G.S. Altshuller. The Fantogram Method. 1971.

1. The success of any problem-solving method depends, to a large degree, on the imagination of the inventor applying the method. Therefore, we recommend that inventors systematically develop personal creativity.

Inventing a magical plant is one of many tools that can be used for such purpose. The goal is to stretch and extend one’s imagination beyond the limits of everyday experience, so that a lack of "fantastic" thinking would not be a barrier to creating new ideas.

In this exercise [creating a magic object - ES], the task is to choose a set of common objects (M) and add to it one or more fantastic objects (x).

The set may comprise a certain type of objects: animals, birds, plants, flowers, sentient beings, machines, communication means, planets, hypothesis, elementary particles, etc. In the beginning of the course, it is more practical to use non-technical sets such as animals and plants because psychological barriers to understanding them are usually lower and easier to overcome.

2. The major difficulties in inventing a novel magical object are as follows: a) Identifying the boundaries for a selected set of objects, e.g. animals; and b) a psychological tendency to stay attached to common objects from the selected set.

One of the most common mistakes is combining two well-known animals and creating a chimera. Historically, this approach was used in myths and fairy tales to create more compelling stories. Some commonly featured chimeras were mermaids, centaurs, and sphinxes. Today, this method tends to generate trivial combinations that no longer excite readers.

Since the boundaries between common ideas and creative, imaginary ones are rather unclear, commonly “invented” fantastic objects tend to remain relatively close to everyday experience, or stay somewhere near its outer edges.

Our analysis shows that good sci-fi writers approach this problem from a slightly different angle. The writers begin with objects taken right from the border line between a common object to a more exotic one. For example, an average person may combine a dog with a dear and come up with a “dog with horns”. A good sci-fi writer would take a wolf and combine it with telepathy, thus inventing an animal that hunts its prey by tracking its victim’s thoughts. (R. Sheckley, The Odor of Thought). The difference between the results is quite striking. Nevertheless, we find that even the most talented sci-fi and fantasy writers actively employ a relatively small number of techniques and objects.

3. To have a productive “invent a magic object” session an inventor must learn how to determine boundaries for different object sets. Practice shows that even the simple step of identifying certain parts of a boundary line, i.e. different criteria for determining what would be a typical boundary, is often sufficient for making good progress.

To enhance the results we recommend using certain “boundary crossing” techniques according to the Fantogram method.

A fantogram, or fantasy table, lists typical attributes for different sets as well as recommended techniques for changing their characteristics ( see Table 1). It is a variation of the morphological analysis method proposed by F.Zwicky.

1	2	Transformation techniques
Generic Characteristic	Specific Characteristic	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I
1g	1s
2g	2s
3g	3s
4g	4s
5g	5s
6g	6s
7g	7s
8g	8s
9g	9s
10g	10s
11g	11s

Table 1. A general purpose fantogram.

For an imagination development exercise we recommend the following generic boundary charactheristics (Column 1):

1g – chemical composition or physical state

2g – micro-structure ( e.g.. a sub-system of a object from the M group)

3g – object itself

4g – super-structure ( e.g. a super-system for the object)

5g – direction of evolution

6g – replication

7g – energy source

8g – transportation method

9g – habitat

10g – level of organization and/or control

11g – purpose, meaning of existence

These characteristics are key boundary segments for many technical and non-technical groups of objects.

Since any particular exercise involves objects from just one group, e.g. animals, we fill in some specific attributes for Column 2:

1s – proteins

2s – cells

3s - body

4s – pack, community, etc.

5s – from cell to organ, body

6s – reproduction, e.g. sexual, cloning, etc.

7s – oxidation of food

8s – walking, running, swimming, flying

9s – soil, water, air, etc.

10s – from chemical reactions within cell to laws in society

11s – food source, biological regulator, etc.

The transformation techniques can vary, but for traing purposes we use the following:

A – increase, decrease

B – combine, break apart

C – “anti-attribute” , i.e. change property to its opposite

D – speed up, slow down

E – shift forward and/or shift backward in time

F – change key dependencies, e.g. “property – time”, “structure – time”

G – separate the object from its function and/or attribute

H – change key relationship between the object and its environment

I – change an environmental ( physical) constant

The process of inventing a magic object using a fantogram involves five steps:

Step 1: Select a group of objects and fill in its specific characteristics in Column 2. (We just did it above for “animals”).

Step 2. Select a cell from the table that combines a characteristic of the group and a transformation technique

For example, take a combination of attribute 3S with technique A, i.e. “body – increase”. This means we are going to consider an animal whose size increases beyond customary boundaries.

Step 3. Run a “thought experiment” by applying the transformation technique to the characteristic.

Begin by imagining the animal gradually growing in size, as big as a mountain, a continent, an ocean, a planet a star.. (E.g. “ocean animal” in Solaris, by Stanislaw Lem; “planet animal in “When the World Screamed”, by A.C. Doyle).

Note: * Pay attention to concepts concepts created in the process because once in a while novel ideas start showing up in step 3.

Step 4. Select one of the ideas generated in the previous step. For example, let’s focus on an animal-mountain.

Step 5. Consider other characteristics from the table and apply them to the idea selected in step 4. For example, how does our animal-mountain grow (5s)? What does it eat (7s)? How does it move around (8s)? Where does it live (9s)?

Even first attempts to answer these questions may lead to interesting variations on the initial idea of the animal-mountain.

For example, a whale can be considered an “animal half-mountain” that lives in water. Animal-mountains could also live in solid environments or in an atmosphere. Imagine that The Great Red Spot on Jupiter is one of those animal-mountains…

Now that we have a specific object and have determined some of its characteristics, shift your attention to unexplored transformation techniques in columns B through I. Tackle the questions, “how does it eat?” etc mentioned in Step 5. For example, pick G, “separate the object from its characteristic.” Consider a small animal that can transform into a big one or behave like something other that itself. This means that the animal itself is small, but it looks or behaves like a big one. An example from nature would be a tiny spider that builds a large web, a foldable extension of its body. The spider spreads the web to capture its prey, and then takes it down before moving on to new hunting grounds ( a spider usually eats its old web before building a new one).

So, the animal has to be small AND big at the same time. Maybe it expands like gas? Let’s see how this could work. A relaxed, solid or liquid, animal lies quietly on the lawn. But when it wants to catch its prey, it “evaporates”, and becomes the size of a mountain, and hunts down its food. Such transition can be accomplished, for example, by a change in body temperature: warm-up, evaporate, condense, merge back into one small quiet body. An animal made of mercury rather than proteins.

This is just one of simple combinations of a characteristic and a transformation technique. If we try other combinations we may come up with a more exotic species. For example, in one of the training sessions, students combined characteristic 5k with technique G. They considered the same group, animals, but chose to separate its evolution from the animal itself.

In the beginning, this approach felt completely unworkable: how is it possible to separate the animal from its evolution? After some thinking, they figured out that technology evolution develops along similar lines: new ideas are tried on models, the best ones are selected, and mass production begins.

This way of thinking lead them to imagine a fish that, due to climate or other environmental changes, had to move to dry land. They imagined a fish that could create new variations of itself. The fish approached dry land. It didn’t know what dry land was, so it spawned lots of different fish variations. Some crawling, some jumping, some cold blooded, some warm blooded, etc. The vast majority of them died, but few returned – they passed the survival test. The parent fish then chose its favorite offspring model. The new generation of fish was created from the best model and moved onto dry land. Mission accomplished!

Later, the students found that this idea was genuinely new and it had not been anticipated in sci-fi literature. And it’s quite good too, since it’s built upon a fantastic notion, not a logical one.

Well, is this idea just a fantasy? Probably not. It’s quite possible that 30-50 years from now, space vehicles will be built using this principle. They might become capable of replicating and advancing in completely unknown, unpredictable environments.

Recommended exercises:

1. Identify fantogram cells that represent:
   1. plasma creatures that live on the Sun;
   2. evolution that unfolds through changes in the same body, not through generational change;
   3. sentient ants;
   4. The Cheshire Cat.
2. Describe a fantastic plant per 8u-C.
3. Describe a fantastic plant per 8u-G.
4. Describe fantastic clothing per 3u-H.
5. Describe a fantastic building per 9u-C.
6. Describe a fantastic source of light per 7u-C

P.S.

A most common mistake in fantogram-based training is haste. We don’t recommend more than one imagination development session per day. Concepts must be thought through thoroughly, without unnecessary jumping from one concept to another. It is very important to learn focused imaginative thinking before taking on more difficult inventive tasks.

© G. Altshuller, 1971.

© E. Shteyn, 2007. English translation.