The Maniac

By: Benjamin Labatut

Narrated by: Gergo Danka, Eva Magyar

Length: 9 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Named One of the 10 Best Books of 2023 by The Washington Post and Publishers Weekly • One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 • A National Bestseller • A New York Times Editor's Choice pick • Nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction

“Captivating and unclassifiable, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray . . . Labatut is a writer of thrilling originality. The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty.”—The Washington Post

“Darkly absorbing . . . A brooding, heady narrative that is addictively interesting.”—Wall Street Journal

From one of contemporary literature’s 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

Benjamín Labatut’s 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 Times’ 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 work of beauty and fabulous momentum, The MANIAC confronts us with the deepest questions we face as a species.

©2023 Benjamin Labatut (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

“Labatut’s latest virtuosic effort, at once a historical novel and a philosophical foray, is a thematic sequel, an exploration of what results when we take reason to even further extremes . . . A contemporary writer of thrilling originality . . . The MANIAC is a work of dark, eerie and singular beauty.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“What [Labatut] brings to the page is something almost indescribably layered and complex that feels like a genre unto itself . . . Labatut has an uncanny ability to inhabit the psyche of these subjects—even though he’s conjuring up their recollections, they still come across as wholly reliable narrators. There is so much depth and profundity within their reminiscing, so much foreshadowing of the present moment when it seems AI is all we’re hearing about.”—Allison Arieff, San Francisco Chronicle

“The novel’s final section, a thrilling human-versus-machine matchup, points to what von Neumann had wrought—and reflects the warnings of Labatut’s Wigner. Although its science never strays from what’s been reported in the real world and although Labatut honors the discipline of historical fiction, The MANIAC qualifies as science fiction, at least as practiced by Mary Shelley and her adaptors. Neither Shelley nor Labatut includes in their work a scene of a scientist shouting, ‘It’s alive!’ as some cursed creation lumbers to life. But the warning of that moment powers The MANIAC as surely as electricity enlivened Frankenstein’s monster, a breakthrough who, in every telling, boasts the capacity to break us.”—Alan Scherstuhl, Scientific American

Enjoyed the stylistic choices and learned a lot

I didn’t quite understand what this book was so the first quarter was trying to figure out if it was a collection of essays, who organized etc…. The stylistic choices were great in how to tell and made the historical facts be live and feel present. I really appreciated the deep dive into the mental issues of some of our greatest minds. The Go portion was good but felt like an entirely departure book. I get the connection but was a weird tack on to me.

Fascinating survey of a complicated person with ties to contemporary issues

I enjoyed the device of using different figures in von Neumann’s life to tell his story and theirs.

what has man wrought

the story of the trail of the super intelligence that continues to grow. be afraid, very afraid

Unidimensional gods keep human hubris tame

I’ve been a luddite mainly out of fear, but Labatut had the delicacy to storytell ai from inception to now. Listening to The Maniac felt like a welcoming a kind relative who is opening up the back of a computer or tv and showing you their insides, explaining their use, their history and the mathemagic tricks they do.

Unlike that one comment Bjork made about poets and lies, for The Maniac I say: Do let poets lie to you.

Learning the details in The Maniac added life to my raw fears and, after fermenting on them together, I have now a new excitement I hadn’t tasted before. Noice!

Now I can’t wait for ai to completely crush and demoralize the grandmasters of the other zero-sum-game, the game for which Chess and Go train the human mind: war.

I wonder if Pax Romana, made way for Pax Americana and now we are witnessing the start of Pax Artificial.

Gods playing to be and not be deluded.

An upper limit to human hubris.

Great story.

Brilliant & Terrifying

Genius . A thriller. A true story . A must read. Many true stories. Fabulous narration . Terrifying story

So fantastic I immediately listened to it a second time!

This book spins a yarn like no other- as first hand accounts take the listener on a colorful yet often dark- mathematical, genius, destructive and tender ride through physics, invention and the human experience. Thank you so much to the author and narrators
JSelway

The characters seemed real

A complex man comes alive in this clever fictional retelling of his life, his colleagues and the results of his work. The voice actors are wonderful

Fabulous

Engrossed me from page one. I learned so much, enjoying every minute. can't wait for Labatut's next book.

Readability and insight to science.

An absolutely captivating study of human nature and it’s interaction with science. The potential dangers of AI and the future of mankind. An easy read that I didn’t want to end.

The power of A.I.

First part of book was incoherent, hard to follow. Best part of book was last 2 hours, which was about A.I.