From the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a dazzling,kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AI Johnny von Neumann was an enigma.
As a young man,he stunned those around him with his monomaniacal pursuit of the unshakeable foundations of mathematics. But when his faith in this all-encompassing system crumbled,he began to put his prodigious intellect to use for those in power.
As he designed unfathomable computer systems and aided the development of the atomic bomb,his work pushed increasingly into areas that were beyond human comprehension and control - and that threatened human destruction.
In The MANIAC,Benjamin Labatut braids fact with fiction in a scintillating journey to the very fringes of rational thought,right to the point where it tips over into chaos.
Stretching back to early twentieth-century conflict over contradictions in physics and up to advances in artificial intelligence that outpace the human,this is a mind-bending story of the mad dreams of reason.
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781782279815Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
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Brilliantly cerebral(Labatut) is fast emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... There is no one writing like him anywhere in the worldAbsorbing... The MANIAC reads like physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP LovecraftIntoxicating... this marvel of a book,which inspires awe and dread in equal measure,is stalked by the greatest terrors of the 20th century,yet its final heart-stopping sentence makes clear the greatest terrors are yet to comeDarkly intelligent and feverishly propulsiveTalent,ambition,skill,intelligence - (are) present in abundanceVirtuosic... Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality... The MANIAC is a work of dark,eerie and singular beautyA brooding,heady narrative that is addictively interesting... gripping,provocativeA dark,strange novel by a rising literary starCaptivatingMonstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thrillerThrilling - and chilling... A gripping readA necessary book,a harrowing one,and it will change the way you look at the world around youAs addictive as a true crime taleBoth entertains and provokes... His infernal vision of science captures something of the unsettling vertigo of living right here in the Anthropocene after allLabatut's voice comes from the future,to free us from the curse of our present
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