S is for Space Creature

        My theme for this year’s April A-Z Blog Challenge is fantastical creatures, celebrating my upcoming book, On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination.  Please check out my Kickstarter Campaign for lots of fun information about the book.

        Like robots, space creatures are often neglected when people look at the creatures of fantasy, presumably because of the slightly arbitrary distinction between fantasy and science fiction.  You may be surprised to learn that people have been telling fantasy tales about travellers to the moon, heavens, stars, and other planets for as long as we have writing that preserves the stories they told, and those tales include all manner of  fantastical space creatures.

        “The story illustrated for you here is of a struthioform astronaut from the far-distant planet Pelavium upon its first discovery of life forms on a moon of Nemelun, with which Pelavium shares a star.  Among these newly encountered species are a tentacled crater-dweller, a grove of sentient trees or vines, and the aviansect that dwells thereon, while a cautious frondbrow looks on shyly.  All these space creatures are new discoveries to the struthioform, but it should be noted that the struthioform is equally new to them.”

        For a few more posts on older fantasy involving space creatures, check out 

a second-century space journey

sixteenth-century UFOs

and nineteenth-century other worlds.

        I’m not as well-practiced at drawing space creatures, but I certainly had fun trying to invent a few.  What sorts of aliens would you most want to have pay a visit to Earth?  Or encounter on your own space travels?

        The other creature representing S in my book is the salamander, which you can link to by way of

the entire post about Mythical Creatures of the Letter S.

[Picture: One Giant Leap, rubber block print by AEGN, 2019.]