The MANIAC by Benjamin Labatut

The first book that I read by this author was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize (which I admit is an award I have been remiss in not reading the nominees for, but started righting that this year and there is some truly great literature to be found in it)--he is Chilean and someone who not only writes but thinks deeply. This is a fictionalized portrait of the visionary Hungarian scientist, John von Neumann, who contributed to the Manhattan Project and laid the foundations of modern computing is a darkly intelligent and yet propulsive novel. It is basically a triptych of sorts--what came before von Neumann, his part in the story, and then what comes after. The first part is the (mostly true) story of Paul Ehrenfest, a brilliant Austrian physicist who descends into madness, murdering his fifteen-year-old son and then taking his own life. Ehrenfest feared what he saw was coming in the 20th century: the rise of fascism, the atomic bomb, the blurring lines between human and machine consciousnesses, and speaks to the reader, who is already living in a world of AI and returning totalitarianism. We move on to von Neumann, who in addition to working with Oppenheimer and being the father of Game Theory, also laid the foundations of modern computing (MANIAC is the acronym for a computer he developed) and foresaw the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Then we flash forward to the rise of AI, whose promises enrapture its developers even as they fret over its apocalyptic potential. It is excellent and kind of terrifying at the same time.