My Cultural Diet

The Institute for the Study of Complex and Dynamic Systems seems like a researcher’s dream come true, allowing one to pursue their chosen area of study without any interruption. But the isolated institute is not without secrets, and despite its precise arrangement and pristine facilities, seems to thrive on chaos — something that physicist Stéphane Douasy realizes when he and his neighboring researchers begin to explore the disappearance of one of their own, and the awesome implications of his research. Robin Cousin’s graphic novel is certainly more than your ordinary mystery thriller, and in the course of reading it, you’ll probably learn more about theoretical computer science and the P versus NP problem than you thought possible. And the setting — a remote scientific facility surrounded by endless forests — is intriguing. But even though I found The Phantom Scientist interesting, I never found it particularly gripping — which is what you really want in a thriller, even one featuring computer scientists, robots run amok, and chaos theory.

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