Homo caelestis

Homo caelestis, or the Vacuumorph. For you who have read Man After Man, that's not Cralym. Or might be, you can never know under all that skin and lenses... For you who didn't, here comes a loooong story...

In Man After Man, Dougal Dixon presents the history of humanity, from an evolutionary point of view, from the ancient Ramapithecus(the common ancestor of man and apes) to millions of years to come telling the stories of different individuals of different times(and species). The Vacuumorph is one of the first experiments in genetical engineering an artificial species of human. Yep, here's where the bomb hits: that's a human being.

The vacuumorphs were created as a species that would be able to survive in outer space, since Earth will be decaying and almost uninhabitable 200 years in the future. It's described as "the ultimate triumph of genetical engineering". It's very unfortunate, though, that they failed so hard.

Firstly, the vacuumorph isn't born like that. They are born as only slightly modified humans that are apt to live in zero-gravity. After growing, they're given the hard skin spherical exoskeleton that protect their internal organs from the lack of pressure of space, as well as a few extra organs(of note: one extra lung to store pure air and another to store carbon dioxide, that can be used to propel the person around). Those two yellow globes are lenses that are sealed to protect their eyes from the vacuum of space, as well as solar radiation outside the protection of our atmosphere. Their feet are much more like hands to grapple themselves to ships and other support stations in space. And that's pretty much all they have of good.

In the fail side, they cannot reproduce by themselves. They're all neuter and they don't have external reproductive organs. They can't speak, since they're in space, so they communicate through those cilia around their eyelids. They must return to a stationary ship to get more air from time to time. And I don't think Dixon ever answered the question of how do they eat. And they can't survive anywhere else than the vacuum of space, since their genetic inheritance makes them uneasy in ambience with gravity(they can't even take a ride in the ship that's going away from Earth, since the acceleration creates gravity that'd be unsuitable for them).

In short, they're a doomed species(they get extinct far before the events of the core of the book take place). I really feel sad for Cralym, not because she's stuck forever as that hideous glob of thick skin doing nothing but floating around the low orbit of earth... but because her species is pretty much an eugenics experiment that was never meant to work. I think Dixon wanted us to get used to genetic manipulation in humans as quick as possible, so he got extreme right in the start of the book.

Long story told, let's talk about art:

Drawing the vacuumorph itself was pretty easy. I did some changes to the original design(arms and hands not so much segmented, the skin not that sickly hue of dark olive blue/green). I think I managed to make a decent Earth there on the background, and I wanted to do more(some space trash, the sun in the distance) but out of fear of screwing this up I decided to stop there(I tried adding the sun, but I' not sure how the sun looks from space).

I like the shading, and I admit someone with more skill for digital painting would do better(really, I use outlines!), but the creature itself is okay.

So, this is a memorial for the Vacuumorph, lest their story of failure be never forgotten.

Now I gotta continue reading that book. I'm barely past the "500 years hence" mark.