Skip to main content

Dream Machine: Appupen and Laurent Daudet ***

Every now and then we get a graphic novel designed to put across some aspect of science and technology while simultaneously entertaining the reader - and for the most part they try hard and then fail painfully. The most succesful I've seen so far is Robin Cousin's The Phantom Scientist - but I'm afraid Dream Machine doesn't come close.

The storyline features a small AI startup with an impressive generative AI, a startup with which a big, bad corporation is trying to get an exclusive contract. We see the head of the startup wrestling with whether or not to take the contract as he finds out more and more details about what generative AI is doing to people (most of which he surely knew anyway) and of the devious plan of the big corporation to gather vast amounts of data and eventually to be able to control whole countries. Move on folks, nothing dubious to see here.

The good news is that we do find out lots about generative AI along the way. And the underlying message that AI can be used for good or for bad purposes, while not exactly original (insert any tech of choice) is fine. But this is a terrible medium through which to deliver the message. With one exception (covered in a moment), hardly anything actually happens. Graphic novels are all about action - but apart from travelling from venue to venue there is no action here. It's all either conversations about AI or lectures about AI. The graphic part adds nothing to this - in fact the layout gets in the way of reading the text. The pictures rarely illustrate anything useful, while the wordy speech bubbles are so small it's hard to read what they say.

The exception I mentioned where it all comes alive are in the 'Super Hugo' sections. These are very short inserts that feature the main character's dreamworld alter ego as a caped superhero. Here he takes on the perils that face the technology in a literalised form. They are quite fun and at least something happens, even if it's not in the real world - but they aren't enough to save the whole. Another brave failure, I'm afraid.

Incidentally, Amazon puts this book at a reading age of 8-12, but it is definitely not aimed at children. Oh, and the Kindle version is in the original French, just for fun.

Paperback:   
Kindle 
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

The Decline and Fall of the Human Empire - Henry Gee ****

In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

David Mindell's take on learning lessons for the present from the eighteenth century Lunar Society could easily have been a dull academic tome, but instead it was a delight to read. Mindell splits the book into a series of short essay-like chapters which includes details of the characters involved in and impact of the Lunar Society, which effectively kick-started the Industrial Revolution, interwoven with an analysis of the decline of industry in modern twentieth and twenty-first century America, plus the potential for taking a Lunar Society approach to revitalise industry for the future. We see how a group of men (they were all men back then) based in the English Midlands (though with a strong Scottish contingent) brought together science, engineering and artisan skills in a way that made the Industrial Revolution and its (eventual) impact on improving the lot of the masses possible. Interlaced with this, Mindell shows us how 'industrial' has become something of a dirty wo...