The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded by Jim Ottaviani

The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded

by Jim Ottaviani

Alan Turing (1912–1954) was the mathematician credited with cracking the German Enigma code during World War II, enabling the Allies to defeat the Nazis. After the war, Turing went on to launch modern computer science through his creation of the universal Turing machine and the Imitation Game, an artificial-intelligence test that is still in use today. Turing kept his code-breaking work a secret in order to safeguard his native England, but failed to hide his sexual preferences, which led to his tragic death at the hands of the same country he worked so hard to protect. Jim Ottaviani and Leland Purvis show Turing to be an eccentric, persecuted genius and a groundbreaking theoretician whose seminal work still plays a role in the science and telecommunication systems that fuel our modern world.

Reviewed by wcs53 on

4 of 5 stars

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I borrowed this graphic novel from the library. It's a different kind of telling of the Alan Turing story. At times I found it a little hard to follow, as it is sometimes told in his voice, then at other times in the voice of people from his life. I thought it would be similar to the movie of the same name, but it differed in many ways, which was not a bad thing. It's well drawn and moves along well. Turing was a genius, but in the end his story was quite sad. This is a decent read and worth checking out.

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  • 1 February, 2020: Finished reading
  • 1 February, 2020: Reviewed