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This is a delightfully informative and madcap graphic biography (sort-of) of Ada Lovelace and her relationship with proto-computer inventor Charles Babbage and his research. I found it reminiscent of such genre-fracturing works as Larry Gonick’s The Cartoon History of… series or Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics in the way it simultaneously uses and subverts the conventions of graphic storytelling to bridge the worlds of education and entertainment. (No doubt there are many other works that do similar things, but I don't actually follow graphic novels much, so these are the ones I thought of.)
It begins as a straightforward biography of Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace, daughter of the mad poet Lord Byron, and very arguably the first computer programmer. The visual storytelling is expanded by the use of footnotes (which often interact amusingly with the other graphic elements) and extensive endnotes that expand on technical points, or issues and personages contemporary to the main themes. (I read it in iBooks format and the e-text has been set up to allow easy movement between the main panels, the endnotes, and large-text versions of both foot- and endnotes.)
But the author, having to her dismay hit the limits of pure biography, due to Lovelace’s tragically short life and Babbage’s failure to actually realize any of his amazing inventions, plunges on sideways into an alternate steampunk universe in which Lovelace and Babbage actually build the analytical engine and use it to…wait for it…fight crime! (And other adventurous pursuits.) Here the story explodes into a mash-up of actual history, deranged tour through the political and literary landscape of mid-19th century Britain, and technical manual.
I loved how the story returned to the essentials of steampunk as a genre (as opposed to an artistic aesthetic) in highlighting the exploits of larger-than-life 19th century figures whose dreams and inventive imaginations outstripped the technology of the day. It does not, however, ignore the aesthetic side of steampunk, and aficionados will find all their favorite goggles, Rube-Goldbergian technology, and dashing women in gender-bending historic clothing.
Whether you read the central graphic story purely as entertainment, or delve deeply enough into the technical appendices to understand just how Babbage’s engine was intended to work (and the reasons why it was unlikely to have done so), or split the difference by meditating on the ways in which a brilliant mind like Lovelace’s was betrayed and undermined by the age she lived in, this is a book I recommend in the strongest terms.
It begins as a straightforward biography of Augusta Ada King, Countess Lovelace, daughter of the mad poet Lord Byron, and very arguably the first computer programmer. The visual storytelling is expanded by the use of footnotes (which often interact amusingly with the other graphic elements) and extensive endnotes that expand on technical points, or issues and personages contemporary to the main themes. (I read it in iBooks format and the e-text has been set up to allow easy movement between the main panels, the endnotes, and large-text versions of both foot- and endnotes.)
But the author, having to her dismay hit the limits of pure biography, due to Lovelace’s tragically short life and Babbage’s failure to actually realize any of his amazing inventions, plunges on sideways into an alternate steampunk universe in which Lovelace and Babbage actually build the analytical engine and use it to…wait for it…fight crime! (And other adventurous pursuits.) Here the story explodes into a mash-up of actual history, deranged tour through the political and literary landscape of mid-19th century Britain, and technical manual.
I loved how the story returned to the essentials of steampunk as a genre (as opposed to an artistic aesthetic) in highlighting the exploits of larger-than-life 19th century figures whose dreams and inventive imaginations outstripped the technology of the day. It does not, however, ignore the aesthetic side of steampunk, and aficionados will find all their favorite goggles, Rube-Goldbergian technology, and dashing women in gender-bending historic clothing.
Whether you read the central graphic story purely as entertainment, or delve deeply enough into the technical appendices to understand just how Babbage’s engine was intended to work (and the reasons why it was unlikely to have done so), or split the difference by meditating on the ways in which a brilliant mind like Lovelace’s was betrayed and undermined by the age she lived in, this is a book I recommend in the strongest terms.
