Soonish
Pages: 368
Edition: Hardcover
List Price: $30
Publisher: Penguin Press
ISBN: 9780399563829
First entered: 21st, Oct 2017
Number of weeks: 1
Book Summary
The instant New York Times bestseller!
From a top scientist and the creator of the hugely popular web comic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, a hilariously illustrated investigation into future technologies -- from how to fling a ship into deep space on the cheap to 3D organ printing
What will the world of tomorrow be like? How does progress happen? And why do we not have a lunar colony already? What is the hold-up?
In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next -- from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research, interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, and Zach's trademark comics, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.
New technologies are almost never the work of isolated geniuses with a neat idea. A given future technology may need any number of intermediate technologies to develop first, and many of these critical advances may appear to be irrelevant when they are first discovered. The journey to progress is full of strange detours and blind alleys that tell us so much about the human mind and the march of civilization.
To this end, Soonish investigates ten different emerging fields, from programmable matter to augmented reality, from space elevators to robotic construction, to show us the amazing world we will have, you know, soonish.
Authors
Name: Kelly Weinersmith
About the author:
Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is adjunct faculty Biosciences department at Rice University, where she studies parasites that manipulate the behavior of their hosts. She also cohosts Science…sort of, which is one of the top 20 natural science podcasts. Kelly spoke at Smithsonian magazine’s The Future Is Here Festival in 2015, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, National Geographic, BBC World, Science, and Nature.
Name: Zach Weinersmith
Hometown: Easton, Pennsylvania
About the author:
Zachary Weinersmith (born Zachary Alexander Weiner) is an American cartoonist, who is best known for his webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal (SMBC). He is the author of two other webcomics, the completed Captain Stupendous with artist Chris Jones, and Snowflakes, co-written by James Ashby and also illustrated by Chris Jones. He also founded the sketch comedy group SMBC Theater with James Ashby and Marty Weiner in 2009.
Weinersmith has been involved in writing and drawing comics since his high school years, but he first published on the internet in the late 1990s. His early comics usually had three or more panels, but after 2002, he switched to drawing predominantly one panel comics. He stated in a 2009 interview that he was glad to have decided to draw one panel comics because he felt three panel webcomics had become a webcomic cliche by that time, and that there were almost no decent one panel comics on the internet. More recently, he has drawn a mixture of single and multi panel comics for SMBC.
Weinersmith's webcomic was recognized in 2006, and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for Outstanding Single Panel Comic,[3] and received nominations in 2003,[4] and 2008.[5]
SMBC is at heart a geek comic, which nevertheless addresses a broad range of topics, such as love, relationships, economics, politics, religion, science, and philosophy. As shown by the diverse range of blogs listed above, it appeals to many different groups.
SMBC has around 250,000 daily readers, served over 300,000,000 comics in 2010, and is one of the fastest growing comics online (has sextupled in readership since 2008). The comics have been featured on many important blogs, including The Economist, Glamour, BoingBoing, Bad Astronomy, Blastr, Blues News, Joystiq, Washington Post, Freakonomics, and more.
Zach has a degree in Literature and 3/8ths of a degree in physics. He enjoys reading about math, logic, science, history, fiction, and philosophy. His hobbies are space travel, dinosaur riding, and wishful thinking. He currently lives in southern California with his beautiful and brilliant wife.
Note: Zach publishes SMBC and SMBC material under both "Zach Weiner" and "Zach Weinersmith".