hildie at Work

But portraying Hildie presented none of those challenges. I hate to call her the “low-hanging fruit,” but her work outfit – a universally-practical jumpsuit not unlike those worn by contemporary astronauts – presented far fewer challenges. Finding reference photos for that outfit was not going to be a problem! So we started with her.

As it is for many of us, Hildie’s job is a really important part of her identity. It’s also important in the stories of the Trilogy. She’s a paramedic with Orangeboro’s Emergency Rescue Team at the Hub. Assigned to the Rescue Runner Triumph, she was part of Charlie’s old team, when he drove a MERS-V (Multi-use Emergency Response Space-Vehicle) at the dawn of his career. Hildie’s a specialist in microgravity-based emergency medicine – a demanding and very challenging specialty.

Rock-climbing shoes, paramedic patches and pouches, and NASA astronaut flight suits all factored into our development of the painting. (See credits below).

Consider fluid dynamics in microgravity, and then recall that human bodies are big bags filled with fluid that tend to leak alarmingly when injured. That’ll give you some of the more obvious difficulties a paramedic in microgravity would have to confront and counteract. Our first glimpse of Hildie, in What’s Bred in the Bone, is in action, on the job, saving lives. Specifically, saving Charlie’s life!

Building From Things We Know

Some visual things were clear from the books: Safety Services employees wear blue jumpsuits. Hildie’s uniform includes chevrons on the sleeve. And she has long, dark hair, which she wears tied back at work. Lucy based her jumpsuit on those used by NASA (as had I, when writing about them). We based the patches and insignia on similar items in current international use. It seemed needlessly confusing to come up with a whole new system of symbols that contemporary viewers might find hard to interpret.

We did go around and around some on her emergency medical equipment pouches. For aesthetic reasons, Lucy wanted to show her wearing a backpack. And contemporary, terrestrial paramedics do use backpacks. But when I envisioned the practical realities of trying to access a backpack in microgravity, in potentially a narrow work area somewhat like the Jeffries Tubes of Star Trek, it seemed awkward at best and utterly impractical, especially for a solo paramedic, at worst. When seconds saved can save a life, you don’t want to have to fight with your gear.

Lucy, however, wasn’t real enthusiastic about portraying Hildie with bulky, 21^st -Century-style belt pouches around her middle. She wanted something more sleek, compact, and perhaps futuristic-looking. And maybe not something bright red, in the painting’s color scheme. So we negotiated ourselves to a compromise.

Between mid-January and mid-February 2022 we tested a lot of ideas. (Artwork ©2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

 

Lucy’s Ingenuity

Once we’d figured out a set of packs we both could live with, there was still the matter of Hildie’s surroundings in the painting. Here’s where Lucy’s ingenuity and spirit of innovation truly became valuable. She drew on her experience making dioramas for natural history museums, and assembled an array of “found objects” to provide long shapes and textures that she could use to create the dramatic perspective.

Once that had been glued together, she used the last of a can of silver spray paint from her studio. It transformed her impromptu background into a credible simulation of a maintenance passageway. Then she positioned her lights and photographed her posable wooden mannequin in the environment she’d created.

Take a look at the early sketch at the left corner of the illustration below. We went through a world of possibilities and variations for the decision-making on this piece. But the early sketch shows that Lucy’s overall composition concept actually didn’t change much. The idea of portraying Hildie floating in microgravity, making her way through a maintenance passageway toward a patient, never really changed.

An early sketch, and the steps to make and use a diorama background. (Art, diorama, and photos © 2022 by Lucy A. Synk).

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this examination of the illustration work that Lucy and I have combined our visions to create. I’m proud and pleased with Lucy’s oil painting of Hildie Gallagher at Work. Next week’s post will explore the more complex process of portraying Hildie in a completely different setting and costume.

IMAGE CREDITS

The vast majority of the imagery in this post is © 2020-2022 by Lucy A. Synk. However, I also have a handful of other sources to thank as well. They include most notably Jody A. Lee. whose two images of Rex, ©2019 and 2020, are details from the book covers for What’s Bred in the Bone and A Bone to Pick. The detail of Shiva Shimon in a helmet and body armor (in the science fictional clothing collection) also is © 2019 and a detail pulled from the cover of What’s Bred in the Bone.

The other imagery from the science fictional clothing collection, moving clockwise from Shiv in the upper left, includes the following. A pair of highly improbable police uniforms from Daz3D. Genuine Leather Jacket’s design for Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds Leather Trench Coat, discovered via Pinterest (Lucy: note the necktie). Artist Lian Li’s “Shura Hitmen LawBreakers Concept Art” (Whoops! Another tie), also found on Pinterest. A production photo of Lieutenant Anastasia "Dee" Dualla from Battlestar Galactica, via Justin Grays. A page of futuristic fashion designs by gary jamroz-palma on Behance, found via Pinterest. And a police-ish-looking uniform which I also found on Pinterest but was unable to source beyond that.

The montage of resource images includes several pieces of a Google Image Search for “Paramedic Patches,” scattered throughout. The rock-climbing shoe collection at upper left is from “Rock And Ice’s” review of the recommended climbing shoes. The AP photo of the unidentified ISS crew came from a story on Sky News. And I found the red paramedic’s fanny pack on Amazon. Many thanks to all! The montages were created by Jan S. Gephardt.