Although I have to confess that certain parts were better than others, on a whole, this book was a delight to read. This is partially because of my own research interest bias, and also because I think some subjects are more relevant and mature than others.

I particularly enjoyed Part 2, “Biological Modeling,” which includes various chapters on Boolean networks, making a clear connection to the field of artificial life that the editors claim is not too distant (if it is distant at all) from areas such as complex systems. This volume makes this fact clear. Indeed, I have always found it bizarre to find separate conferences on artificial life and complex systems, as if they are completely strange topics to each other. In fact, the term “artificial life” is less clear today than it was before the introduction of the field of synthetic biology. To clarify the distinction: perhaps synthetic biology is closer to biology than to artificial life, but artificial life as a name has also been subject to deprecation, with some researchers even avoiding being classified as practitioners in that field. Fortunately, the field is gaining a second life, perhaps after synthetic biology. At the end, artificial life and synthetic biology will meet in the middle, where biological systems will look artificial and artificial ones will look like modified biological systems. Needless to say, evolution and artificial evolution are and will remain fundamental in this interaction across fields.

In summary, the book is a fine example of multi- and inter-disciplinary work and is worth reading.