Periodic Table of Aliens

         Do you like my depictions of fantastical creatures?  Do you like weird and wild space aliens?  The properties of the elements of the periodic table?  Light verse?  Cute and quirky books?  If you replied “Yes” to any of those questions, you should zip straight over to Kickstarter to check out Miguel Mitchell’s new Kickstarter campaign!

        Miguel has written a poem with a humorous verse for each of the 86 naturally-occurring chemical elements in the universe, describing a property of the element and an imaginary space alien associated with it.  With a PhD in chemistry and plenty of speculative fiction cred, he knows whereof he rhymes.  I’m involved because he commissioned me to illustrate his verses.  Exactly how many of the illustrations I will do depends on how much backing the project gets — the more people pledge, the more illustrations I’ll do!  The remaining illustrations will be done by Miguel himself.

        Today I’m sharing with you the illustration for sodium and its associated alien, the oodleplop.  (You can read the verse as the sample shown on the Kickstarter page.  I’d share it here, but I want to make you go to Kickstarter — that’s what a marketing mastermind I am.  Bwaahaha!)  This is one of the first illustrations I’ve done because it really caught at my imagination, and the whole scene of the slime-monster tending a dark old-time apothecary came to me in a glorious flash.  In fact, the idea tickled me so much that I even wrote a short story inspired by it (although in my story the creature is on Earth).

        I’ll share one more illustration with you today.  This one is a faux block print, done digitally rather than actually carved and printed.  It illustrates a long-legged iverstahl, who is associated with strontium.  The other little alien doesn’t have a name.  Maybe it’s actually a larval iverstahl before it undergoes metamorphosis…  But I tend to think that it is indeed another species, receiving assistance from the tall iverstahl.  I know what it’s like to need help reaching high things.

        Anyway, I signed on to be an illustrator on Miguel’s project because I thought it was a fun combination of science and fiction, and because I thought it would be an interesting challenge to imagine all these crazy creatures.  If you, too, think this sounds like a fun project, please consider supporting the Kickstarter campaign to make it possible.  And forward this along to all your most wonderfully nerdy friends, so that they, too, can enjoy and support this delightful undertaking.

[Pictures: Na is for sodium, aka Love Potion, rubber block print by AEGN, 2021;

Sr is for strontium, illustration by AEGN, 2021, both for Periodic Table of Alien Species by Miguel O. Mitchell.]