The MANIAC
Benjamín Labatut
Named a Top 10 Best Book of 2023 by Publishers Weekly • a national bestseller • a New York Times Editor's Choice pick“A contemporary writer of thrilling originality . . . more
368 pages, Hardcover
First published Penguin Press
4.38
Rating
6053
Ratings
978
Reviews
Benjamín Labatut
5 books 1193 followers
Benjamin Labatut was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands. He spent his childhood in The Hague and Buenos Aires and when he was twelve years old he moved to Santiago de Chile, where he lives today.La Antártica empieza aquí was his first book, being published in México, where it won Premio Caza de Letras 2009, delivered by Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM) and Editorial Alfaguara.
His second book is titled Después de la luz, appeared in 2016, published by Editorial Hueders. After a deep personal crisis, Labatut wrote this book, conformed by scientific, historical and filosofical notes about the void.
His third book Un verdor terrible, was published in spanish by Editorial Anagrama and also several countries such Germany, Italy, France, Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal
Community reviews
The following paragraphs will be me fangirling over the genious of Benjamin Labatut. I mean, you have to be a genious to turn a book about quantum mechanics and high level mathematics into a page turner. I devoured the novel although through school I struggled to understand basic physics ( I was good at mathematics though). I knew the novel was going to be a five stars from the beginning. Who would not be curious to read a novel which starts like this: „On the morning of the twenty-fifth of September 1933, the Austrian physicist Paul Ehrenfest walked into Professor Jan Waterink’s Pedagogical Institute for Afflicted Children in Amsterdam, shot his fifteen-year-old son Vassily in the head, then turned the gun on himself” He then starts to present the story of this physicist, who realizes the potential destructive power of quantum mechanics and slowly goes mad from the struggle with his brilliant intellect The Maniac is a novel “based on fact”, as Labatut puts it. more
Not as stylistically ambitious as WHEN WE CEASE TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD, but perhaps an even greater book. Damn. I’m dizzy. This book is downright chilling at times, especially the middle section that deals with John von Neumann (the best section). This section is spectacular and spellbinding, telling the story of von Neumann, but through the viewpoints of everyone who knew him. more
With the creation of the atom bomb physicists have known sin, and this is a knowledge that they cannot lose ~ J. Robert Oppenheimer. By its very nature the hydrogen bomb cannot be confined to a military objective, but becomes a weapon which, in every practical effect, is almost one of genocide ~ Enrico Fermi. In a second, battle-hardened soldiers who had fought and bled in World War II dropped to their knees and prayed. They sensed that something unspeakably wrong was occurring when they saw their bones appear as shadows through their flesh ~ on the testing of the first hydrogen bomb that was 700 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. more
Disturbing contemplation on the nature of progress and how values that we see as quintessential human are at risk of being supplanted and left behind in a quest for ever greater (artificial) intelligenceTechnological power as such is always an ambivalent achievement and science is neutral all through, providing only means of control applicable to any purpose, and indifferent to all. It is not the particular perverse destructiveness of one specific invention that creates danger, the danger is intrinsic. For progress there is no cure. After a brief prologue on mathematicians going crazy or homicidal, we largely follow John (János) von Neumann his life, a brilliant Hungarian mathematician far ahead of his time. Despite his astounding achievements in quantum mechanics, game theory, computing, machine learning and theorising DNA before its actual discovery, his personal life and interactions with other humans was often fractious and sad. more
“When future historians look back at our time and try to pin down the first glimmer of a true artificial intelligence, they may well find it in a single move during the second game between Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, played on the tenth of March 2016: move 37. ”I am in utter shock. Serious, mind-numbing shock. Benjamín Labatut is unbelievable. In no universe should moves made on a Go board be enough to send rippling waves of goosebumps down the back of my head and my neck. more
I loved the structure of this novel. We start with a chapter about Paul Ehrenfest, who grew increasingly concerned over the progress and implications of mathematics and quantum mechanics to the point of committing a murder-suicide. That's not a spoiler either, as Labatut gives us the physicists' fate in the opening line. The meat of the book is dedicated to the life and accomplishments of John von Neumann, perhaps the most celebrated scientist of the 20th century. Today, Neumann is largely credited with laying the groundwork for computing power and artificial intelligence. more
Phenomenal. I know this is billed as fiction, but if everyone wrote like this, I would read a lot more historical biography. If you loved the Oppenheimer film and have yet to read The MANIAC, get on it. . more
Genius, Madness, Bombs, AI. Labatut, once again. Although the major part of the book concentrates on John Neumann, it also goes to visit other scientists; other geniuses. The underlying link for these geniuses is that madness is the other side of the coin to genius. Genius and Madness are interlinked, and one leads to the other in a never-ending cycle. more
85th book of 2023. 4. 5. Right now, I don't think it's quite as good as Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World that just blew me away. I still think about that novel's opening "Prussian Blue" and his pure skill in executing that chapter. more
Dertien A4-tjes had ik. Vol met citaten uit het boek, uit interviews met de schrijver, met aanvliegroutes om dit weefwerk samen te vatten, gedachten bij de diffuse lijn tussen non-fictie en proza, kronkels bij Labatuts omtovering van droge kost tot smeuïge smulpartij én tientallen manieren om mijn enthousiasme uit te drukken. Het is tegelijk doodzonde én een geweldige uitdaging om dit te moeten destilleren tot een brouwseltje van tweehonderd woorden. ‘De MANIAC’ is de vierde roman van Benjamín Labatut, die pas met zijn derde ook buiten het eigen taalgebied furore begon te maken. Net zoals in de briljante voorganger ‘Het blinde licht’ kruipt de Chilleen door de donkerste krochten van de 20e-eeuwse wetenschapswereld en laat hij zien dat de werkelijkheid vaak gekker is dan fictie. more
He knew the real challenge was not building the thing but asking it the right questions in a language intelligible to the machine. And he was the only one who spoke the language. We christened our machine the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. MANIAC, for short. On its surface, the title of The MANIAC would appear to refer to the early computer tucked away in the basement of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, but metaphorically, it refers to those geniuses whose ability to see further and understand more deeply than us ordinary humans can appear as a form of madness (or mania) to those around them. more
This book is a work of fiction, based on fact. The Maniac is Benjamín Labatut's first book written directly in English and follows his brilliant When We Cease to Understand the World in Adrian Nathan West's translation. Javier Cercas's The Blind Spot: An Essay on the Novel, in Anne McLean's translation, explained the idea of the "novel-without-fiction". Labutut's project is subtly different - a book of fiction that isn't a novel. Per Publisher's Weekly:“A novel to me is just the worst possible form,” Labatut says. more
Este trasunto de ensayo, biografía, e historia novelada, es una gozada. Si bien tiene una primera parte breve, que está bien, pero que no invita a tirar cohetes, la segunda, principal y más larga, es una maravilla que te sumerge en el interior de la cabeza de una de las mentes más fascinantes del pasado siglo, la de John Von Neumann, vista a través de los ojos de sus allegados más cercanos, amigos, compañeros y familiares. Un acercamiento a un episodio trascendental de la historia, el desarrollo de la física cuántica, la computación y la creación de la bomba atómica. Cierto es que algunos pasajes resultan confusos por la complejidad de los temas que se tratan. Pero que a veces no te enteres ni papa, no hace que no quieras seguir leyendo. more
Si en la fabulosa Un verdor terrible Labatut trazó una suerte genealogía de los pilares del pensamiento racional del siglo XX (física, matemáticas, etcétera) para al final exponer como el conocimiento humano había encontrado la frontera de lo incognoscible, dónde lo racional y lo irracional resultan difíciles de distinguir, en esta continuación Labatut se focaliza en otro infinito más allá de lo humano: la inteligencia artificial. En alguna entrevista el escritor chileno ha declarado que seguramente MANIAC será considerada una novela y que eso para él será una vergüenza. Yo no voy a abundar en ese derrota moral porque en verdad es un libro de narrativa, que al igual que en Un verdor terrible toma hechos reales y los trata como ficción en diferentes grados y a través de varios formatos (novela corta, relato y ensayo). En Maniac también emplea esta estrategia, aunque sin ese sentido de la maravilla, quizá porque Labatut ya no parte de la nada, tiene un precedente con el que debe dirimir méritos y deméritos. En cambio, dónde sí que creo ha crecido ha sido en el vigor de su prosa, pues en Maniac las frases son largas, cadenciosas, mucho más intrincadas que anteriormente y eso que, en un primer momento, Labatut lo escribió y lanzó en inglés (él fue educado en colegios ingleses en las diferentes ciudades dónde vivió en sus años de formación). more
Cavemen created the gods, I see no reason why we shouldn’t do the same”. Benjamin Labatut’s English language debut The Maniac is a monumental achievement in literature, the blend of fact and fiction throughout a tumultuous time in human history fascinates from the first section to the very tantamount ending in the third. Section two is seemingly the most use of fact and fiction to create a retelling bookended by the first and third that are deeply rooted in non fiction, the combination however is a stroke of genius. Like his first translated English language novel Labatut writes with such compulsion and terror about the scientific advancements, the unmitigated glory men pine after while having little to no regard or moralistic capacity of what sheer destruction their creations mean for the world we inhabit. The grand scheme is always heading toward the direction of AI but Labatut begins from what he assess as the turning point to getting there, a horrifying yet riveting story of men and women who have given almost everything for the destruction of the very world they were trying to conquer. more
Krachend, fesselnd, explosiv … aber knallhart, mit Wucht am Gegenstand vorbei geschrieben. Ausführlicher, vielleicht begründeter auf kommunikativeslesen. com Würde ich nochmal ein Buch von Benjamin Labatut lesen. Ja, aber hoffentlich geht es um Jugendbanden, um Boxkämpfe, um wütende Jünglinge, die sich die Hörner abstoßen und der Vergeblichkeit ihres Tuns innewerden. Ich wünsche mir, es spielt in Kolumbien, in den Banlieus von Paris, im Kreuzberg eines verwüsteten Berlins wie Tim Staffels „Terrordrom“, aber nicht in Harvard, am MIT, in Cambridge oder Oxford und reflektiert nicht wutentbrannt über Theoretische Physik, Kybernetik und künstliche Intelligenz, sondern wo der höchste und beste Kick zu finden ist und von welchem Hochhaus es sich mit einem Hängegleiter oder Deltasegler am besten zu springen lohnt, um einen heftigen und langen Ausblick auf die Stadt zu genießen. more
It's insane and perhaps says a lot about our world that the greatest minds of their time were brought together to work on a project and that project was to create a bomb that could destroy the planet. One of those men was John Van Neumann and he is the hub of this novel which redefines the border between fiction and non-fiction. But essentially it charts the endeavours of mathematical genius from the war years through to the present day, thus we are taken from the bomb to the computer to AI. It's a novel that is as educational as it is compellingly readable and inspired. more
The Maniac of the title is not one of the several mathematicians, physicists or even game players that abound within, though certainly many of them lived a feverish life that could be viewed as crazy. No, the eponymous Maniac is a computer. Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. Mathematician humor. Maniac was not the first computer, but it was the one meant to transform all areas of human thought and grab science by the throat by unleashing the power of unlimited computation. more
‘Go players speak of groups of stones as "alive," "dead," or "unsettled. " There are stones that cut, stones that kill, and stones that commit suicide. Players must be able to read the board, peering into the future with their mind's eye to determine if a group of stones will live or die. ' Shelving it as anything less would literally be so wrong. It’s such a cleverly-written book (yet so easy to ‘digest’; and if it had seemed like I was reading it a bit ‘slow’, it was because I was savouring, not struggling) and my jaw is tumbling away from me as we speak (type). more
The book’s title comes from the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratories’ computer, called MANAIC, developed by John von Neumann. “We christened our machine the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer. MANIAC, for short. ”The Maniac is a fictional account of the life and work of the polymath John von Neumann. Some of his many achievements include the development of the three axioms of quantum physics with Paul Dirac, working with Oskar Morgenstern and using game theory to describe decision making strategies in economics, formulating the architecture of an electronic digital computer based on Alan Turing’s theoretical machine, describing a self-replicating digital automata before the discovery of DNA, developing a mathematical description of a shock wave following an explosion, and working with Klaus Fuchs to develop a design for the hydrogen bomb. more
Ακόμα περιμένω το βιβλίο του Μπενχαμίν Λαμπατούτ που δεν θα μου κάνει εντύπωση, γιατί σίγουρα δεν είναι αυτό εδώ. Το βιβλίο, αν και μυθιστορηματική βιογραφία του Ούγγρου μαθηματικού Τζων φον Νόυμαν, ξεκινάει με ένα σύντομο κεφάλαιο για τον Αυστριακό φυσικό Πάουλ Έρενφεστ (υποδειγματική η γραφή του Λαμπατούτ, γίνεται παραληματική ακολουθώντας την πορεία του μυαλού του φυσικού). Και μετά βλέπουμε τον φον Νόυμαν, μέσα από το πρίσμα ανθρώπων που σχετίζονταν μαζί του -από φίλους και συνεργάτες μέχρι την οικογένειά του. Τρία πράγματα κρατάω: το Σχέδιο Μανχάτταν και την ανατριχιαστική περιγραφή της πρώτης έκρηξης βόμβας υδρογόνου, το πώς -για άλλη μια φορά- ο συγγραφέας δείχνει πώς κυριαρχεί ο ανορθολογισμός πάνω στη λογική και το κλείσιμο του βιβλίου, με την ιστορία του γκο, την εξέλιξη των υπολογιστών/μηχανών και τα πρώτα βήματα της τεχνητής νοημοσύνης (σου σηκώνεται λίγο η τρίχα με το AlphaGo και το AlphaZero). Για άλλη μια φορά, ο Λαμπατούτ κινείται μεταξύ fiction και non-fiction για να εξερευνήσει τα όρια μεταξύ λογικής και παραφροσύνης, έχοντας στο υπόβαθρο την εξέλιξη της επιστήμης. more
Una novela vertiginosa sobre los límites del pensamiento y los delirios de la razón. 'MANIAC' desfilan los más prestigiosos físicos del siglo XX y se sinceran o sinceran sus verdades o las verdades tres las cuales fueron mundialmente famosos. Esta vez, Benjamin Labatut hace hablar a los personajes, quiere que su relato sea explicitado de la forma más auténtica y veraz posible (una aproximación al falso documental, al modo que exploró DFW con 'Entrevistas breves con hombres repulsivos); y lo consigue (aunque algunos textos se quedan lejos de otros) quedando una sensación de tibieza. Leído como una continuación de 'Un verdor terrible', MANIAC es un híbrido literario que explorar los territorios abiertos por su antecesora y que acontece lugares en los que la ciencia (o los juegos de la ciencia) fueron oscuros, extraños, irracionales; pero pierda la frescura de 'Un verdor' pues hay momentos en los que se pierda fuerza narrativa. Son tres historias y tres personajes. more
I think I slightly preferred When We Cease to Understand the World to The MANIAC, but both books have been excellent. Given that this is Labatut’s first book written in English, it is an impressive achievement from a simple prose point of view, even before you start to consider its content. It’s basically impossible to intuit that it wasn’t written by a native speaker. My one complaint (and this is something that niggles at me far more than it has any right to) is that he called Finchley Central Tube Station “Finchley Central Subway Station”, an egregious error which outraged my warrior-like North London-imprinted soul. Jokes aside, the truth is that this is yet another brilliant book from a writer who seems to be on a phenomenal roll. more
Benjamin Labatut loves writing about geniuses, he appears endlessly fascinated by great minds and their proclivity to descend into madness. But more than about big brains, this wholly immersive 'work of fiction based on facts' is about the rise of technology and how computers and artificial intelligence have pushed beyond all human limits. In 'the MANIAC' the big star is Hungarian-American mathematician John von Neumann, possibly the smartest person that ever lived but somehow little known today. Von Neumann is a fascinating subject indeed, involved as he was in so many fields, from the foundations of mathematics to the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project to game theory to the building of the first computers (the MANIAC is the name of the computer he built in the '50s) to theories about spacecraft and artificial intelligence. He is an interesting character as well, which Labatut describes in his brilliant and accessible style we know from his first book When We Cease To Understand the World. more
A third of the way into The MANIAC I began to wonder if I'd made a misstep in my ability to understand Benjamin Labatut's work. By the time I'd finished the novel, I felt the existential dread of the encroaching abilities of artificial intelligence. It's a strange thing to admit, but it's rare that a novel can leave me with moderate despondence and it's a vibe that I'm very much about. Your mileage may vary on that note. Last year I read When We Cease to Understand the World, which was one of my favourite novels I read in 2023. more
"Este libro es una obra de ficción basada en hechos reales". Y vaya qué ficción. Esta cita está tomada de la parte de los agradecimientos, al final de libro. Pero es algo que ya sabemos desde el principio; y en eso radica el poder de la narrativa de Labatut, a quien considero uno de los mejores escritores contemporáneos, pues ha creado un estilo propio que une la ficción y la no-ficción, la ciencia y la literatura, de una forma única. Resulta un poco difícil describir ese estilo único, pero parte de un instinto literario propio del autor, que es una especie de intérprete de la poesía que puede contener el hecho científico y sus artífices, los científicos. more
Heel graag had ik dit boek 5 sterren gegeven en was ik mijn recensie gestart met 'wat een trip dit boek'. Helaas. De gekte en snelheid die me in de eerste twee delen zo inpalmden miste ik volledig in het laatste deel over de strijd tussen AI en de beste GO-speler van de wereld. Ondanks deze lichte teleurstelling blijft drie kwart van De MANIAC (273/380e om precies te zijn) het beste dat ik in 2023 heb gelezen. De voor mij nog onbekende Benjamín Labatut heeft een verrassend toegankelijk boek geschreven over een ontoegankelijk onderwerp: het werk en het leven van een wiskundige. more
Exquisite fusion of history, science, and narrative that pushes the limits of human understanding and aspiration. more
There’s something about Benjamín Labatut which screams genius; the way he manages to encapsulate the big important themes through interconnecting details, he way of taking complex concepts in quantum physics and making them sound easy, and The Maniac is his first book in English. The Maniac, like it’s predecessor, When we Cease to Understand the World, is about humankind’s want to improve the world but we end up creating chaos. This time round, The Maniac mostly focuses on one person, John von Neumann, one of the people who helped create the atom bomb and one of the pioneers of the computer. The book starts with an introductory piece about the dangers of scientific progress, using the murder of Vassik Ehrenfest as an example of the horrors that technology can bring. Then the majority of the book details the life of John von Neumann through different perspectives, from school friends, his two wives, colleagues who were with him during The Manhattan Project. more