Counterbary Islands

In a remote star cluster at the extreme far reaches of the visible universe, an alien species carries out a massive stellar engineering project on an unprecedented scale. Constructing artificially inflated super-giant stars to act as gravitational foundries for the synthesis of transuranium elements, this race produces exotic forms of matter never before seen in the processes of natural stellar evolution. These alien Engineers mysteriously vanish, but the residue of their engineering projects is swept by solar winds across the nebulae of their native cluster, there to be incorporated into the next generation of embryonic star systems.

One of the synthetic elements that finds it way into forming planets is a stable transuranium metal with the unique property of counterbary (antigravity) on exposure to gravity fields of planetary mass. Sinking first to the molten cores of the forming worlds, the metallic particles of "counterbaryum" eventually emerge at the surface through natural geological processes. Rocks carrying sufficiently rich veins of counterbaryum ore occassionally break free of weathered surface formations, sent adrift on the winds to wander the skies.

In the extreme far future, self-replicating Von Neumann probes representing the last vestige of human culture finally reach this remote region of space. Carrying out their ancient programming directives, the probes identify appropriate planets for terraforming and eventually produce human colonists from raw environmental materials and stored genetic templates. In an eyeblink of geologic time, human colonists--raised by nurturing surrogate machines in artificial habitats and encoded with the history and memories of their race--set forth from the safety of their protective enclaves to explore the wonders of their strange adopted worlds...

So this is obviously my tribute to/shameless rip-off of Roger Dean's majestic floating island paintings. I recently purchased the beautiful Dean retrospective "Dragon's Dream" and found myself once again smitten with his fantastic floating islands, but my rationally-inclined brain had to find at least a pseudo-scientific explanation for their buoyancy. The idea for the exotic counterbary element came first, and the story of the planets' colonization by Von Neumann probes followed from that. So there you go.

While Roger Dean is strongly inspired by the American Southwest, I tried in this case to capture the feel of the rocks at the Cape Kiwanda headland on the Oregon coast, including the radically disparate mineral types encountered even within the same aggregations. Cape Kiwanda is heavily festooned with cypress trees, so that's one element of defensible commonality with Dean's paintings.

See the original pencil drawing in my Scraps ([link]). For the real deal, visit Roger Dean's site at ([link]). See also the classic books Views and Magnetic Storm, and especially 2008's amazing Dragon's Dream--all well worth the investment.

UPDATE: I modified the middle two islands using Liquify for a more classically "Dean-like" effect. This should be the last time I change it!