The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer
Sydney Padua, 2015
Knopf Doubleday
320 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307908278
Summary
Sydney Padua transforms one of the most compelling scientific collaborations into a hilarious series of adventures.
Meet Victorian London’s most dynamic duo: Charles Babbage, the unrealized inventor of the computer, and his accomplice, Ada, Countess of Lovelace, the peculiar protoprogrammer and daughter of Lord Byron.
When Lovelace translated a description of Babbage’s plans for an enormous mechanical calculating machine in 1842, she added annotations three times longer than the original work. Her footnotes contained the first appearance of the general computing theory, a hundred years before an actual computer was built.
Sadly, Lovelace died of cancer a decade after publishing the paper, and Babbage never built any of his machines.
But do not despair!
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage presents a rollicking alternate reality in which Lovelace and Babbage do build the Difference Engine and then use it to build runaway economic models, battle the scourge of spelling errors, explore the wilder realms of mathematics, and, of course, fight crime—for the sake of both London and science.
Complete with extensive footnotes that rival those penned by Lovelace herself, historical curiosities, and never-before-seen diagrams of Babbage’s mechanical, steam-powered computer, The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is wonderfully whimsical, utterly unusual, and, above all, entirely irresistible. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1971
• Where—Canada
• Education—Sheridan College
• Currently—lives in London, England, UK
Melina Sydney Padua is a graphic artist and animator. She is the author of the 2D Goggles webcomic and her animation work appears in several popular Hollywood films—Marmaduke, Clash of the Titans, The Golden Compass, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Iron Giant, and Quest for Camelot.
Her work has been exhibited at the BBC Tech Lab and at a Steampunk exhibition by Oxford's Museum of the History of Science. She gave a conference on storytelling at The Story, an event shared with Cory Doctorow, Tim Etchells, David Hepworth, Aleks Krotoski, and Tony White among others.
Originally from the Canadian prairie, she now lives in London with her husband and far too many books
Lovelace and Babbage
Padua writes the steampunk webcomic 2D Goggles or The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage. It features a pocket universe where Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage have actually built an analytical engine and use it to "fight crime" at Queen Victoria's request Also featured in the comic is the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whom Padua has called "The Wolverine of the early Victorians."
The comic is based on thorough research on the biographies and correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace, as well as other bits of early Victoriana, which is then twisted for humorous effect. According to Padua,
Some of the documents are more entertaining than the actual comic. Plenty of times, I've thrown something into the comic just so I'd have an excuse to refer to some document.
The comic began as a one-shot for Ada Lovelace Day—a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Disliking the fact that both Babbage and Lovelace died with their life work incomplete, Padua ended the comic with the alternate events, then found that...
[A] lot of people saw it and thought that I was actually going to do a comic, which I had no intention of doing. But then I started thinking, "What if I actually did the comic?" I started fooling around, and I guess I'm still fooling around with it.
Originally, in 2011, the comic was meant to be a limited edition print of only 25 to raise money for The Ada Initiative. Two years later, in 2013, it was adapted as a stage show, A Note of Discord by Theatre Paradok at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Then, in 2015, the comic was published as a 320-page book titled The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Pantheon Books. (Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 1/3/2016.)
Visit the author's blog.
Book Reviews
Much of this material is interesting, but it reads as a more or less unedited jumble. The impression it gives is that Padua was captivated by her research and couldn’t bear to leave much out, however peripheral to the main story line. Eventually a reader must give up trying to follow a narrative and read The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage primarily as a miscellany of historical curiosities.
Lauren Redniss - New York Times Book Review
Informative and entertaining... It’s a book that makes you a lot smarter as it makes you laugh.
Nancy Szokan - Washington Post
Reading The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage is like auditing a dozen high-level, inventively taught college classes simultaneously: more than a little overwhelming yet fascinating.
Margaret Quamme - Columbus Dispatch
Sydney Padua’s new book is definitely "Yowza!" material.
Etelka Lehoczky - NPR
An outlandish, enlightening tale.
Discover Magazine
(Starred review.) [A] must-have for anyone who enjoys getting lost in a story as brilliant in execution as conception. Padua debut graphic novel transforms the collaboration between Ada Lovelace (the daughter of Lord Byron) and Charles Babbage (a noted polymath) into an inspired, “What If?” story.... [A] spirit of genuine inventiveness.
Publishers Weekly
Originally a webcomic, this collection of jests interweaves history, literature, and fantasy into short stories starring Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Babbage's machines, and a number of 19th-century luminaries.... Padua's extravaganza is very much for the whimsical intelligentsia.... —Martha Cornig
Library Journal
Sydney Padua’s impeccably researched, yet playfully imagined graphic biography is a treat for history buffs and graphic novel lovers alike…With fantastically detailed art, footnotes and diagrams…, this is a whimsical graphic account like no other.
BookPage
(Starred review.) [A]udaciously imagined.... [W]ritten and illustrated by an artist and computer animator, [it] begins with a sliver of fact—the brief, apparently unproductive "intellectual partnership" between Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage.... A prodigious feat of historically based fantasy that engages on a number of levels.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to help start a discussions for The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage:
1. One of the many (many) footnotes describes the difference between Babbage and Lovelace as this: "In a sense the stubborn, rigid Babbage and mercurial, airy Lovelace embody the division between hardware and software." How does this metaphor work to describe the personalities and characteristics of the two protagonists?
2. Why does Ada Lovelace take up mathematics and science? To escape...what?
3. Here's one of the big questions the novel poses: What is the relationship between science and imagination?
4. And Here's another intriguing question from the book: Was mathematics invented or discovered?
5. One of the footnotes tells us that Lovelace is fascinated by zero: "It had a spiritual dimension." How so?
6. Was the story and the prodigious imagery of the book overwhelming or distracting to you? Or did you find it enhanced your understanding of the story and its of humor ?
7. Follow-up to Question 6: Ditto the footnotes—were they helpful or overwhelming?
8. Talk about the ways that Padua envisions The Difference Machine changing the world of the 19th century. In other words, what is the alternative history imagined here?
9. Describe the humor in Padua's novel—how she uses it and the different forms it takes.
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)