#danielmbensen

I'm going to be "at" the virtual Chicon worldcon in two weeks! If you're planning to be there too, come find me.

Here's my schedule:

The Biology of Fantasy Creatures (panel) Friday September 2nd at 11:30am CDT Airmeet 1

Building a Better Monster (speculative evolution workshop) Saturday September 3rd at 8:30am CDT Airmeet 1

Reading Saturday September 3rd at 11am CDT Airmeet Readings

Virtual Table Talk Sunday September 4th at 11:30 AM CDT Airmeet Table Talks

What Will the Aliens Look Like? (panel) Monday September 5th at 11:30 am CDT Airmeet 2

(see posts like this on my Patreon one week earlier)

Partly this came from a conversation we've been having at the Spec Evo forum, and partly from some musings I've been having on the random aspects of evolution. More on randomness next time.  For now, I give you a delicious array of conodonts.

Conodonts were jawless fishes that lived until about 200 million years ago. They used comb-like teeth of hydroxyapatite (the major component of both teeth and bones) to filter plankton out of water, and perhaps to grab, slice, or crush prey as well. Above, you see how I squashed conodonts into different niches first, and then I figured out what their evolutionary relationships might be.

Starting at the top we have:

Gray: ancestral filter-feeder similar to real fossil conodonts

Teal: pelagic pursuit-predator

Green: bottom-feeder

Orange: large, cruising filter-feeder

Red: pelagic apex predator, feeding on small vertebrates

Violet: benthic ambush-predator

Indigo: large shell-fish specialist

Blue: small shell-fish specialist

Yellow: small invertebrate-feeder, uses conodont elements on evertile tissue for defense

Chartreuse: small invertebrate-feeder, uses evertile tissue for prey-capture

Violet2: benthic shell-fish specialist

Tune in next time, for my next step. Which clade do you hope will have the most babies?

The creatures of my alien planet Junction and how to turn speculative biology into a story. https://youtu.be/dByLI0K4u4U?t=3675

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1WTaG42lbuF9Ii8liJFgqgCrVDpIk_J1NybBe1UQ7-6I/edit?usp=sharing

This was supposed to be a trial run for Vessian, a fictional language that evolved from ancient Thracian, and a part of my current novel-in-progress Wealthgiver.

I say “supposed to” because I wrote the English version of the follow message almost a year ago. Let’s hope the Vessian parts of my novel will take less time.

~~~

We are the Good. Ami emi Vessiti. (WE-nom BE-1st-plur GOOD-nom-plur-def)

You can forget the lies you have heard about us; we are not evil. Iu ivuss galti ta egmirat dravdzissi tsi tsepis zlivti be nami; me emi zuli. (YOU-plur-nom BE-2nd-plur-aor CAN-past.part-plur TO FORGET-2nd-plur LIE-plur-acc-def THAT Be-2nd-plur HEAR-past.part-plur FOR WE-dat NOT BE-1st-plur EVIL-masc-plur)

January Newsletter: Why????

So there I was again, crying in my writing chair.

Yeah, it's going to be another one of those newsletters. Don't worry, I come out of it okay.

I won't go too much into the background, but in January I hit an author-career snag and didn't know what to do about it. The day after I got the news, I sat down in my writing chair, not knowing how my next book was going to get out there, and I thought: why?

Experiments with an idea that never made it into Interchange. Imagine a fish that gets onto land, not by pushing on the ground with its fins, but by using its jaws. Remember that fish have (potentially) several sets of jaws nested one within the other, all evolved from the repeating structure of the gill arches.

In the topmost picture, the lower jaws are divided at the "chin" and folded back into comb-shaped display structures. The other limbs (and feeding mandibles) are individual teeth. I wasn't satisfied with that, but the result was cute.

The lower picture was better. The front and rear legs evolved from the second-outermost jaw of the aquatic ancestor. The outermost jaws are still used to catch prey, which is passed to the inner-most jaws, which are finally connected to the esophagus. The little hat thing on top is the tail, which has evolved into an excretory and display structure.