Where the body was by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips

This book uncovers the lives and secrets of the people in a residential neighbourhood. Slowly, it pieces together all clues about the disappearance of a private eye. It's a nice story. I ended up being more interested in people's lives than in solving the crime. I also liked the afterword where Brubaker explains how some bits of the story are not fiction. The art is nice and immerses you in the story effortlessly. An okay read I guess, but not good enough to deserve the price I paid for it!!

 

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr

Wow, this book left me wondering, sitting on my bed, in the dark, for a long while. I closed the book and thought about how our human intelligence seems unable to overcome our inherent stupidity. Individual and collective stupidity. It is strange to see how brilliant minds put together can excrete so many bad, destructive decisions. This novel explores this aspect of human nature. With a distinctly pessimistic tone, it illustrates how humanity repeatedly destroys what it creates, a pattern that has endured for millennia and is unlikely to change, I think. While there are small glimpses of hope and brilliance, with individuals striving to improve the world, those in power consistently prioritize their own interests over the greater good. I see the world now and cannot say it is different from Miller’s vision. I read Nuclear War. A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen in May 2024, which in hindsight looks like a prequel to A Canticle. Really scary, as Nuclear War is based on real plans and interviews with people involved in the nuclear sector. The scenario ends with a total annihilation of civilisation. 

The novel is well written. I didn’t find it dense or tiring. The story is engaging, especially in the first part, though the two later sections, set centuries after, are also compelling. I particularly enjoyed the contrast between scientific and religious ideas. Since the book follows Catholic monks, we see their dedication to recovering lost scientific knowledge and preserving their faith. However, without them realizing it, their crumbling belief system finds new footing in an unexpected way. St. Leibowitz rises to prominence through a process that mirrors how the story of Jesus spread 2,000 years ago: through tales, legends, sightings, and fragments of barely legible relics, which ultimately help lay the foundation for a new civilization. 

Canticle for Lebowitz raises interesting questions such as, do we need faith-based moral authority to regulate our impulses? Or worse, do we have to submit our free will to such authority to survive? 

It's definitely worth a read. So go get yourself a copy.

Espectros de cine en Japón. Entre la literatura, la leyenda y las nuevas tecnologías (Spectres of cinema in Japan. Between literature, legend, and new technologies, ) by Rafael Malpartida

There's no English translation of this book. 

A super interesting book about the depiction of ghosts in classic and modern Japanese cinema. Starting with classic cinema, 50s and 60s are considered the golden age for spectre and fantasy classic Japanese cinema, Malpartida explains how traditional legends and traditions influence classic films. He offers a useful classification of ghost movies 

1. movies about cat spectres (kaibyo eiga, a popular theme). Cats can be possessed by the ghosts of the recently deceased after licking their blood. 

2. The story of the Oiwa spirit- many movie adaptations based on a popular Kabuki act: Tokaido Yatsuya Kaidan from 1825) - a story about murder and revenge. 

3. The Snow Woman (Yuki onna) - various adaptations of the story of a woman who appears in snowy nights. 

In terms of modern cinema, Malpartida discusses the super famous Ring movies, the original and the Korean and Hollywood remakes, offering sharp criticisms of the remakes that fail to convey the original meanings. For example, Malpartida criticises the appearance of the Hollywood Samara as being a copy of the Exorcist girl (Reagan) rather than a version of Sadako. Then, the discussion moves to Shimizu's Ju-On series of movies, highlighting the director's skill to create so much in artistic terms with little resources. After that, the author discusses Kiyoshi Kurosawa's movies highlighting the director's interest in incommunication and solitude. 

The book ends with an amazing section with illustrations of movie posters and movie scenes and a nice catalogue of about 70 ghost films, including titles, posters and synopses. 

Final remarks: so many ghosts ghosts represent/ portray women victims of violence searching for justice themselves because institutional justice doesn't do its job. All throughout the book, Malpartida highlights the Japanese directors' ability to scare with their story building skills and by showing us how much we have in common with ghosts.

The 6 Voyages of Lone Sloane by Philippe Druillet

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Stunning, mind blowing, baroque art. Six short stories featuring Lone Sloane, a mysterious and enigmatic figure who speaks little but journeys through strange worlds and experiences surreal adventures. Lone Sloane is a blend of science fiction and mythology. Set in space, the protagonist travels between planets, first on a "magical" couch and later on a spaceship. During his journey he encounters other humans and robots, but also gods, monsters, and other fantastical beings—characters that feel more mythical than traditionally SF, yet still enjoyable. The overall experience feels like science fiction with a psychedelic twist. The album features stunning artwork, with panels that are visually captivating, though at times difficult to interpret within the story. For me, this is only a minor drawback. All in all, a great read.

Eyes of the Void by Adrian Tchaikovsky

This is the second novel on the Final Architecture series. I read Shards of Earth, the first novel, about a year and a half ago. I'm glad this second book comes with a "Story so far" section at the beginning, including key concepts, humanity factions, and key characters. There is also a complete list of characters, species, worlds, and more at end. And a very useful timeline, too. All these helped refresh my memory without the need to reread the first book. Anyway, the story felt a bit slower than the previous one, took me almost 2 weeks to read, but it wasn't bad. The protagonist is trying to understand the mysteries of unspace, the origins and motivations of the architects so he can save the universe!! So far, the ideas are fine but are not mindblowing. Hope the third book comes with striking revelations. This series is fun, but I don't think it will become a classic.

Artificial Intelligence: A guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell

This is a thought-provoking, accessible book. It includes some technical content but it is not difficult to read, maybe intermediate. It definitely requires your attention. This book has clarified some false impressions I had about Artificial Intelligence. The book includes some chapters explaining the history of AI. It provides a useful classification of AI - Symbolic AI, programmed using symbols (words or phrases) which are understandable by human beings, and Subsymbolic AI, which capture the “sometimes unconscious thought processes” underlying human’s fast perception (recognising faces or words). An example of Symbolic AI is Expert Systems. An example of Subsymbolic AI is Machine Learning, of which the most popular are Deep Learning and Deep Neural Networks. There are chapters dealing with various kinds of AI technologies, like visual recognition (e.g., object recognition), games (e.g., Chess, Go), languages (e.g., speech recognition). In all, Mitchell explains the technologies and their potential, focusing on how machines learn and on enquiring on the ethics and trustworthiness of AI. But most importantly, Mitchell highlights the limitations for each approach, first stating that each technology is just a limited, narrow aspect of human intelligence and providing, sometimes funny, examples of failures. My favourite chapters are at the end. Chapter 14: On Understanding, which looks into the mystery of how humans “understand” things, and Chapter 15: Knowledge, Abstraction and Analogy in AI. The conclusion of both chapters, and I think of the book (which was published in 2018), is that AI is far from achieving human intelligence, let alone superhuman intelligence. To be intelligent machines would need to acquire common sense like we do. We are either born with it or we develop it in infancy. Machines would need learn how to abstract concepts from a few examples, identify and use analogies. Because our mental models, those which form the concepts that we use, are created using abstraction and analogy. We are far from understanding how those concepts are created, emerge and or develop in our human brains, so we are even farther from embedding those in a machine. And to end a quote: “only the right kind of machine – one that is embodied and active in the world – would have human-level intelligence in its reach.”

The Collected Toppi. Volume Ten: Future Perfect

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 

 As usual. Beautiful Art. Fantastic stories. My favourite story is the last one, titled Science Fiction. Don't want to say much about each story as they are short and it would be better if you read them.