An Expedition to Darwin IV

In this episode, we pay a visit to the eerily beautiful, richly realized, and utterly alien planet of Darwin IV. 

Transcript

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The following episode of Approaching White Speed is all about the book Expedition by Wayne Barlow. It's an art book, which means that it's not really focused on storytelling or plot, but more along the lines of artwork and world building. With that in mind, I'm going to be taking a lighter hand than usual with spoilers. I'm going to be going into detail about things that happen throughout the book, but this warning doesn't carry as much weight as it usually does because, like I said, story is not the focus here. But I'd also be remiss if I didn't give a warning of some kind, so let this intro serve as that. But without further ado, let's explore the world of Darwin 4. If you ever watched Discovery Channel or Animal Planet or Science Channel or any of that family of cable television, you might have run across this documentary called Alien Planet, which came out like 20 or so years ago, or maybe a little less than 20 years ago. It was this awesome sequence of computer-generated animation that depicted all these various alien creatures, and it was interspersed with these interviews with super prominent scientists of the time, like Stephen Hawking and Michio Kaku and whatnot. And it told the story of humanity's first exploration of a, you guessed it, Alien Planet. And it was supposed to be like this sort of plausible look at what we could potentially find on such a mission. For a long time, Alien Planet was this super nostalgic thing that would just pop into my brain once a year, and then I would scour the internet on some late night to just watch the whole thing through in bed. I actually came to a really funny realization during my college years that the narrator of the documentary is actually the guy who plays Dr. Cox in Scrubs. It's weird to listen to him talk about stuff like Xenobiology and this richly realized and rendered planet that is Darwin 4, when all I'd ever really heard from him, or I guess all I ever really remembered hearing from him before this realization, had been newbie and girls' names and toxic but hilarious rants and pep talks from his character in Scrubs. It's funny to think that I've encountered this super distinct voice 10, 15 years before I'd ever even bothered to watch Scrubs. So that's the documentary. But what you might not know is that Alien Planet is actually based on a book which was written by Wayne Barlow. The full title of which is Expedition Being an Account in Words and Artwork of the 2358 AD voyage to Darwin 4. I know that Alien Planet was a book for a while, but for the longest time it was super rare, and the absolute cheapest you could find it online for, at least from what I've seen, was over $200. And it was only recently that they came out with a new edition that I have since bought, read, and enjoyed. The book is this awesome speculative biology, or I guess it would be more of a speculative xenobiology project, that goes over in rich detail the various life forms that live on the planet Darwin 4. If you've ever seen pictures from the book All Tomorrows, you might get a pretty good idea of what you're in for in Expedition. It's gonna be kind of difficult to talk about this book though on a podcast, because since a podcast is a obviously very audiocentric medium, it's gonna be hard to sort of convey the sheer outlandishness and brilliance of a lot of the imagery that is found within this book. Expedition is primarily an art book, but it describes a world that is so fascinating that I would be remiss if I omitted it from this show. So I suppose I'm going to try my absolute best to describe the indescribable. Now, Wayne Barlow is an artist who's been working for a very long time. He's been deeply involved in both the film and video game industries. He's done work, creature work on the movie Avatar, the James Cameron one, not The Last Airbender, as well as stuff like Dante's Inferno. He even has a few other speculative biology volumes, like, for example, there's one that focuses on the Christian hell and all of the demons and other creatures that live therein. Expedition in particular looks like this sort of 1960s slash Sgt. Pepper flavored drug trip. The world of Darwin IV aesthetically can kind of be compared to some of the wackier episodes of Futurama or Rick and Morty or the Midnight Gospel, but it's told through a way more restrained and subtle lens. Barlow places more of an emphasis on science and logic than he does on crazy bizarrness for the sake of it. But that's not to say that things don't get really delightfully weird in this book, though. When it first came out, Alien Planet, the documentary, did something special for me. It showed me, and I'm assuming many other kids, that the universe is far stranger and far more extraordinary than the budgets of our little science fiction TV shows and movies can ever plan for. Real-life aliens aren't going to look like guys in makeup that we would see in episodes of Star Trek, or probably even remotely like humans? Earth is an extremely specific set of permutations that is probably not exactly replicated anywhere else in the universe. So why would alien life look anything like Homo sapiens? What who is to say that aliens would have two forward-facing eyes, two legs, two arms, and brains in their heads? Well, Wayne Barlow takes this concept and runs with it. He goes as far as to say, why should an alien even have eyes? What does a planet look like in which the life uses entirely different senses to perceive and navigate its environment? What kind of evolutionary events happen because of that? Well, to get a good picture of this, I think it's probably best that we start with the planet Darwin IV itself. Darwin IV is located in this binary solar system, fictional solar system by the name of Darwin. By our standards, Darwin IV is a super barren and inhospitable place. It's characterized mostly by endless expanses of flatlands and desert, with a ridge of mountains that encircle the equator. There's very little vegetation cover on the planet. There used to be a lot more, but plant life has been receding in the eons past. Bodies of water are few and far between, and rainfall is super infrequent. But despite all of this, the planet is home to a teeming ecosystem of tenacious lifeforms. Another neat thing about Darwin IV is that it is a very richly realized planet. Oftentimes in science fiction, you know, for want of budget or time spent at any given place, planets often tend to be very monochromatic. Like take take Tatooine from Star Wars, for example. It's you know a planet that is entirely covered in desert, and there are other planets and other science fiction properties that are wholly dominated by a volcanic landscape or are ice balls and nothing else. But that simply isn't the case. Like, you know, obviously Earth has a stunning variety of landscapes and biomes, and even worlds that are not Earth, like Mars, for example, have very distinct and disparate environments. And the same can be said for Darwin IV. Darwin IV is a very inhospitable and oftentimes monotonous place, but there are also glaciers and receding forests and a very strange ocean that we'll get to later. It's a place that's every much as alive and has every bit the amount of geological variety that our own planet does. In the book, humanity is able to visit this planet and explore it thanks to an alien race known as the Ema. The Ema are these sort of environmentally conscious and advanced aliens that sort of look upon our ecologically devastated Earth with pity and decide that it's a bit of a project or a problem to solve. And while doing this, they're also using satellites to image the nearby solar systems, and they manage to snap a picture of a colossal life form on the planet Darwin IV, thus launching an expedition to visit and document the world. The Ema brings some humans along with them, including our narrator, Wayne Barlow, who was sent along on the mission to give a sort of artistic eye for the public instead of the facts and figures and data sheets that would characterize a scientific mission such as this. The Ema are hellbent on just keeping everything exactly the way it is, and they go to great lengths to make sure that they don't contaminate the Darwin IV ecosystem at all. In the documentary, on the other hand, it's a mission that is launched by humans, and it is carried out by these probes that are controlled by artificial intelligence who do our exploring for us. And the documentary makes a point of telling us that we won't really know anything about their findings until decades from now because of the distance between us and Darwin 4. And personally, I think I like this version of the story better because it doesn't feature the Ema, and as a result, the impact of seeing these alien creatures is that much more profound. Because if we already know about a hyper-advanced, sort of culture-esque alien race, from what I can gather, then seeing these primitive life forms, while awe-inspiring, is sort of like we've already done it before. But the book also has its own merits to give as far as way deeper observations of Darwin IV, as well as a very environmentally conscious message and sort of a cautionary tale about the way we are treating our Earth, and the sort of envy that our characters look upon the pristine Darwin IV ecosystem with. There's also some pretty neat details that hint at a wider universe, such as a very minor plot point in which there are believed to be spies within the expedition that leak the location of Darwin IV to this interplanetary cartel of hunters. But as we zoom a little further into Darwin IV, we see that the life here has evolved to perceive its environment not by eyes or any kind of light-based methods of observation, but rather with sonar and infrared detection. Darwin IV is a very loud place, and the air is just perpetually filled with the pings of animals trying to get around. And it's these two adjustments that Wayne Barlow makes, the fact that the creatures can perceive their environment with sonar and infrared, that fundamentally sets it apart from life on Earth. In the same way that Earth has had hundreds of millions of years to go from the primitive, you know, pinpoint sight organs that the ancient creatures of the sea had to the complex eyes that we possess today. The creatures of Darwin IV have similarly evolved advanced sonar and infrared detection capabilities. There's a theory posited within the book that Darwin IV used to be home to sight-based life, but they were eventually outcompeted by their sonar-having counterparts and went extinct. As is fitting for the name of the planet. Another major departure from Earth life around here is the fact that jaws have not evolved on Darwin IV. The creatures here don't eat by, you know, catching prey in their fangs and chewing up morsels of meat, but rather they feed in a way that's very similar to how spiders on Earth do, in which spiders would inject their fangs into their kill and then sort of inject these enzymes that would break down the insides, and then they would slurp it up. The inhabitants of Darwood 4 are very similar to mosquitoes in that they will just plunge their, you know, straw-like organs into their prey and then suck out nutrients that way. They possess these long and sharp tongue-like appendages which a lot of predators on the planet use to impale their prey and then suck their insides out while they're still living. Most of the creatures on the planet are liquivores, and there are very few departures from this rule. I think the only mention of anything resembling the mouthparts on Earth comes in the form of these creatures that have very primitive mandibles. A good percentage of Darwin IV life also possesses these bioluminescent lights on their bodies. And while it's never expressly said in the book or the TV documentary, as far as I know, I believe this is partially an artifact from the time when sight-based creatures ruled Darwin IV. But they also still serve a purpose in this new infrared-based environment because they sort of serve as almost like an identify friend-foe system amongst the creatures here. And they're also decent for conveying emotion and are good for mating signals and whatnot. In the same way that the birds of Earth have hollow bones that make them lighter and able to fly despite possessing wingspans over six, seven, eight feet wide, the life of Darwin IV is proportionally way less dense than the life of Earth. And this combined with the fact that Darwin IV possesses lower gravity than Earth means that the creatures here can grow to gigantic, borderline implausible sizes. This also means that evolution can get a little experimental as far as locomotion goes. Many of the animals on Darwin IV use legs to get around, but these are usually arranged in kind of strange ways. For example, there's a creature known as the Gyro Sprinter, and it from the side looks like something akin to an antelope as far as build goes, but if you look at it from the front view, you realize it only has two legs, the first leg being in the front, the second leg being in the back. There's even speculation that it used to be a four-legged animal, but over time evolved and had those legs fused together to form simply two legs. But despite this, they're graceful creatures and they have these sort of booms on the side of their bodies that sort of keep their balance in the way a tail would on Earth. And despite their strange appearance, they can reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour. There are other things like the Grovebacks, for example, which are these colossal, I want to say turtle-like creatures, but as I'm hoping this podcast conveys, there's no real Earth analogue for any of these animals. But let's just say that they look sort of turtle-like, but instead of four legs they walk around on two forward legs and a sort of sledge that sort of protrudes from the bottom of their body. It looks almost like an upside-down shark fin that's placed on its undercarriage. Even stranger, perhaps, are the Rhyme Runners, which have not two, not three, not five legs, but one single leg, which they use to hop around. And like the gyro sprinter, despite this sort of improbable configuration that looks like it would just topple over, they maintain perfect balance thanks to the gifts evolution has bestowed upon them. Another motopedalian that is even stranger than the Rhyme Runners would be the flipsticks. The flipsticks are these sort of tube-shaped creatures that stand at over 60 meters tall. They have bioluminescent lights running throughout their bodies, and they have two stabilizing boobs on the side of their bodies in the same way that the gyro sprinters do. But instead of hopping along like kangaroos the way the Rhyme Runner does, the flipsticks move almost as if they were pogo sticks. They stand upright and they leap into the air and they tumble like a pinwheel of sort, and then they land on the other end and leap again in these very surreal arcs. They could cover a huge amount of ground doing this, and it really just goes to show what evolution is capable of when it's given a toolbox as unrestrained as that of Darwin IV. There's also the umbrella of creatures categorized as floaters, which, as you might be able to guess from their name, spend their entire lives in the air. A lot of these things don't even have legs or any limbs to speak of, which means that they do not land at any point in their life cycle. They are born, gestate, and grow, and live in the air for their entire lives. A lot of them are filter feeders in the way that a lot of Earth's whales are, in that they feed upon the bacteria and the micro plant life that seems to be abundant in the lower and mid-atmosphere. But some of them are also hunters that are fully capable of attacking prey on the ground. And many of them, not all of them, but many of them get around not by wings or any kind of familiar propulsion method, but by gas bags that sort of inflate them like balloons, which they of course can deflate at will to gain or lose altitude. There are also creatures like the skewers, which do have wings, but they don't flap them to gain altitude, but rather they use these sorts of they look almost like jet pods that are built into their wings, and these jet pods kind of combust methane that give them a sort of push. And this propulsion system combined with a wingspan that's well over 60 feet, allows them to just gracefully and easily soar through the air whether there is wind or not. These skewers, by the way, are the undisputed apex predators of Darwin 4. They sort of resemble pterosaurs of Earth, but instead of eyes, they have this sort of bulge in their head that possesses their sonar organs. And instead of beaks or bills, they have this kind of spear-like growth that protrudes from their heads. It's described as being as hard as titanium, but flexible like a sword at the same time. And they use this spear to swoop down upon unsuspecting prey and impale it, and from there they carry it up into the air. And built into this sort of spear-like device are grooves through which the skewer's tongue, which like all the other tongues on Darwin IV, are hollow so that they can inject the digestion enzymes and suck out the creature's insides, will sort of slide through and penetrate the creature that is still probably wriggling and dying on this spear. It's a very macabre and brutal form of feeding, and it's pretty indicative of the general savagery of life on this planet. The skewers in particular are even reported to kill for pleasure. But the skewers and the rhyme runners and the grovebacks and gyrosprinters and all the other insane life forms are not what catalyzed this journey. That honor belongs to a Titan known as the Emperor Sea Strider. As I said before, the expedition was launched in the first place because Ema's satellites were able to photograph one of these creatures on the surface of Darwin 4. And while Ema cameras are probably of a significantly higher quality and fidelity than our modern-day cameras can even hope to achieve, the fact is, if it's a creature that is big enough to be seen from outer space, then it's probably an awe-inspiring sight to see in person. And that's exactly the encounter we get to witness when our narrator Wayne Barlow journeys into the Amoebic Sea. The somewhat erroneously named Amoebic Sea itself is a mind-bogglingly alien thing. What looks from orbit to be Darwin IV's biggest and only ocean is actually a membrane of gelatinous composition. It's like a continent sized layer of jello that's just been splashed over a whole entire region of the planet. But the Amoebic Sea itself is a lifeform, or more accurately, it's a enormous collection of symbiotic microbes that all live packed together. Colony organism in the way that the Portuguese man of war is on Earth, but scaled up to a ridiculous degree. The Amoebic Sea is like an oasis of sorts on Darwin IV, and various other creatures live on and around it. Its outer periphery serves as this kind of feeding ground for land-based animals who will come to the sides of the ocean and then stick their tongues in and drink up whatever they need to before moving on. And it's this relationship that kind of sparks this sort of cycle of growth and recession in the amoebic sea. They're also the creatures of the sea itself, and while the expedition never manages to penetrate the amoebic sea and see what exactly is living inside, there are plenty of creatures that live on the gelatinous surface. Take the stripewings, for example, which are these winged but flightless bioluminescent organisms that go on these rambunctious, aimless chases across the sea in droves of dozens of individual animals every single night. And then you have the sea striders themselves, and the sea striders are they completely dwarf anything that does or ever has lived on Earth. Fully grown sea striders are reported to stand at heights of over 600 feet. They're these enormous bipedal creatures that perpetually walk along the surface of the amoebic sea. Their weight is so widely distributed that they can just simply stand on its surface, but they need to keep walking their entire lives or else they will sink through. They've evolved these sort of mouths on the bottom of their feet, which they use to take chunks out of the amoebic sea with every step and then digest it. They're on this sort of eternal feast and they gain every bit of their sustenance from the very bed on which they are allowed to roam. The artwork that we see of the sea striders in the book and the footage of them in the documentary are among the most spectacular bits of imagery of anything on Darwin 4. If you're not totally sold on buying a copy of Expedition, I still implore you to go on Wayne Barlow's site and you can see for yourself one of these things. It's really stunning stuff. And it's such a testament to the sheer alienness of this fictional world. It really makes you wonder what could be out there in real life. The Sea Striders make a huge impression on Wayne Barlow and the audience. Well, I mean, they made an impression on me. It's treated as a very climactic moment in the book. But there's also almost half of the book after that as well. Because there's another life form on Darwin IV that even more potently seizes the imagination. These being the enigmatic floaters that we've been seeing glimpses of the entire story, but don't have a close encounter with until two weeks before Wayne Barlow's departure from Darwin IV. And these are the creatures known as Eosapiens. Much of the EoSapiens' body resembles a balloon. They have these sacks on their backs that allow them buoyancy and maneuverability. The main body possesses the usual bells and whistles of Darwin IV life, those being sonar projectors, infrared detectors, and the tongue that they use for feeding. But notably, they also have these two very well-developed and muscular arms that hang down from the main body. And these arms are tipped with very primitive fingers and claws. But it's not these arms that are themselves a pretty substantial evolutionary leap for life on Darwin IV that's the main attraction here, but rather what is being cradled in them. Because the first Eo sapien that Wayne Barlow encounters is holding a club that seems to have been gnawed in shape by the creature's digestive fluids. It becomes apparent during this encounter that the Eo sapiens are in a very early stage of sentience. They are at the dawn of their history. We're encountering the Darwin IV equivalent to cavemen, and before we know it, he is surrounded by 15 of these creatures, many of which are holding tools or are adorned with the vertebrae of previous kills, like trophies. The Eo sapiens, by the way, each of them are twenty meters in height, so they're not exactly small creatures. Take turns running their hands along the window of Wayne Barlow's vehicle. It's a very simple but powerful scene, and Wayne Barlow is thinking the whole time, like what must be going through these lifeforms' minds right now? What must I be to them? And can they fully grasp the importance of what is happening? After each of the Eo sapiens has a chance to touch Wainbarlow's vehicle, they fly off and vanish as suddenly as they appeared. Throughout the remainder of the book, Waymarlow studies the Eosapiens and their way of life and hunting habits. We witness firsthand as they track down and kill another one of Darwin IV's animals. The clubs that I described earlier also double as flechettes, and the Eosapiens use their powerful arms to throw them with pinpoint accuracy. These flechettes in turn embed themselves into the ground and form almost like a corral to keep their prey from escaping. And once the prey is thoroughly trapped, the Eosapiens descend upon them, hold it down, and then twist off the legs to take away for a meal. It's really gruesome stuff, and that more than anything is what sticks with Wayne Barlow after the expedition is over and done with. It serves as this kind of highlight and summation of the two major faces of the planet Darwin IV, those being awe-inspiring otherworldly beauty, and savage, unforgiving violence. And more importantly, the Eosapiids themselves, just in their existence, are this kind of mirror that is held in front of humanity. It's very nostalgic in a way, it's almost like time traveling to meet an earlier version of yourself and sort of having the opportunity to tell them what to avoid and what to cherish in life. I feel like it's that same thing but on a species-wide level. It's like seeing early humans firsthand and getting to see where we came from. It brings to mind these really big questions about whether the Eo sapiens can get it right and be the stewards that Darwin IV needs them to be, or whether they're going to make the same mistakes that humanity did when it came to our own home.