Tor.com content by

Jim Ottaviani

Fiction and Excerpts [4]

The Imitation Game

Leland Purvis and Jim Ottaviani

Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:26am

Comics

3 Favorites [+]

Primates (Excerpt)

Jim Ottaviani

Wed May 8, 2013 4:00pm

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Graphic Novel, Non-Fiction || Tackling Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas in turn, and covering the highlights of their respective careers, Primates is an accessible, entertaining, and informative look at the field of primatology and at the lives of three of the most remarkable women scientists of the twentieth century.

Comics

The Imitation Game

Leland Purvis and Jim Ottaviani

Mon Jun 23, 2014 10:26am 33 comments 3 Favorites [+]

Today, Alan Turing is considered the father of theoretical computer science and artificial intelligence. The mathematician, born on June 23, 1912, was a brilliant World War II codebreaker and parlayed that insight into theorizing and creating the first stored-memory computers. Unfortunately, this Officer of the British Empire was persecuted by the British government of the time for his homosexuality and suffered through chemical castration before ending his life.

The Imitation Game by Feynman author Jim Ottaviani and Resistance illustrator Leland Purvis chronicles the life of Turing in a full-size graphic novel. Check back every day this week as Tor.com releases the entire graphic novel in four parts.

Behavior Doesn’t Fossilize

Jim Ottaviani

Fri Jun 7, 2013 10:00am Favorite This

Despite my best efforts, I’ve failed to reverse the arrow of time; I continue to get older every day. I don’t feel bad about this—Stephen Hawking hasn’t licked the problem either, and, well, he wrote the book!

You don’t have to be Hawking to know what I mean. Anybody old enough to think about age can probably feel its effects in their bones. And tendons and ligaments and muscles. If you’re a runner (I am… just ran the first trail race of the year today), then you know the saying that goes “it’s not the years, it’s the mileage” isn’t really true. It’s both.

Excerpts

Primates (Excerpt)

Jim Ottaviani

Wed May 8, 2013 4:00pm Post a comment Favorite This

Check out Jim Ottaviani’s Primates, out on June 11!

Jim Ottaviani returns with an action-packed account of the three greatest primatologists of the last century: Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas. These three ground-breaking researchers were all students of the great Louis Leakey, and each made profound contributions to primatology—and to our own understanding of ourselves.

Tackling Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas in turn, and covering the highlights of their respective careers, Primates is an accessible, entertaining, and informative look at the field of primatology and at the lives of three of the most remarkable women scientists of the twentieth century. Thanks to the charming and inviting illustrations by Maris Wicks, this is a nonfiction graphic novel with broad appeal.

Alan Turing

Get a Sneak Peek at the Forthcoming Alan Turing Bio Comic The Imitation Game

Jim Ottaviani

Wed Jun 27, 2012 10:00am 4 comments Favorite This

“Alec Pryce was getting rather [illegible] with his Christmas shopping. His method was slightly unconventional. He would walk around the shops in London of Manchester until he saw something which took his fancy, and then think of some on of his friends … who would be pleased by it. It was a sort of allegory of his method of work (though he didn’t know it) which depended on waiting for inspiration.”

That’s how Alan Turing’s only known foray into writing fiction begins. Alec Pryce is a thinly disguised version of Turing himself, but from what little survives of the manuscript he’s nowhere near as interesting as the real thing. There’s not enough left of the story to tell whether it would have been any good, but there’s more than enough of Turing’s legacy to tell us that the world would have benefited from many more years of his brain at work on problems, big and small.

Putting Into Words the Importance of Space Exploration: Apollo XI, September 16, 1969

Jim Ottaviani

Fri Sep 16, 2011 5:00pm 1 comment Favorite This

Click to enlarge

All of us are here at Tor.com because we love good writing, and expect it in our science fiction. We don’t expect it from scientists, though, and even less so from engineers. And if those engineers happen to be test pilots who happen to be astronauts, our expectations drop further.

Excerpts

The Five Faces of Feynman

Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick

Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:00pm 3 comments Favorite This

Tor.com presents excerpts from Feynman, the bio-comic from Jim Ottaviani and illustrator Leland Myrick. The two authors present a colorful picture of the larger-than-life exploits of Nobel-winning quantum physicist, adventurer, musician, and world-class raconteur Richard Feynman, following him from his childhood in Long Island to his work on the Manhattan Project and the Challenger disaster.

Ever wanted to know more about Richard P. Feynman, quantum electrodynamics, the fine art of the bongo drums, the outrageously obscure nation of Tuva, or the development and popularization of the field of physics in the United States? This excerpt presents the five faces of Richard Feynman: Adventurer, skeptic, scientist, artist, musician.

Moon Landing

In Event of Moon Disaster

Jim Ottaviani

Mon Jul 18, 2011 12:23pm 2 comments Favorite This

In a few days we’ll celebrate the 42nd anniversary of the first time humans set foot on our moon… another world. Forty-two isn’t a special number, except for those who consider space travel mostly humorous, and survival inevitable. Along with all other Tor.com readers I blame, and love, Douglas Adams for that.

All these years later, here in reality, space travel is not as humorous or inevitable. And that’s the anniversary we celebrate today, because forty-two years ago William Safire took a call from NASA’s White House liaison Frank Borman. Borman told him “You want to be thinking of some alternative posture for the President in the event of mishaps.”

Safire, though he was a smart guy, didn’t get it, so Borman—who had commanded Apollo 8, and did get it—said it plain: “Like what to do for the widows.”

Oh. That kind of mishap.

So Safire wrote the following for president Nixon to read in case Aldrin and Armstrong didn’t come back….

Comics

Better Zombies Through Physics

Jim Ottaviani and Sean Bieri

Tue Sep 16, 2008 4:44pm 7 comments Favorite This

Join us for chills, thrills, and pulse-pounding scientific breakthroughs as we embark on a tour of the Quantum Zombie, Inc. facility, courtesy of a guy who bears a striking resemblance to famed scientist and cat-lover Erwin Schrödinger. Hijinks, hilarity, and an abundance of felines await you in “Better Zombies Through Physics.”

Teaser 1

Teaser 2

Chapter 1: Less Than 34 Shopping Days Until All Hallow’s Eve!

Chapter 2: The Lab of the Living Dead

Chapter 3: The (Death) March of Progress

Chapter 4: The Wrong Customer Is Always Right

Chapter 5: The Cat’s Out of the Bag Box

Chapter 6: “…the living and the dead cat smeared out in equal parts.”

Better Zombies Through Physics Goes CC