the author of When We Cease to Understand the World: a thrilling, kaleidoscopic book about the destructive chaos lurking in the history of computing and AI 'Monstrously good... Reads like a dark foundation myth about modern technology but told with the pace of a thriller' Mark Haddon In a scintillating mix of fact and fiction, The MANIAC 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, Benjamín 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.
Review
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 - <span class="a
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