Book
The maniac / Benjamín Labatut.
"A story centered around one of the great geniuses of the modern age, the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the uncanny circuit of his mind deep into our own time's most haunting dilemmas"-- Provided by publisher.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780771010415 (hardcover)
- Physical Description: 354 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: Toronto, ON : Strange Light, 2023.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Von Neumann, John, 1903-1957 > Fiction. Mathematicians > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Biographical fiction. Novels. |
Available copies
- 1 of 1 copy available at Tsuga Consortium.
Holds
- 0 current holds with 1 total copy.
Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stroud Branch | FIC Labat | 31681010342178 | FICTION | Available | - |
- Random House, Inc.
From one of contemporary literatureâs most exciting new voices, a haunting story centered on the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the impact of his singular legacy on the dreams and nightmares of the twentieth century and the nascent age of AI
BenjamÃn Labatutâs When We Cease to Understand the World electrified a global readership. A Booker Prize and National Book Award finalist, and one of the New York Timesâ Ten Best Books of the Year, it explored the life and thought of a clutch of mathematicians and physicists who took science to strange and sometimes dangerous new realms. In The MANIAC, Labatut has created a tour de force on an even grander scale.
A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members, friends, colleagues, and rivals, Labatut shows us the evolution of a mind unmatched and of a body of work that has unmoored the world in its wake.
The MANIAC places von Neumann at the center of a literary triptych that begins with Paul Ehrenfest, an Austrian physicist and friend of Einstein, who fell into despair when he saw science and technology become tyrannical forces; it ends a hundred years later, in the showdown between the South Korean Go Master Lee Sedol and the AI program AlphaGo, an encounter embodying the central question of von Neumann's most ambitious unfinished project: the creation of a self-reproducing machine, an intelligence able to evolve beyond human understanding or control.
A world of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC's unique blend of fact and fiction confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.
