![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images2\/77_turingandtheskugs.jpg\")
\n\u201cTuring and the Skugs\u201d\u009d, 40″ x 30″ inches, Oct 2010, Oil on canvas.” Click for larger version.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n
I made this painting because I\u2019m gearing up for a novel involving the computer pioneer Alan Turing, the beatniks, some shape-shifting beings called skugs, and possibly some time-travel. Although it would be simpler to do the book without time travel, which what I’m more likely to do. Don’t want too many ingredients in the stew, after all.<\/p>\n
I got the word \u201cskug\u201d\u009d from my non-identical twin granddaughters, aged three. When I visit my son\u2019s house in Berkeley, I always like to open up his worm farm and study the action with the twins. We find a lot of slugs in there, and we marvel at them. The girls tend to say \u201cskug\u201d\u009d rather than \u201cslug,\u201d\u009d and I decided I liked the sound of this word so much that I\u2019d use it for some odd beings in my novel.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the first time I\u2019ve done this kind of thing\u2014the alien ostrich-like beings called \u201cPeng\u201d\u009d in my novel Hylozoic<\/em> take their name from a pet stuffed penguin, also named \u201cPeng,\u201d\u009d who\u2019s greatly prized by my other granddaughter, in Madison, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n Anyway, for the purposes of Turing & Burroughs<\/em>, I\u2019m supposing that Turing has carried out some biochemical experiments leading to the creation of slug-like creatures called skugs.<\/p>\n In the painting, we see Turing outside a Rural Supply Hardware garage, with two skugs backing him up. Alan is encountering a handsome man who may well become Alan\u2019s lover. Unless the skugs eat the guy.<\/p>\n As always you can get more information and buy originals at my Paintings <\/a>site. Prints are available on Imagekind<\/a>. And, looking ahead, I’ll be having a small show in the Borderlands Cafe <\/a>in San Francisco in November, 2010, with originals and prints for sale.<\/p>\n I’m thinking that Turing\u2019s skugs become hugely influential. (1) They\u2019re used for prostheses. (2) They act as standalone programmable robots. (3) Some humans switch to skug bodies and enjoy the power of shapeshifting.<\/p>\n Perhaps any two people who’d taken on skug form could then mate to bear a skug-child\u2014a result which would pretty much eliminate any real distinction between homosexual and heterosexual couples. Not that you\u2019d have to remain physically of one \u201cgender\u201d\u009d if you\u2019re a skug\u2014remember that you could shapeshift. <\/p>\n I’m supposing that some people (let\u2019s call them \u201cSkuggers\u201d\u009d) become skugs\u2014although there are some fundamentalist hold-outs, who are initially presented as bad, but who maybe are good. The Skuggers revere Turing for having brought skugs about, but the rebels wish he\u2019d never lived.<\/p>\n If I were to do this with time travel, the Skuggers would be in the future. Without time travel, they could simply be an underground group in our present-day world, and we have a more straight-ahead story.<\/p>\n If I were to go with a time-travel scenario, we’d be talking about Futurians. Here, the main group of Futurians are happy Skuggers and they wouldn\u2019t want to go back into the past and mess with Turing\u2019s life. As they see it, everything has worked out well. But a group of the anti-skug Futurians are going back to try and change history and eliminate Turing from the past. Fearful of the outcome, some of the ruling Futurians have banded together as something like \u201ctime police commando squad.\u201d\u009d But\u2014as they all may eventually come to understand\u2014they can\u2019t actually change anything. I\u2019m going to say that you can\u2019t change the past.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/images2\/largersize\/77_turingandtheskugs_1000.jpg\")
\n[Afterworld-like scene at Yellowstone.]<\/em><\/p>\n
\n[Yellowstone steam pool]<\/em><\/p>\n