Glacial Period by Nicolas de Crécy (3.8🌟)

Glacial Period is a French graphic novel commissioned by the Louvre Museum. I think the museum commissioned more graphic novels and I will see if I can get another one.

The story begins with a group of explorers walking across a snow covered field. They are searching for an old city which they know existed in the area. After so many centuries of glacial frost humanity has lost track of their past. History is lost and so is the old civilisations and their people. All of a sudden the explorers stumble upon the ruins of a big building and set their minds to explore the inside. Although partially destroyed, the structure still keeps most of its contents in good condition. By looking at these strange objects the explorers try to imagine how people lived in the past. However they can make up very little as they do not understand much of what is there. Sculptures, paintings, strange objects everywhere and no signs of written language.

Opinion: I liked the story. I loved the art. The premise is interesting and I liked how some of the events take place in the ruined museum of Louvre. The author takes the opportunity to guide us through some of the rooms and to show case some art objects. I liked how everything seemed alien to the explorers and how they tried to interpret what they were seeing. With little to zero reference they couldn't guess. I found their reasoning fascinating. It made me think about how important (historical, cultural) references are in our daily life. It would be easy for us to interpret an object of our days but for someone who is alien to our civilization this could be a monumental task. One problem I found in this book though was that the choice of the Louvre as the main setting felt artificial. In my opinion a different urban setting, like a street or a shopping centre would've been more realistic.

The art is beautiful. I particularly liked the combination of colours and the, some times, soothing atmosphere even when the characters were in danger. Strange might be but this is how I felt.

My edition was published in 2007 by NSB Publishing. It has 76 pages.

Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke (4🌟)

Rendezvous with Rama is a science fiction novel written in 1973. It deals with first contact with an alien race.

When an immense object near the asteroid belt is detected by space telescopes, astronomers and scientists across the United Planets set their minds to investigate it. The investigators name the unidentified object Rama (a hindu god) and try to find out everything they can through their radars and space telescopes. As Rama comes near earth and flies beyond, they identify its shape as a perfect cylinder which seems to be rotating around its long axis at considerable speed. Not much else is learned from a distance. Now that Rama flies towards Mercury's orbit a decision is made to send a party to intercept and investigate the object.

Bill Norton in charge of Solar Survey Research Vessel  Rendezvous and his crew have to land on Rama and find a way to get inside the gigantic object. As they carry out their mission we learn about the nature of Rama and the mentality of the beings who built it.

Opinion: this is a short, fast read. An excellent premise for a first contact story. Excellent plot, including scientific elements and a bit of mystery but with flat non relatable characters. I have to say that I didn't mind about this last issue that much as I was immersed into discovering Rama as a reader. Every chapter something new happened, revealing in small doses the mysteries of Rama. The characters seemed to me like ants working their way through the object, all of them undistinguishable between them. However the actual object, Rama, felt to me a much better character.  It came to live with a little bit of personality and history of its own. It lead to some interesting scientific and philosophical questions. (Who built it? Why did they come? How many years has it been travelling? How does it work?) I liked the open ended finale, leaving quite a few unanswered questions, as this way the story felt more realistic.

My edition is a SF Masterworks published in 2006 by Gollancz. It has 252 pages.

Japón. Manga, traducción y experiencias de un apasionado del país del sol naciente - Marc Bernabé (4.5🌟)

Title in English could be: Japan. Manga, translation and experiences from an enthusiast of the country of the rising sun.

This is an interesting and extremely entertaining read. I fully recommend this book to any manga and everything japan fan. 

Partly autobiographical, this book explores the world of manga from the point of view of a manga translator. Marc Bernabe is a well-known translator of Spanish Manga editions. While the book is written in a semi-colloquial style of writing, the first two or three chapters are the most technical and professional-oriented. They include themes such as the Japanese language, the nature of translating in general and translating Japanese in particular, and the author’s professional career. After that we get more leisurely themes like the author’s favourite manga and mangaka, an excellent interview with mangaka Yuji Shiozaki and many anecdotes. And if the above was not enough,  at the end Bernabé gifts us with his personal guide to Japan, including his favourite places to visit and a chapter about the dark side if the country. 

Japón is beautifully illustrated (see photos below) and of excellent quality paper and binding.

My edition is in Spanish (no English translation yet) published in 2018 by Norma Editorial. It has 322 pages and is flexibound.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie (4🌟)

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is a crime novel part of the Poirot series.

We follow Dr James Sheppard who narrates the whole story. One morning he is called to see a patient, Mrs Ferrars who died the night before. He can only confirm the death, but keeps thinking about her case the rest of the day. The same day he meets with Roger Ackroyd in the street and is invited for dinner at his house. After dinner Ackroyd tells Dr Sheppard his suspisions about Mrs Ferrars taking her own life because she was being blackmailed. Later at home Dr Sheppard receives a call from a stranger telling him that Roger Ackroyd is death. Obviously, the police come and start to ask questions. One of the suspects is Ralph Ackroyd, step son of the dead man. Fearing for her relative, Flora Ackroyd, decides to ask Hercule Poirot for help. And this is when the fun begins.

Opinion: I found Dr Sheppard narration engaging.  He plays a role similar to Hastings, who is now in Argentina, helping Poirot in his investigation. Christie made an excellent job at making the reader to suspect everyone in turns, but when the real twist comes at the end, boom!  Cannot say more only that this was a real treat.

My edition is a Facsimile published by Harper Collins. It has 312 pages.

Space Battleship Yamato - Leiji Matsumoto (3.8🌟)

Space Battleship Yamato is a short science fiction, shonen manga series. Shonen means its intended audience is children, teenagers. I do not really engage with this kind of reads because they tend to be simple but I took the risk with this one. Why? Because it is a classic. This series was written in Japanese between 1975 and 1980.

The story follows a starship, Yamato, on a journey to save earth. It is the 22nd century, and earth is dying due to radiation and attacks from the Gamilians, a hostile alien race. After losing most of its space fleet humans receive a message from Starsha, an alien woman from planet Iscandar. Starsha offers humans the knowledge to build a powerful spaceship to travel 148 thousand light years to Iscandar and collect a device which could clean Earth from radioactivity. Reinvigorated with hope humans rebuild Yamato (an old spaceship) with powerful weapons and engines which can travel faster than light. But Yamato's voyage won't be easy as the Gamilians set all their power to destroy the battleship and with it all hope for humanity.

Admiral Okita

Opinion: Considering its intended demographics I think this is an excellent book. Story and art wise. This is a space opera with light sciency elements. This means scientific issues are not discussed in depth, maybe only mentioned. For example at trying to explain how Yamato can travel at warp speeds and what happens during warp the author shows the crew saying they are about to or in warp, the space around changes and we cannot see the stars.    Of course I should not be asking for more but I felt the author left a hole there especially because of the vast distances (148,000 light years!!) Yamato travelled in a matter of days. Aside from the science, the technology depicted in the story seemed to me old fashioned. But I didn't mind, the art for the technology and landscapes is great. I cannot say the same about the drawings of people.  I think the designs of the Admiral and main crew are cool but the rest are forgettable.

The AI and the doctor

The story is a classic epic tale with the heroes fighting their way through the stars to save earth. The Admiral is a character who greatly influences the rest and who would become a legend. Susumu Kodai is the hero, brave and courageous who revers and follows the Admiral's steps.  This is most evident in the second part of the book were the earth government goes nuts and ignoring obvious dangers decides to go against its own heroes. This is a bit of political commentary I appreciated. The Doctor, who loves sake, provides an element of childish humour, a nice touch ever now and then.

And the robot was a great surprise to me. It teams up with the Doctor in some of the funny panels as it gets "drunk" with sake. Despite its silly behaviour this robot (an artificial intelligence in an old fashioned robotic body) has some brilliant interventions where it wants to risk it's "live" to get something done. The AI says it is a man and no one objects. I think it is because in that society people co-exist with AI. Understand they were created in the image and likeness of the human brain, so in essence they are the same as humans. Anyway, this is not part of the story, but something I thought after reading it. Actually this is what I like about reading science fiction, it provides food for thought and more questions.

My edition was published in 2019 by Seven Seas and it has 647 pages.

How we became Posthuman. Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics – Katherine Hayles (3.8🌟)

How we became Posthuman looks into the history of the science of Cybernetics to explore how the idea/concept of (post)human (as in classic liberal thinking) has evolved. Cybernetics looked to create machines using what we know of humans and biological organisms. For that it modelled the human mind, consciousness, senses and behaviour. Other concepts such as decision making, judgement also had to be considered. Since the late 1940s scientists of different fields worked together to develop theories which we could use to create machines to do our work. Several schools of thoughts developed with different ideas of how machines could be built but most importantly with different conceptualisations of the human being. This is important because all this work depends on what and how we think humans are. Are we our bodies or our consciousness? Are we information only? As in our DNA? As in our thoughts, language, communications?

I found the following excerpt useful at the start of the book (p2-3)   "First, the Posthuman view privileges informational pattern over material instantiation, so that embodiment in a biological substrate is seen as an accident of history rather than an inevitability of life. Second, the Posthuman view considers consciousness, regarded as the seat of human identity in the western tradition long before Descartes  thought he was a mind thinking, as an epiphenomenon,  as an evolutionary upstart trying to claim that it is the whole show when in actuality it is only a minor sideshow. Third, the Posthuman view thinks of the body as the original prostheses we all learn to manipulate, so that extending or replacing the body with other prostheses becomes a continuation of a process that began before we were born. Fourth and most important, by these and other means, the Posthuman view configures human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the Posthuman,  there are no essential differences or absolute  demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals." I kept coming to this every time I got confused.

This was not an easy book to read especially because I was not familiar with Cybernetics and its concepts. I was not familiar either with other philosophical discussions such as liberal humanism and liberal subject, as well as semiotics but I think I have learned a lot. At least I marked all the ideas I thought important and interesting (which is most of the book). Ideas I want to revisit in the future when I read more about the topic. The writing is dense and almost every paragraph is charged with philosophical or scientific concepts I had to stop and look in the dictionary all the time.

The author discusses the life and ideas of some big names in Cybernetics, such as Weiner, McCulloch and Maturana. I liked her approach at relating crucial events in the (personal) lives of the scientists to explain why and how their thinking was framed. She also relates stories about the Macy conferences which run for several years and which are the foundation for modern developments.

Hayles also takes her time discussing concepts such as homeostasis and autopoiesis, reflexivity and virtuality. Before this book I would not have been able to connect these concepts together but now I can see an evolution there, an evolution which takes us to current work on artificial intelligence and artificial life. Unfortunately, I am not knowledgeable enough and articulate in this field to try and explain these and others myself. Hayles discusses them so much in depth I think I can only grab the surface. There were other concepts I thought I could manage better until I read about all their dimensions and interconnections. For example the concept of “embodiment” which Hayles takes almost a chapter to explain. A chapter titled The Materiality of Informatics, in which she talks about Foucault! Embodiment, body, inscription, incorporation, materiality, bodily experiences… I think I didn’t understand much but I can always reread this when I learn more.

Finally, what made the book more enjoyable were the author’s discussions of science fiction literary work. I might be unfair saying only enjoyable so I would add informative and illustrative. Hayles relates the stories in these novels, sometimes with spoilers, and then connects the ideas in the plot, or character construction, etc to cybernetic concepts previously discussed. Thanks to this I now have a few books added to my wishlist: Simulacra by Philip K Dick and Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers.

My edition was published in 1999 by The University of Chicago Press. It has 291 pages of content and 350 pages including notes and index.