A potent, educational work whose simple presentation doesn’t weaken its message.
Ramey’s (Saving Sam, 2012) graphic novel takes a look at the ways that humanity is devastating the planet and the frightening prospect of humanity’s extinction.
By 2150, mankind has vanished from the face of the Earth, according to the book’s insect narrator, who begins his story by detailing how his kind has adapted and survived for 400 million years. Homo sapiens were around for a mere fraction of that time, but they began negatively affecting the environment by the start of the Industrial Revolution. Greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation were catastrophic, leading to pollution, melting glaciers, rising sea levels, and drought—and as resources gradually waned, the human population increased. Many animals became extinct or endangered, and insects were targeted by pesticides, though they continued to thrive. As the book’s arthropod guide explains, the superior human brain produced essential scientific developments, but it was also the reason why humans formed societies and sustained a wide range of beliefs. As a result, they inevitably turned against one another, due to clashing which led, in turn, to violent conflict. Ramey tackles the subject matter academically, with straightforward text backed up by quoted material from an extensive bibliography. His stark, black-and-white artwork offers realistic renderings of both humans and animals. There are a few instances of humor, predominantly involving the anthropomorphized narrator, which dons spectacles and occasionally crosses its two front legs. But the book’s harrowing message is grave and abundantly clear; regarding climate change deniers, for example, the narrator deems it “curious that they persistently talked about making things better for their grandchildren while taking action that contributed to their certain destruction.” The author wisely blankets mankind’s denouement in ambiguity, instead focusing on the barren aftermath: an Earth filled with junk—and perseverant insects.
A potent, educational work whose simple presentation doesn’t weaken its message.Pub Date: June 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9850545-3-3
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Charles Square Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
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