The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage
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 Dust jacket of US edition | |
| Author | Sydney Padua |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Sydney Padua |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage |
| Genre | Steampunk |
| Publisher | Pantheon Books (US) Penguin Books (UK) |
Publication date | 21 April 2015 |
| Media type | Print, hardcover |
| Pages | 320 |
| ISBN | 978-0-307-90827-8 |
| OCLC | 1054115668 |
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer is a steampunk graphic novel written and drawn by Sydney Padua. It features Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage in an alternative universe where they have successfully built an Analytical Engine and use it to "fight crime".
The book was published simultaneously by Pantheon Books in the US and Penguin Books in the UK on 21 April 2015.[1] It has received positive reviews and awards.
The book grew out of a webcomic of the same name.[2][3] The comic began as a single comic strip for Ada Lovelace Day in 2009, a celebration of women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.[4] Disliking the fact that both Babbage and Lovelace died with their life work incomplete, Padua created a fictional ending for the strip, 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."[5]
The setting describes an alternative historical reality[6] in which Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage have actually built an analytical engine and use it to "fight crime" at Queen Victoria's request.[7] Also featured in the comic is the great engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, whom Padua has called "the Wolverine of the early Victorians".[8]
The comic is based on thorough research on the biographies of and correspondence between Babbage and Lovelace, as well as other bits of early Victoriana, which are then twisted for humorous effect. "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," Padua says.[5]