One of the many prestigious publications that Tom Gauld is the resident cartoonist at is New Scientist magazine and Physics for Cats is the latest collection of his cartoons for that magazine. And, having read everything Gauld’s put out over the years, and enjoyed much of it, I’d say Physics for Cats is the best book he’s made so far!
There wasn’t a set of pages I went past where I didn’t find something to appreciate. Some of the cartoons are genuinely funny, like “Math Puzzles for Conspiracy Theorists: Susie brings eighteen apples and twelve oranges to school and divides them equally between her six friends. How many of these children are in the pay of Big Fruit?” or the “Choose a Pill” scene from The Matrix where Morpheus keeps going with the colours and the pills do sillier things as he goes.
Some of the cartoons are visually interesting like Mobius Strip-type labs or witty infographics showing comically disastrous experiments. Gauld’s art in general is minimalist and yet very appealing at the same time.
Some cartoons are very contemporary, like “Clickbait for Stars” and different options for the “I’m not a robot” tickbox you see on some websites. There’s so much imagination across the entire book - the “How is Dark Matter?” strip, “Staring into the Abyss” strip, rewilding nature and inadvertently bringing back a Lovecraftian Elder God!
Despite being science themed, they’re very accessible cartoons with just the one instance for me of having to look up a reference (Block Universe theory). The cartoons in Physics for Cats are clever, thoughtful, creative, and hugely entertaining - it’s such an easy and brilliant read. So much fun, I loved this book - Tom Gauld’s career best to date and one of the year’s artistic highlights.
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