He seemed almost like he was doing his best impression of the way a regular human being walked, but having never seen one before.
Labutut’s recent speciality is fanciful fictional biographies of real scientists. He very much bends the boundaries between novel, essay, reportage and invention, and, as in his previous book, WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, you didn’t always know which was which and what was happening. It was an excellent book.
This one zeroes in on John von Neumann, and is told in a series of statements by the people who knew him. All of which is invented, although the bare biographical elements and timeline are true. Like I said: a fictional biography. And it’s just brilliant.
Von Neumann was one of the scientific/mathematical prodigies of the 20th Century, with a deeply conflicted legacy – initiating our digital world, but using those tools to ensure the hydrogen bomb worked. And the device he used to do that, he named the Mathematical Analyzer Numerical Integrator and Automatic Computer. The MANIAC. And a maniac is how the genius von Neumann is presented – an alien child.
Superbly written – each chapter is its own little story of him, and some of them are fully eerie. Very recommended.