G.T. Labs

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Feynman, banned. Yes, you read that right…

Here’s a milestone I never thought I’d reach: According to PEN America (via Harpers), a book I wrote, Feynman, with art by Leland Myrick, is banned in Missouri. Baffling!

I’m proud of the book, and Leland is a terrific artist and a Missouri native, so…while I can’t think of this as an honor, looking at everything else on the list I’m glad I’m in such good company.

As for book bans in general, I have nothing original to say, but I’ll say the unoriginal part here anyway. They’re foolish and counterproductive.

Abrams ComicArts: 10th Anniversary!

 

I’ve had the honor of working with many great people and publishers, and Abrams is one of the latter, filled with the former. They celebrate their 10th anniversary this year, and are doing so with some really cool events, like a show at The Society of Illustrators. They’re also doing a cool giveaway, which you’ll want to enter.

So thanks to Charlie, Nicole, Orlando, Pam, Maya, and everyone else there for inviting Leland and me into such good company. And congratulations on ten years of superb books; I look forward to many more decades of great reading!

A new site, and its background image

 

Hi! After a long hiatus from blogging and site updating, we’re back with both…and now at least the site will be responsive. (I’ll try too!) I hope you like it, and can find stuff, and that it works well for all your G.T. Labs and science comics needs. I think it will for mine. Many thanks to my friend Jane for getting me here.

Of course a website refresh isn’t newsworthy at this point in history. It’s not like we’re living in the world of The Americans, where “ARPANET” is invoked like it’s a magical and mysterious thing. Which it is, if you think about it for even a second. (And for the worst cross-over ever, imagine Harry Potter sneaking onto that show and yelling Arpa Net, causing all the mainframe tape drives to spin out of control.) But it’s also mundane and commonplace too.

So what remains that’s magical and mysterious while also being the very definition of mundane and commonplace? Quantum theory! And that’s where the new background image comes in. This is the rendering of Einstein’s clock-in-a-box as it appears in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (1949). No credit for the artist, but I infer from the text that it was commissioned by Bohr himself, and as a collector, that would be a drawing I’d love to have the original for.

It illustrates a thought experiment he posed to stump Niels Bohr and his fellow quantum theorists in Einstein’s ongoing effort to demonstrate, once and for all, that this quantum stuff was nonsense. The bunk. Just Plain Wrong.

It almost worked.

Bohr had dispatched most of Einstein’s previous objections with relative ease, but this one made him sweat. Here’s how the scene plays out in Suspended in Language, which you can buy right here on this site, or from great booksellers everywhere.

(Sorry/not sorry about the EPR cliffhanger!)

G.T. Labs books: now DRM-free at comiXology

The title says it all, but in case you want more, you can read the press release: “New DRM-free Publishers at ComiXology“.

I was happy when comiXology asked me to join the second wave of DRM-free books, since it allowed me to make the books available to a wider audience. Will some of that audience share the books in ways I’d rather they didn’t? Maybe, but I suspect most won’t, and the benefits of making the books easier to read will be worth it.
This isn’t my first foray into DRM-free, though the first was a smaller scale. I worked with the Ann Arbor District Library a couple of years ago to release a few titles to AADL card-holders available. We went back and forth quite a bit on how that would work, and in the end instead of of requiring one of those hated click-through agreements, I wrote this and attached it to all the files:
A note from the author:

Hi! Jim Ottaviani here, writing to say thanks for downloading [BOOK TITLE]. You probably expected to see a bunch of legalese at this point, but I almost never make it all the way through those licenses myself, so you won’t get that here. You also won’t get passwords, due dates, or DRM. We want you to read this book however it suits you, be it on a desktop computer, a laptop, a tablet, a phone… From here on out, this copy is yours.

So, I hope you enjoy [BOOK TITLE], and if you do I have two requests.

If you want to share it with friends who live in Ann Arbor, please encourage them to get the book from AADL themselves. This is an experiment for both the library and me; we’d like to find out how many people want to read books this way. So if your friends live here, they can get it the same way you did, and that would help us learn more. And hey, if they don’t already have a library card, now is the perfect time for them to get one! AADL is a wonderful resource, and you’ll both be happy you introduced them to it.

And if you planned to send it to a friend from out of town? Well, while it’s uncomfortable to say it so plainly, here goes: You and I chip in via taxes to support all the great books, music, and movies — not to mention services — AADL provides. Some of my share comes from sales of the books I write. If you give this to someone who hasn’t chipped in, either directly or indirectly, we’ll end up with fewer great things to watch and listen to and read. So instead of sending them your copy, please suggest that they buy one, or ask their local library to order one for its collection.

Thanks for reading, and again, I hope you enjoy the book.
So far, so good I think. And now, in partnership with comiXology, the experiment goes global.

July 19 at 2pm: Jim and Primates at Barnes & Noble in Ann Arbor

PRIMATES cover

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Primates, but the folks at Barnes & Noble Store #2107 and Gina at First Second have fixed that! So, if you’re in the neighborhood, you can take a break from the Art Fair(s), skip the corn dogs and elephant ears, and come hear me enthuse about great apes.
The event is part of a nation-wide “Get Pop-Cultured Preview Weekend” held in anticipation of the San Diego Comicon. While I’m not the most pop-culture-y guy in the world, when it comes to being cool and heroic and stuff, you can’t beat Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, Biruté Galdikas.

I’ll be working without a net (as in, no A/V) so this will be an interesting experiment in talking about comics with no pictures projected on a screen behind me! There are things to say and books to sign and fun to have. And B&N#2107 is a really nice store to hang out in. See you there?

Alan Turing on the future

“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
Alan M. Turing (1950). “Computing machinery and intelligence.” Mind, 59, 433-460.
If only that future had included many more years of Turing, and the products of his genius.
Posted in honor of The Imitation Game by Leland Purvis and me…read it at Tor.com, which concludes its online run today. Thanks to Leland most of all, but also Irene Gallo and Chris Lough at Tor.com, Joan Hilty, Nick Abadzis, and everyone else who made this possible.