A little while ago, Mr. M got early access to DALL·E, the AI tool that generates images based on a text prompt. It’s absolutely incredible, and you’ve probably seen some of the images floating around on social media.
Because he’s married to an author, Mr. M decided to put DALL·E’s might toward creating some new book covers for me. It was close to the release of Eclipse the Moon, so he included Luna in the covers. Here are the results! You can click on the images to get a slightly bigger version.
First, he went with a straightforward request: “sci-fi romance book cover with a woman holding a small white fox-like creature.”
You can see that DALL·E really struggles to produce proper words, getting close in a few cases—I’ve always wanted to read ROMANAC RONCK FENCE!—but not really succeeding. And it’s hilarious that it generated a few classic clinch covers, just with one of the humans replaced with a fox. 😂🙈
Okay, but what about retro covers? Behold “1960’s sci-fi book cover of a woman holding a small, white, fox-like creature.”
The vibe feels like 60s SF, but the words are still gibberish.
To get rid of the words, Mr. M moved on to generating art rather than covers. It’s fascinating how different “60’s sci-fi art of a woman holding a small, white, fox-like creature” is from the cover option above.
The top-right image here is my favorite of the entire experiment. The lady looks absolutely nothing like any of my characters, but she’s so poised, aloof, and elegant—and then she’s holding up Luna with a lobster-claw hand. It cracks me up every time.
Maybe the 70s were a better time for SF art? Let’s find out: “70’s sci-fi art of a woman holding a small, white, fox-like creature.”
I could definitely see some of these on a book from the 1970s, so good job DALL·E!
And finally, just for fun, what if the Starlight’s Shadow crew wandered into an anime universe? Behold “a woman holding a small white fox-like creature standing next to a space ship anime.”
Adorable! 😍 Now I really need an anime studio to pick up the Starlight series just so I can see an animated Luna.
This is such interesting technology, and apparently they just opened it up to a lot more people and are selling commercial rights to the results, which means someone really could make a book cover from the generated images.
Which style is your favorite?
Hard because none of the women look like I envision any of the characters. And I don’t think of Luna as an actual traditional fox … more like a fennec fox kit. Could be wrong, but that’s how I picture her.
I love how everyone pictures Luna differently!
Definitely the anime!
I’m getting distinct Flowers for Algernon vibes from one, and fabulous classic Star Trek vibes from another. :) The anime ones feel the most engaging to me. What an interesting writing prompt it would be to see what story each picture might inspire. How fun!
The ears are wrong in the book they are described as rounded. And Luna is small than the fox like creatures. But the art looks great.
First and third anime! But it might be because the girl reminds me of The Last Unicorn! And I always picture Luna as my beloved fur-kid, Mira, who as an American Eskimo spitz, resembled an Arctic Fox a bit, but more adorable!💜🐾
1970’s is my first choice but I liked the anime too.
I like the 4th one in the straightforward request although I do wonder what the green square on her shirt/coat is and the red cheeks need to go. I like the relationship of the fox and woman.
I think book covers rarely look like what is described in the books so I went with how the relationship feels to me.
I’m getting distinct Flowers for Algernon vibes from one, and fabulous classic Star Trek vibes from another. :) The anime ones feel the most engaging to me. What an interesting writing prompt it would be to see what story each picture might inspire. How fun!
Ok, but the anime ones 🤌🏽
What a cool newsletter, Jessie! One I will want to read and look at several times more!
👊🦊
I love every Luna in the anime style! She looks so adorable. If an animated Starlight’s Shadow ever popped up I’d be down for it.
Anime ones speak to me more than the others but Luna isn’t right for me and how I pictured her.