THE RITUAL AURA (LANIAKEA)

  A description like The Ritual Aura casts a wide net for a Technical Death Metal band, moreso when trying to put ritual into perspective. But beyond that, it sure is a sci-fi proponent. Labelled as both progressive and technical, the latter is the most prescriptive on this record. Technical Death Metal goodness.

   

  Laniakea opens with a soulful piano intro before barraging into fret-board wizardry, partly aided by the ex-Obscura shred master—Christian Muenzner. Shredding is in the element of Hellenic Terror Kronos, featuring similar shrieking but with better production—however befitting Kronos' is. Sub-par releases had the Mad Mane Machine wishing some tracks were longer than teaser material. The Precursor of Aphotic Collapse features amazing trade-offs with a dual breakdown work before the lead bursts into a solo closure.

   

  What of a Perry Rhodan exo-world with a dome barrier aligned with fleet as they await entrance. A protective dome deactivation that only Perry's hand can aid for it to be achieved. The mass of orbs is puny to the propitiously titled Laniakea. Uninhabitable space is as unforgiving as rightly wielded Technical Death Metal. Furrowing and flitting forward across the exosphere with a wrecking, calculated weight.

 

 Supermassive superclustural supremacy FTW.

BOGTROTTER (DARK MATTER)

  

Emanations. Gurgling from below the porous marshes. Bubbles collecting, spiraling to the bog's sodden expanse. Dark Matter, what else pulls the sonorous visions together?

  Cerberus echoes netherworld proliferations. Slushing with vigorous vibrations as foggy psychedelia spouts from the quagmire, in a bass closing SkairHaap.

  Slippery animated frogs exist, camouflaged in a tapestry of moss covering outcrops and lichen draping and veiling trunks—croaking and enchanting quicksand victims to the awaiting Ghoul Train underneath.  

Reptiles something something scaly texture from glitches.

TIME TRAVEL IN FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND

A Timeslip stands no worse than a landslide—a fault in the spatial infrastructure. In a near-future world, there had been an ongoing war among opposing Western, South American, and Third World Powers who have been using nuclear weapons of increasing caliber—within the orbits of Earth - Luna system. 

  The effect of this is man learning a bitter lesson on the indivisibility of Nature. The short-lived relief that everyone had—since it all happened above the stratosphere—was all gone as timeslip hazards might as well be equated to fallout. Both space and time goes on the blink. On one hand, it's still a null relief since nobody gained anything from the showdown, which managed to obliterate Moon colonies—something termed a doubtful benefit.

  Professor Ransome concludes that it came to be perceived as a hitherto undiscerned relationship between the planet and the infrastructure of space which surrounds and supports it. The infrastructure has been destroyed or at least damaged to the point at which it malfunctions unpredictably, and now the consequences must be borne with. 

Consequence one includes slipping either into the past or the future, as wherever one is standing could face a sudden geo-locational change. Consequence two is time-shock. Lastly; getting trapped in 'The Present' of the past or the future, as Joe Bodenland. 

'The Present' must be viewed with with increasing suspicions as T/timeslips increase—some timeslips are not timely enough to warrant a capital T. Herefore, these jumps can only take place in an Eternalist's universe; since when Joe slips back in Time, the world is still unfolding as per that date. Remember how they say about alternate universes coming to save time travel from its paradoxes? Then, doesn't that give it more power? Like merging a fictional lifeline to an existing one. A Timeslip eventful enough in length requires the chrono-marker to regard its time as Time, so Joe Bodenland does that, to events lasting beyond a few hours.

Well, Joe the time traveler could sell his timepiece from the (eternalism, forbid a) 2020 U.S.A., traverse the past with a Felder, but a (alternate universes be damned) May 1816 Geneva needs some music.

  

Let's meet the olde poets.

SURFACE TENSION BY JAMES BLISH

   In the Devonian period, life began to earnestly reach the land—395 Million years ago. Plants had began to flourish and managed to stabilize the carbon dioxide-abundant atmosphere by releasing large quantities of oxygen—paving way for land colonization by arthropods i.e. mites and millipedes. Vertebrates followed—lead off by lungfish, advancing to amphibians.

"Are we going to tell them they're microscopic? I'm opposed to it. It may saddle their entire history with gods-and-demons mythology that they'd be better off without."

  Picture this; a miniature wooden spaceship, out to conquer space! So it ensues that whichever race is inside must be microscopic. And as the title of the tale gives away—SURFACE TENSION / SAFE UR-ION SCENT—a liquid that occurs in plenty and of significance to this race, will play a major role. Surface Tension is hard science fiction explaining life from its origins—the sea. 

"Martin, what would you think of our taking to the sea? We came out of it once, long ago; maybe we could come out of it again through Hydrot."

  The tale of a galaxy-trotting, planet-hunting crew on a mission to scatter men, or at least lifeforms very much like men, all over the galaxy. Until they crash-land on a target planet, with zero survival chance. They rush against time to 'create' the new race through pantropy. These creatures (pantropes) are calibrated, with detail that once out of the water, they go through a couple generations as amphibians before breathing through the larynx.

"Those people will be of the race of men, Eunice. We want them to win their way back into community of men. They are not toys, to be protected from the truth forever in a fresh-water womb."

  Ensuing is a description of the lifeforms appearing in the classic novella; found descriptions; and relations to each other.

 .  .  .

 Location: Hydrot—A waterscape, similar to Earth, immersed in water bar a triangular slab. Evolution here seemed to have stopped with the crustacea. Crayfish.

 Star: Tau Ceti—performs the role of Solar System's Sun. 

 

 Man: Was fashioned from the genes of his crash-landed ancestors. 250 microns in size. He had a thermocline to protect them from cold during hibernation, an amniotic fluid produced from a winter-induced protective shell. At this (hibernation) time, he lived in spores. Had webbed extremities, all lead by Lavon."They are creatures that look alike."

 Shar: Knowledge keepers of the race. With each awakening from hibernation, the (new) Shar's responsibility is to drill Lavon of his environment before he (Lavon) embarks on leadership duties. Translates the first words of the corrosion-proof micro-engraved record from the ancestors—'i/terste//are//e/ition.' ...this was as fascinating as the prevalence of sound /ə/ in the same language.

 Protos: Man's accompanies. On the same hierarchy level with Euglena. A family of Paras, Didins and Stent. Could be taught man's language. Their bodies flared regularly with blue-green pulses. Were gleaming mobile cylinders. "Not green and had a visible nucleus, no matter how strange its shape."

 Paras: Man's Proto allies. Communicated with invisible cilia vibration in even, emotionless tones. Each separate hair-like process buzzed at an independent, changing rate. The resulting sound waves spread through the water intermodulating, reinforcing or cancelling each other. "A transparent bubble-filled cylinder, a colourless slipper of jelly, spirally grooved, long as the length of man".

 Generation XVI Para: Has cilia and hover with a muted whirl. "Slipper-shaped organisms, nearly transparent except for the thousands of blue and silver granules and frothy bubbles which packed its interior. 

 Didins: Shared hierarchy level with Para and Stent, all Protos. "Barrel-like creatures ringed to rows with cilia, and bearing a ram-like prow."

 Euglena:  On the same hierarchy level with Protos.

 Vortae: From one level with Paras. "Placid and murmurous."

 Eaters: Man's number one foe/predator. Occurred either as Rotars or Rotifers. Rotars only locomoted by swimming. "As beautiful as the fruiting crowns of water-plants. " All had the whirling crown of cilia which could suck quarry into the incessantly grinding mastax in a moment."

 Dicran: Man's foe. They were Eaters, Dicran. Their method of locomotion was leaping. Have an armour plate for defense, a mastax and cilia which make a rhythmical pulsation to create an illusion of rotating corona. They are poisonous. Means of locomotion; leaping. "The armoured trumpet-shaped body".

 Notholka: They are leapers just like Dicran. They are Eaters.

 Diatoms: Same hierarchy level with Desmids. Beautifully marked, oblong, pillbox-like shell swarming with greedy bacteria. "Everything which was green and had an engraved shell of glass."

 Desmids: Flexible shells which could not move. Was the food source for Man before he started growing his own. 

 Syn: Fronds in the water. Plants that communicate with Paras. Refused to help men as they expected them to be dead before the Eaters awake (they rise the last from hibernation/awakening).

 Bacteria: Was visible to Man. Appeared in rods, globes, and spirals.

 Noc: A flagellate with no natural weapon against rotifers. Drifts like star-shell. Of the same size with Dicran. Produces a blue light in flashes when excited.

 Caddis-Worm: Live in sand-built houses—a masonry tube with everything in form of a conical bore differing from the next tube only in size—clinging to mountainous slopes of under-water rock. This was the first City of Man—once the Caddis-Worm was exiled.

 Stephanost: A predator of Man, but is easy to avoid. A trapper, but not a hunter.

 

 Flosc: They live in castles; which are all tunnels and exits and entrances. They are colony-builders. Man fought them out of their castles, which were much better than the worm-houses.

 .  .  .

SAFE UR-ION SCENT / UR+ION SAT FENCES (so undecided)