The MANIAC
Description
<b> From the author of <i>When We Cease to Understand the World</i>: a thrilling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AI</b>
<b>'Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller' Mark Haddon</b>
In a scintillating mix of fact and fiction, <i>The MANIAC</i> tells of the dark foundations of our modern world and the nascent era of AI.
At its core is John von Neumann, a titan of science who revolutionised fields from game theory to computer systems and helped develop the atomic bomb. As illness unmoored his mind, his work pushed further into areas beyond human comprehension and control.
With dazzling mastery, Benjamin Labatut weaves von Neumann's story together with the crises in physics at the beginning of the twentieth century and humanity's showdown with artificial intelligence a hundred years later. Innovative and disquieting, this book plunges us into the most profound questions of humanity, where reason teeters on the brink of chaos.
Reviews / Votes
Brilliantly cerebral * Sunday Telegraph (five stars) * [Labatut] is fast emerging as the most significant South American writer since Borges... There is no one writing like him anywhere in the world * Telegraph * Reads like physicist Carlo Rovelli crossed with the cosmic horror of HP Lovecraft -- Chris Power * Sunday Times * Imaginatively told through the fictionalised personal testimony of von Neumann's friends and family, the novel is as engrossing as it is disturbing * Financial Times, Books of the Year * Intoxicating... 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 come * Daily Mail * Darkly intelligent and feverishly propulsive * Observer * Talent, ambition, skill, intelligence - [are] present in abundance * Guardian, Book of the Day * Virtuosic... Labatut is that vanishingly uncommon thing: a contemporary writer of thrilling originality... The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty * Washington Post * A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting... gripping, provocative * Wall Street Journal * A dark, strange novel by a rising literary star * New Scientist * Captivating * Irish Times * Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller -- Mark Haddon In fictionalising the history of the atomic bomb, Labatut has landed on a chilling way to dramatise our contemporary fears. Science Fiction-tinged nightmares about new nuclear threats and an alien, self-learning system of intelligence are made both more real and understandable through the voices of the people who gave birth to them * Literary Review * Thrilling - and chilling... A gripping read * Marie Claire, Best Books of 2023 * A necessary book, a harrowing one, and it will change the way you look at the world around you * LitHub * As addictive as a true crime tale * Mail on Sunday * Both entertains and provokes... His infernal vision of science captures something of the unsettling vertigo of living right here in the Anthropocene after all * TLS * Labatut's voice comes from the future, to free us from the curse of our present -- Wolfram Eilenberger, author of 'Time of the Magicians' The MANIAC works as a novel primarily due to Benjamin Labatut's mastery of prose * Irish Business Post * Labatut is very good on making science exciting... less through their technical details than by expressing the human experience of ignorance being swept away, with wonder put in its place * The Critic * If you've yet to sample Labatut, stop wasting time. Get on the Labatut train * BookMunch * A book to gift... for its hard look at what we've so willingly surrendered to our machines -- Anne Michaels * Observer, Best books of 2024 *More details
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