The Captain's Dream

In the early 19th century, in the captain's cabin of a Royal Navy man of war, a man sat at his desk, intending to continue writing his novel- and was struck by what he called "a sprained imagination".

About two centuries later, I read The King's Own. One particular passage detailing a dream about death stayed with me, and I decided to combine this with my explorations into neural network AI image synthesis.

The Captain's Dream is a short 13 page AI art comic, accompanied by a two page afterword. It is illustrated with images generated with Stable Diffusion, Dall E, Midjourney and Disco Diffusion and edited together into a narrative following Captain Frederick Marryat's original text from the 1830s novel The King's Own. 

Every artist cited in the prompt is a historical artist within the public domain, with documentation of the prompts and images used here.

The King's Own can be read at Google Books or Project Gutenberg, with more information about Marryat on the blog marryat92.

Content warnings for unreality, surreal imagery, death and mild macabre imagery.