Adrift on solar winds

Fungus or vegetable, man or machine, what waits in the darkness drifting through vistas of star dotted infinity? How many times will we fail to imagine it and reflect contorted images of ourselves on to it.

This is my failed attempt at creating something alien. I imagine it would be partially fungal and partially vegetation creating the energy needed to sustain itself via photovoltaic bulbs. It is partially animal and observes its environment with a singular eye. It collects radiation with a baleen appendage then digests  and exhausts the participial as a means of propulsion. Its wings allow it to glide when it encounters planetary atmospheres.

This creature was inspired in part by the floaters imagined in Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series. It’s an interesting mental exercise to try to move beyond the ordinary forms that are taken by earthly creatures. To come up with new anatomies that are plausible in the obscure edges of the universe.

This drawing is in pen and ink on white paper. Color was done in photoshop.