The first comes from the National Geographic book Our Universe, which I pored over intensely as a kid. In particular, I was fascinated by the four or five pages that had paintings of weird non-humanoid aliens that might conceivably live on the other planets (and moons) in our solar system: zeppelin-monsters for Jupiter, toad-monsters with a perpetual hotfoot on Venus, and a weird fuzzy-tailed elephant-deer on Mars.
The most distant of these critters dwelled on a planet that is no longer even considered a planet. This week, Z is for Plutonian zistle.
There's not much lore about these little crystal sea-urchins, but I hope you'll go look at the original image and read the original description.
Another weird alien in just a few minutes!
Wonderful fireworks-style burst of a finish! I love the idea of a crystal alien-- I never encountered that book but if I had I'd have been obsessed with it, certainly.
ReplyDeleteOf course one of my favorite aliens of all time (of all time) is silicon-based ... but it doesn't look much like a zistle.
ReplyDeleteI hope you noticed that it's daytime on Pluto in this drawing. (The sun is up, but that doesn't make it a bad time for fireworks.)
I also had a copy of that book as a kid, and loved it, of course. I will always remember the oucher-pouchers (hilarious name) and the freaky violence of the Jovian zeppelin-creatures getting burst apart by bat-like dive bombers. I hadn't really kept the zistle in my mind, but with your picture and the Plutonian origin they're coming back to me. Great, surprising choice!
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