A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a book by Janna Levin which contrasts fictionalized accounts of the lives and ideas of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing (who never met). The book won several awards, including the prestigious PEN/Bingham Fellowship Prize for Writers and the MEA Mary Shelley Award for Outstanding Fictional Work. It was also a runner-up for the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award.

Description

A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines is a book by Janna Levin which contrasts fictionalized accounts of the lives and ideas of Kurt Gödel and Alan Turing (who never met).[1][2][3][4]

In an interview with Sylvie Myerson in The Brooklyn Rail, Levin said of her book: "There was a lot that made me want to write it as a novel, one being this whole idea that sometimes truth cannot come out as a theorem even in mathematics, let alone in a retelling of two people’s lives. Sometimes you have to step outside of the perfect linear logic of biographical facts.".[5]

A copy of this book was among the items seized as evidence from Bruce Ivins in an FBI raid investigating the 2001 anthrax attacks.[6]

References

  1. ↑ Holt, Jim (September 3, 2006), "Obsessive-Genius Disorder", The New York Times .
  2. ↑ Johnstone, Doug (January 18, 2008), "A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines by Janna Levin", The Times .
  3. ↑ Jackson, Kerri (April 28, 2008), "A madman dreams of turing machines", New Zealand Herald .
  4. ↑ Stretch, Charlotte (January 17, 2008), "Touched by genius", New Statesman .
  5. ↑ Myerson, Sylvie (September 2007). "Janna Levin in conversation with Sylvie Myerson". Brooklyn Rail.
  6. ↑ Meek, James Gordon (August 7, 2008), "FBI reveals tasers, guns and 'anger checklist' from Bruce Ivins raid", New York Daily News .


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