Alvin is an Android documentarian who loves nothing more than to travel the Sol system and explore its many curiosities. Soft-spoken and gentle in his demeanor, Alvin carries an infectious love and admiration for the natural wonders found on every corner of the system, planetside or otherwise. He is a staunch environmentalist who believes the march of technological progress must respect the ancient crawl of nature, that what is not made by our hands should not be trampled by our feet. By exploring and recording glimpses of nature's splendor he hopes to inspire a similar admiration among his fellow starfarers, that amidst the intermingling of planetary cultures we not forget the roots that saw our ascent towards the stars.
Having produced and hosted a great many films, Alvin is most widely known for his "Fantastic Sol" series, showcasing some of the hidden wonders of various worlds that average people may never get to see for themselves. While he has a deep love for the mundane, Fantastic Sol focuses on the mysterious and forbidding, on places it may not be safe to go and creatures whose habitats mustn't be encroached upon, allowing us to appreciate their miraculous lives from a safe and respectful distance. From the searing-hot surface of Mercury to the volcanic mountains of Venus, from Terra's caves to the badlands of Mars; exploring Callisto's megafauna, Ganymede's carnivorous flora, the crushing depths of Europa to Saturn's hundred moons; from the rocky core beneath Caelus's icy slurry to the new life on the Plutoformed world of Neptune, hand-sculpted across generations, and on to Pluto itself, Sol's most distant of children. Life is abound throughout the Sol system, and with a soft voice and a metal heart filled with wonder, Alvin will bring it to the safety of your screen.
Venturing into these forbidding places and braving the system's wildlife is no easy task, but Alvin is uniquely equipped to explore the most hostile reaches of Sol without a mote of fear. United Androids are known to be robust and durable lifeforms, but even among their lot Alvin is exceptional- originally built for deep-sea exploration, United Robotics designed Alvin with gentle, rounded surfaces meant to endure crushing atmospheric pressures. His range of movement is somewhat limited compared to other United droids but that is a small trade-off for preventing his joints from becoming points of mechanical failure. In place of a retractable helmet-protected design, Alvin has a dome of Neptunian diamond, allowing his optic sensors a full and unobstructed view of the world around him. His rounded chassis paneling is built to be light but extremely durable, allowing him to withstand anything from a light bump with rocks to a trip through the digestive tract of a planet's giant wildlife (an experience captured and shared in Fantastic Sol: Beneath Europan Ice and again, later, in Fantastic Sol: Creatures of the Stars). He has an extreme tolerance to both high and low temperatures thanks to his Venusian crystal memory components, he's shielded from radiation and he has an internal tracking beacon so his film team can find him when he gets lost. Additionally, for use in liquid environments, he has a set of propulsion units built into his feet, allowing him to drift through the seas. If there is anyone in the Sol system built to endure and explore its greatest extremes, it's Alvin.
Alvin's current project is a documentary on a little-known sentient lifeform found along the Asteroid Belt separating the Inner and Outer planets of Sol. Titled "Fantastic Sol: Overlooking the Void", Alvin is exploring the world of Ceresian fungal colonies, a cannibalistic saprophagous pink mushroom that feeds on dead organic tissue and grows into dense clusters. Mineral extraction operations have encountered Ceresian fungus fairly often and standard operating procedure is to burn it out so it doesn't encroach on mining operations, but Alvin wants to change this practice. About twenty-five years ago we learned that Ceresian fungal colonies formed thick neural networks and were, in fact, able to grow into sentient life when they reached sufficient density, which casts the practice of burning out fungal colonies in a much more barbaric light. By exploring the life cycle of Ceresian fungus- how its spores drift through the vacuum of space, how they happen to land on organic tissue by chance, how they flower, die and serve as a fertile bed for new Ceresian spores to flower- Alvin hopes to bring a unique and largely unrecognized starfaring sentient lifeform into the light of public consciousness, to see the pink fungii as more than an industrial nuisance. Ultimately, though, Alvin hopes his documentary can have an impact on deep space mineral extraction companies, tightening regulations on mining the Asteroid Belt and treating the native lifeforms with a greater dignity and respect. We have nothing to fear from Ceresian fungus, but we certainly have a lot to learn from them.