G.T. Labs

Jim Ottaviani

Graphic novels about science: Buy one, get one (Feynman) free!

Feynman paperback coverIt’s a Friday when a lot of people shop, and do so hoping to get a great deal, so I’d like to offer you what I think is a great deal:

The first 10 purchases of any book from www.gt-labs.com will get a free copy of Feynman. (I’ll love it if you buy more than one book, but to be fair to all this will be a one-per-order thingee…) After that first ten, I’ll still send you something for free along with your purchase, but it may not be that book. It will be comics- or science-related, though!
Let’s try this through Dec. 10, 2013, shall we?
And…I’ll sign any of the books to anyone on your holiday gift list, including you, if you’re in the mood to treat yourself to something nice.
 

Note that I have to limit this offer to folks in the U.S., since I don’t have time right now to figure out postage and fill out customs forms and wait in the lengthening lines at the post office. I can only procrastinate so much on writing the next book, after all!
So, I hope you head over to www.gt-labs.com and pick out a new favorite!

Secret research trip for FutureBook™, tweeted after the fact

My social media advisor (a.k.a. my wife) says nobody likes a blizzard of tweets, and even if they did I’d be too forgetful to post these and am too lazy to configure auto-tweeting software to schedule them.
And, some of these are no doubt too long…I’m also too lazy to count to 140.
So, here is a large batch of pseudo-tweets in the form of a single blog post. Yeah, a blog. Very retro, which is appropriate since this happened a while back. But now all — okay, some — can be revealed…
##
19May2013: Secret research trip commences. Plan is to post these as Time Delayed Tweets (TDTs) upon successful completion…
TDT/May19-20: Best (not recommended) way to beat jet lag: Board 10:10pm flight at 11:40pm, sit on runway for 4.5 hrs, get off plane, try again next day.
TDT/May19-20: BTW, the above technique assumes you don’t do more than doze for an hour or so for the duration.
TDT/May20-21: Took 4 tries to get to Atlanta, on to London 1st try after that. Yesterday: not best day ever. Today: still not great, but not worst.
TDT/May21: Arrived in England, took train to Cambridge, walked from station to room to clear our heads.
TDT/May21: Leland Myrick meets us at end of (our) road. Great to see him, for all the reasons you’d imagine.
TDT/May21: Dinner at former student haunt of our Research Subject.
TDT/May21: The Tickell Inn: Higher end than usual student bar. Doesn’t smell like filthy rag soaked in stale beer, for one thing.
TDT/May21-22: Accommodations not luxurious; mattress is a good simulation of thing of same name…
TDT/May21-22: …but totally fine, and no apparent jet lag. See above for brilliant technique!
TDT/May22: Into the archive. 100s of photos taken, dozens of priceless things held in bare hands. #gobsmacked
TDT/May22: Ruined forever, thanks to friends Malcolm & Anna and CAMRA beer, cider, and perry festival. Weak, unsubtle, and bad U.S. cider will never do now.
TDT/May22: Also, good cider is strong. #typinghardafterhomanypintswasthat?
TDT/May23: More archives. Not all end up being on task, but worth it because…ho-hum, there’s A.A. Milne’s handwritten m.s. for Winnie the Pooh.
TDT/May23: Ho-hum, Newton’s library. As in Isaac Newton’s personal library. Right there. I’m now about to pull a book off the shelf. With my own hands.
TDT/May23: Title in question: “The General Delusions of Christians, Touching the Ways of God’s Revealing Himself to, and by the Prophets
TDT/May23: “…Evinc’d from Scripture and Primitive Antiquity…
TDT/May23: “…and Many Principles of Scoffers, Athiests, Sadducees, and Wild Enthusiasts Re-futed…
TDT/May23: “…The Whole Adapted, As Much As Possible, to the Meanest Capacity.” 
TDT/May23: Oh, Isaac Newton — you’d have loved the National Enquirer! (And it would love you.)
TDT/May23: Apparently you can tell if Newton actually read a particular book because he turned down corners. The librarian in me blanches, but…
TDT/May23: …there’s the fold, and I’m delighted.
TDT/May23: Into Inner Sanctum. 100s more pictures taken with a stupefied look on my face. #whatamIdoinghere? 
TDT/May23: More than one picture of Feynman on display in Inner Sanctum. #heh
TDT/May23: Appropriate, since Feynman (or rather, Feynman) is in part the reason we’re here.
TDT/May23: Into Innermost Inner Sanctum. Wonderful stories (most on deep background) told in a #whatamIdoinghere? setting.
TDT/May23: Great Indian to end the day. Cobra Beer = fantastic. Malcolm & Anna = more fantastic.
TDT/May24: Back to archive and a few 100 more photos, incl. early drafts of The Book. 
TDT/May24: Re. The Book’s early drafts: Calista/@01FirstSecond, when time comes, please don’t edit me w/chapter-by-chapter letter grades. #kthx
TDT/May24: Run in rain through Cambridge. Can’t sneak in for Trinity Court run. Got lost, found way back again. Almost hit by 3 different cars.
TDT/May24: Had a great time, IOW.
TDT/May24: Drinks in Fellows Club before dinner. Malcolm pronounces wine not quite ready. Leland, Kat and I think it’s fantastic. #lowbrows
TDT/May24: Dined at Trinity High Table. #whatamIdoinghere? Tried not to think of Hogwarts every few seconds. #failed
TDT/May24: They eat fast at High Table. (Hypothesis 1: To get out of there and leave students to own revels.) (Hypothesis 2: To get to the cheese and port.)
TDT/May24: Cheese and port after dinner — by candle light — with Fellows. #whatamIdoinghere?
TDT/May24: Learn that Trinity College has 40-50 year supply of port.
TDT/May24: Given consumption this evening…w/only 7 of us…I imagine subterranean reservoir size of Lake Huron.
TDT/May24: Rain clears after dinner for our stroll through Trinity Court. Magical, and gratified to hear our host is not jaded in the least.
TDT/May25: Work part done. (And per above what a horrible load and burden it was!) Traveling to Wales.
TDT/May25: Caerdydd Castell. Wisgi Cymreig. Da.
TDT/May25: Also, and this time in English: great dinner in Splot. (#notmakingthatup!) Featured 80s techno dance club soundtrack, complete w/New Order.
TDT/May26: Tintern Abbey is not-shockingly sublime. Lovely weather too…
TDT/May26: …so any impression that after rocky start this trip has been full of good luck is correct.
TDT/May27: London. Churchill’s underground War Rooms. Also sublime, but entirely unlike Tintern. (I know, shocking!) #ACTIONTHISDAY
TST/May27: #ACTIONTHISDAY reminds me that “The Imitation Game”, by me and Leland Purvis, is almost done. Look for it soon via @tordotcom.
TDT/May28: Onward to Down House to complete our Great Scientists tour.
TDT/May28: The grounds here are even more beautiful than Inner Inner Sanctum’s, and the stuff inside is much older. We don’t touch it, either.
TDT/May28: Fleshed out closing sequence for the FutureBook™ on Darwin’s Sandwalk. #thankyouCharlesDarwin
TDT/May29: Flying home in biz class, thanks to amazing help from amazing friend. Upside: biz class. (#whatamIdoinghere?) Downside: future travel ruined forever.
TDT/May29: 804 miles from home, which is less than the number of reference photos I took on the device I’m also using to write with.
TDT/May29: Signing off from the lap of luxury, in an age of wonders.
Nov13: Did I forget to reveal the subject of FutureBook™? Sorry. (#notreallysorry) More to be revealed tomorrow, via @01FirstSecond and @BoingBoing/boingboing.net.
Nov13 ± N months: #writingwritingwritingwritingwriting. Also, #writingwr
itingwritingwritingwriting.

Detroit, Sunday Oct. 20, ~5:30-8:30am

Free Press Marathon logo

Here’s today’s pre-dawn playlist. Don’t worry, I listened via an iPod, so I didn’t disturb the neighbors at The Inn on Ferry Street*:
The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
The End of Our Road by Marvin Gaye
I Heard It Through the Grapevine by Gladys Knight & The Pips (The Randy Watson Experience Sympathy For The Grapes Mix)
You have to click on track 02 to hear this, but it’s worth the extra effort! You can go the YouTube route for a live, unmixed version. You’ll get to watch the Pips do their thing…and that’s always worth your time.
Then I ran the Detroit Half-Marathon, and posted my best ever time.** Coincidence?
* Which is a wonderful place to stay…just off Woodward, close to Wayne State and the Cultural Center.
** Which will cause no elite Kenyan runners to reconsider their life choices. But I’m happy. And tired.

World Science Festival/NYCC13 panel

wsf-nycc2013.jpgThank you to The World Science Festival for inviting me to take part in the best convention panel I’ve ever been on. Moderated by Jonathan Coulton (@jonathancoulton), it featured Dominic Walliman (@DominicWalliman) and Charles Soule (@CharlesSoule). All smart, all funny, all with interesting insights into comics and science…and all a great pleasure to meet and get to know.

You can see more photos from the panel at the WSF link above…and like the one here, courtesy of Erika Crown, you’ll know when I’m in one because I’m the guy with his mouth open.

New Teacher’s Guides for Feynman and Primates

First Second and I have created new teacher’s guides for Feynman and Primates. They look great (that’s because of First Second’s fabulous designers) and are full of useful information about the books (I can take some credit for that part). 

We think teachers…and casual readers too…will find them useful. You can find them at the links above. 

And, thanks for reading these, and all my other stories. As Banned Books Week approaches I’m inclined to paraphrase the oft-banned George Orwell and say that all readers are equal, but some readers are more equal than others. Those are the ones who head towards the bibliographies I include in my books and then read even more about these scientists!

G.T. Labs post office box…no more!

In the last year or so arrivals to my P.O. box have dwindled, so that now only virtual particles bubbling up from the vacuum and checks from my distributor have appeared there. So, it’s time to reduce the keys I carry around each day by one… 

I find myself sad to close it. It served me well for over a decade and I loved finding the yellow “a package is waiting for you” slip or a note from someone who just discovered one of my books and had to tell me about it by sending a letter. Paying a visit after a few weeks out of town was like unlocking a long-abandoned storage locker, one that might be full of treasure, and I have happy memories of using a trip to get my mail as a way to trick myself into getting a few miles of running in during the dead of winter.
Anyway, if you see reference to a post office box in older copies of my books and are hankering to mail beef jerky or chain letters or stuff I might actually want to hold in my hands, please don’t send it there. Instead, contact me via email and we’ll figure out what to do next.

I’m not sure what will happen to good old eighty-one forty-five next, but I’m about to find out. Or not…it probably transforms itself into a miniature black hole, from which nothing escapes. And yes, I’ve already made sure those checks don’t cross that event horizon!