Bringing LiFe From
Outern Space to
PLANET EARTH...
Rls.Date
05/04/2020
Pack 0520
cXc
LiFE
SCiENCE
FiCTiON
Greetings, earthlings! Since Mistigris revived in 2014, there has been a nigh-
unprecedented eruption of Star Wars in the world, five of them released across
a five-year period. And now, with the exception of the streaming TV series,
its all pretty much wound down... which brings us to the dubious cultural
cachet of May the Fourth be with you, celebrating all things Sith and Jedi one
day a year. Is anyone looking forward to more Star Wars in the wake of the
Rise of Skywalker, or are we instead grateful that the bones have been put back
in the steamer trunk for a well-deserved rest?
But our community of artists continue minting Star Wars fanart, and when else
exactly will be a better time of year to share it? As usual, however, there
isnt enough of it to warrant a full-bore all-Star-Wars artpack collection, so
again we hedge our bets and dedicate our May release to the big tent of science
fiction. Its an odd time to be an SF fan, with society radically refigured in
the face of a global pandemic, looking forward to an imminent climate collapse
expected to dwarf all expectations in its societal disruption. Writers have
traditionally used science fiction as a lens through which the issues of today
could be viewed, but at this juncture in history everything is so in the air
its impossible to plausibly predict what next year is going to look like, let
alone a distant future. As the old expression pithily has it, yesterdays
tomorrow is today.
Last year we observed some of our more compelling SF futures, such as Blade
Runner and Akira, receding into the quaint annals of retrofuturism. Were
really boldly proceeding into uncharted territory here! Consequently weve
folded in some pieces pertaining to the current global Covid-19 pandemic among
all the other works celebrating alternate futures. Does that follow? Ladies
and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet
Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it that
does not make sense!
Ill take a brief moment to celebrate some of the works taking place in the
strange and far-off world of 2020: most obviously, Cyberpunk 2020. Weve
been here for 30 years already, glad you caught up! Also we might have been
the setting for The Edge of Tomorrow. The US Robotics company was supposed to
be refigured from manufacturing 14.4k sportster modems to robot production this
year, according to I, Robot. The years very name is also contained in Sealab
2020, Super Baseball 2020, and perhaps the most spectacularly interesting
failure of the lot, Texas Gladiators 2020. However the chips fall, I hope that
you have a calmer time than Pacific Rim, but not one as quiet as A Quiet Place.
May it be brighter than Perfect Dark Zero, and more satiated than The Hungry
Earth. In conclusion, Terrahawks.
OK, enough silliness. On with the infofile business. Id like to draw your
attention to new contributors Farrell Legos, who builds nerdy mosaics using a
certain block-shaped construction toy Im going to leave to your imagination,
Joninscii, whose designs are inspired by simple textmode compositions,
Littlebitspace, who had the misfortune to come next and suffer a direct
comparison of their work with Joninsciis, and MigMoog, whose work stands on
its own! This collection marks their collective underground computer artscene
debut, which is always something I like to celebrate.
Two other bodies of work jump out to the casual viewer of this collection:
Horsenburger turns a corner in this collection, picking up line art for the
first time on a regular basis in basically 30 years, representing extensively
with specimens from his recent Space Misadventurer daily drawing challenge.
But leaving even him in the dust we have the very cream of literally hundreds
of original works on SF themes minted by Blippypixel like some kind of
malfunctioning replicator. I dont need to emphasise these works here, because
if you threw an astro-dart blindly into the pack, youd hit one. You may think
that this gallery of speculative vistas is sprawling, but you have no idea how
many were omitted in a cold, calculated Darwinian bid to play God and engineer
a superior artpack. Speaking of which, hats off to LDA, not only for turning
up in a big way this month, but specifically for taking my half-baked leftover
concept from last year and turning it into a very credible FILEID.DIZ -- and
memberlist header! A compelling subset to Blippypixels works featured this
month include a series of cosmic captioned travelogues, presented almost like
scenes from an 8-bit adventure game or an intergalactic travel brochure found
in the seatback pocket in front of your assigned spot on the solar sail
shuttlecraft.
Other housekeeping notes for home viewers might include a tip of the hat to
Mist Classic alunus reNM8r for making a cameo reappearance as Hungryeye, and to
his CDIS colleague Onyx, whose vaults were plundered here for a few pieces of
unreleased tracker music dating up to a quarter century of age. Ive been
sitting on some of those songs longer than many of you have been alive!
Do keep an eye open for Horsenburgers turn at the teletext mill in the latest
Blocktronics artpack, where he shares some screens on pro-wrestling themes, and
while youre browsing other groups artpacks, take a look at what Arlequin has
done with Publius Emeritus IIs ASCII art logos from MIST0220 in the latest
Impure collection!
Though we had aspirations to mount a big project next month in celebration of
Pride, all the turmoil of world events put that plan on profoundly uncertain
foundations. Someday we hope to get around to it -- our hearts in the right
right place, just not our calendar. In the meantime, our upcoming June artpack
is scheduled to be unthemed, so if any of you have come up with creative works
youd like to share, were ready to handle all takers.
And on that happy note, I wrap this missive from the mothership. Stay home,
make art, flatten the curve, and you just may get a chance to live long and
prosper.
- Cthulu
Mistigris founder
May 3, 2020