{"id":4798,"date":"2013-07-01T15:54:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T23:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=4798"},"modified":"2013-07-01T16:25:27","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T00:25:27","slug":"illustrating-the-big-aha-the-mr-normals-vs-the-myoor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/01\/illustrating-the-big-aha-the-mr-normals-vs-the-myoor\/","title":{"rendered":"Illustrating THE BIG AHA. “The Mr. Normals vs. The Myoor”"},"content":{"rendered":"

I finished another painting for my novel today, more info here: The Big Aha project<\/a><\/em>. The new picture’s title is The Mr. Normals vs. The Myoor<\/em>.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cThe Mr. Normals vs. the Myoor,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, July, 2013, 24\u201d\u009d x 18\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the image.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The picture has to do with a scene in the closing chapters of The Big Aha<\/em>. My character Zad has created some creatures called Mr. Normals<\/em> whom Zad has now sicced upon a sinister giant alien slug called a myoor<\/em>. The myoor looks scared of them, which is good.<\/p>\n

I made the Mr. Normals look like Gyro Gearloose\u2019s Little Bulb in the old Donald Duck <\/em>comics. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The other day I watched this very heavy Mexican SF movie called Sleep Dealer<\/em>, which the cool Tucson artist Daniel Martin Diaz turned me onto recently. (Check out Diaz’s amazingly cyberdelic forthcoming book Soul of Science<\/em><\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Sleep Dealer<\/em> film’s is partly about the US taking advantage of Mexican workers. And the myoor is kind of flowing down across a border, and my Zad character looks kind of Latino in this painting, and I was also thinking about cross-border ethnic conflict here, so at another level the picture is a political parable…not that I would have a clear idea of what the Mr. Normal \/ Little Bulb figures would stand for under that interpretation.<\/p>\n

But primarily <\/em>the painting is about the events in The Big Aha<\/em>. The way I painted Zad relates to two earlier paintings of him which I\u2019ll reprint below, Louisville Artist <\/em> and Night of Telepathy<\/em>.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cLouisville Artist,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, October, 2012, 24\u201d\u009d x 20\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the image.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The way I painted the Louisville artist is kind of a self-deprecating joke about my personal self-image, or about the public’s image of artists or writers.<\/p>\n

I mention Louisville because I was born there and lived there till I was 17, at which point my parents moved away and I went off to college. The Big Aha <\/em> novel is in fact set in Louisville. Those tall things in the background are \u201chouse trees\u201d\u009d that people inhabit in the biotech future.<\/p>\n

What about the woman? She\u2019s the girlfriend, Loulou, whom Zad takes up with during a period of separation from his wife. I had fun giving Loulou a really odd hair-do. Kind of Princess Leia thing.<\/p>\n


\n \u201cNight of Telepathy,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, November, 2012, 40\u201d\u009d x 30\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the image.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

In this painting we see Zad and Loulou spending a night together in telepathic contact. What about those rats? Well, there happen to be a lot of intelligent rats in The Big Aha<\/em>, thanks to \u201cquantum wetware.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n

And it\u2019ll all seem perfectly logical in the end\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finished another painting for my novel today, more info here: The Big Aha project. The new picture’s title is The Mr. Normals vs. The Myoor. \u201cThe Mr. Normals vs. the Myoor,\u201d\u009d oil on canvas, July, 2013, 24\u201d\u009d x 18\u201d\u009d. Click for a larger version of the image. The picture has to do with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4798"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4804,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4798\/revisions\/4804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}