It was the wildest thing: immediately following an unexpected power outage in
the area, a second Cthulu showed up at the computer lab in his basement,
disoriented and alarmed, but committed to advancing the next Mistigris
release. We handed him a bottle of his favorite beverage, Jlt! Cola, to
settle his nerves, got him a chair and put him to work preparing the latest
project we were then prioritizing: a print manuscript being laid out. After a
short time attending to this task, he became very agitated, drawing our
attention to a peculiar error message hed managed to bring up in Scribus,
describing a text anomaly. Shortly afterward, all the equipment started
malfunctioning and we had to halt work after suddenC
It was the wildest thing: immediately following an unexpected power outage in
the area, a second Cthulu showed up at the computer lab in his basement,
disoriented and alarmed, but committed to advancing the next Mistigris
release. We handed him a bottle of his favorite beverage, Jlt! Cola, to
settle his nerves, got him a chair and put him to work preparing the latest
project we were then prioritizing: a collection of popular melodies arranged
in ANSI music. After a short time attending to this task, he became very
agitated, drawing our attention to a peculiar error message hed managed to
bring up in ANSIplay, describing an audio anomaly. Shortly afterward, all the
equipment started malfunctioning and we had to halt work after suddenC
It was the wildest thing: immediately following an unexpected power outage in
the area, a second Cthulu showed up at the computer lab in his basement,
disoriented and alarmed, but committed to advancing the next Mistigris
release. We handed him a bottle of his favorite beverage, Jlt! Cola, to
settle his nerves, got him a chair and put him to work preparing the latest
project we were then prioritizing: an e-mag about food and recipes. After a
short time attending to this task, he became very agitated, drawing our
attention to a peculiar error message hed managed to bring up in Browser,
describing a flavour anomaly. Shortly afterward, all the equipment started
malfunctioning and we had to halt work after suddenC
It was the wildest thing: immediately following an unexpected power outage in
the area, a second Cthulu showed up at the computer lab in his basement,
disoriented and alarmed, but committed to advancing the next Mistigris
release. We handed him a bottle of his favorite beverage, Jlt! Cola, to
settle his nerves, got him a chair and put him to work preparing the latest
project we were then prioritizing: finishing off a giant networked ANSI art
collaboration. After a short time attending to this task, he became very
agitated, drawing our attention to a peculiar error message hed managed to
bring up in Moebius, describing a palette anomaly. Shortly afterward, all the
equipment started malfunctioning and we had to halt work after suddenC
It was the wildest thing: immediately following an unexpected power outage in
the area, a second Cthulu showed up at the computer lab in his basement,
disoriented and alarmed, but committed to advancing the next Mistigris
release. We handed him a bottle of his favorite beverage, Jlt! Cola, to
settle his nerves, got him a chair and put him to work preparing the latest
project we were then prioritizing: packaging computer art on science fiction
themes to share in the month of May, as we had done that month for the
previous five years. After a short time attending to this task... he calmed
noticeably. Putting the finishing touches on an infofile, he got up and
stretched before proclaiming that he had to head back to his timeline ?!
and finish watching some old STTNG episodes.
... OK, looks like we managed to duck that malfunction, so perhaps this is the
prime universe after all, not the ruined 2023 of Perfect Dark, Gunbuster or
The Tomorrow War. The more years we do these SF artpacks and the further we
get into the future, the more milquetoast what we get measures up compared
to what we were hoping hello, flying cars? or dreading a new life awaits
you in the off-world colonies!, as though existence itself is subject to the
law of diminishing returns... and even our approaching dystopian visions are
diminished compared to earlier, bolder conceptions of potential futures now
behind us. Well, it all helps us to better cultivate our finely-attuned
appreciation for retrofuturism. Days of Future Past, then!
But enough wallowing in our theme. Thanks to LDA for this artpacks nicely
moody FILEID.DIZ art and ... ok, are you sure we arent in a parallel
universe? Youre telling me Cthulu drew both infofile headers? Well, Frank
Drake and Carl Sagan designed the Arecibo message Cthu merely transcribed it
-- and that only because its diagram of the Arecibo Radio Telescope bore a
superficial resemblance to Mistigris leading letter M, talk about grasping at
straws! The telescope itself was decommissioned, rapid unplanned
disassembly Space-X style, back in 2020 now, while were on the topic of
retrofuturism... but I digress.
I would like to acknowledge a few firsts: this artpack marks the first time
Nitrons colleague Alterra has appeared in a Mist pack, bringing some
geometrical ASCII space station designs along with him SanTagoy has work
appearing in this collection, only previously seen participating in the recent
Blender compo next up July 22-23 btw! and The Green Herring, explicitly
repudiating Shi-Akumas AI excesses that soured MIST0223, steps out from the
ZZT realm and into an artpack for the first time here. Welcome to all of you!
We started doing these SF artpacks specifically because artists were feverish
to manufacture Star Wars fanart, but perhaps after the hangover of somehow,
Palpatine returned and Disney+s carpet-bombing oversaturation of that
market with five movies and seven streaming series -- I mean, I like the baby
Yoda as much as the next guy, but keeping up with this stuff is a full-time
job. The galaxy far, far away is distinctly a supporting player here in this
artpack, positioned somewhere between Darkman Almightys dominant Star Trek
tributes it looks like Q has reversed whatever he did to Worf over the
holidays, but otherwise his lens has turned to DS9 and Blippypixels nods to
foundational classics of the SF genre from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Granted,
all of the fanart combined goes in the backseat -- or possibly the trunk --
with Blippys fantastic original SF fever dreams storming the helm by the
dozens and setting the controls for the heart of the sun. If we can
eventually manage to collectively get all this Star Wars mania out of our
system we might finally take a break from SF artpacks in May of 2024, but we
likely still could release a Blippypixel solo pack on SF subjects... any month
of the year!
But enough about Blippy -- sure, 75 of these artworks may be his, but we still
pulled together 50 more from other parties. The unaffiliated Nitron endows us
with a lordly guesting spree here, revelling in War Games and early anime
nostalgia. And dont get started asking him about MASK! We also take the
opportunity to revisit the humorous paintings of Nick Lakowski, whose work
appeared regularly in our post-revival artpacks for some five years. Also,
Dosdoc has just made a bold lateral move from block ASCII logos to colour ANSI
illustration provided its still literary in nature: he has his standards!
and just had to put in a special appearance at the very last minute to
demonstrate his new approach -- still outsider by artscene standards, but we
look forward to seeing where it evolves to.
Thanks to all of these individuals and the rest of our contributors -- also to
our colleagues who took a breather this month and are cheering from the
side-lines, and the extended members of our community out there in the
audience, so cheers and greetings to all of the cannibal clones, cyborg
gladiators, howling mutants, mad scientists, rogue AIs, surly Roombas, street
samurai with indigestion, literate grey goo and renegade Boston Dynamics dogs
out there reading this infofile from a bunker somewhere in the glowing,
irradiated wasteland. We did it all for you!