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A Theory of Nothing
Duronimus Karlof is a rising star at Harvard. He holds a prestigious professorship, his students idolize him, and he is widely considered one of the most influential scientific minds of his generation. The death of a colleague, however, forces him to reconsider his life’s purpose.
Inspired by cutting-edge thinking in the humanities, he begins to question the oppressive nature of reality. Cynically exploiting his position at the university, he assembles a critical mass of experts with the mission to prove that there is some loophole in the scientific conception of the cosmos.
What ensues is bigger than the Manhattan Project, the Space Race, the Human Genome Project, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change combined.
Philosophical and funny, this highly original novel finds the ridiculous in almost every aspect of contemporary intellectual life, and highlights the challenge of independent thinking when politics takes control of science.
Inspired by cutting-edge thinking in the humanities, he begins to question the oppressive nature of reality. Cynically exploiting his position at the university, he assembles a critical mass of experts with the mission to prove that there is some loophole in the scientific conception of the cosmos.
What ensues is bigger than the Manhattan Project, the Space Race, the Human Genome Project, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change combined.
Philosophical and funny, this highly original novel finds the ridiculous in almost every aspect of contemporary intellectual life, and highlights the challenge of independent thinking when politics takes control of science.
- GenresFiction
306 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 3, 2016
8 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 13, 2017
Written for scientists, thinkers and those who tolerate them, this is a novel about a man who pursues an idea so far out from the edge of scientific inquiry that it is guaranteed to get multiyear funding. There was lots of inside jokes about the purposes of conferences, internal professor politics, government approvals, and agency endorsements. It was fairly entertaining at times, but the characters were lightly sketched and I found it hard to engage with them emotionally enough to care about them. I was still curious to see where it was going, and indeed to consider the outcomes of their experiments.
July 19, 2017
I wanted to enjoy this book much more than I did. Some really good ideas but the story dragged a bit through the middle.
February 25, 2017
A Theory of Nothing (2016) by Thomas Barlow is satire of modern academia. Duronimus Karlof is a scientist at Harvard who takes on a challenge presented by a humanities academic to challenge the laws of nature.
What follows is reasonably amusing but ultimately falls down as the book goes on. The problem is that much of today's academia has become so ridiculous and so regularly ridiculed that it's hard to make up fiction that matches much of it. Twitter accounts that feature abstracts of real academic work that are both funny and tragic are very difficult to beat.
It's not a bad book for a quick, amusing satirical read about modern day academia.
What follows is reasonably amusing but ultimately falls down as the book goes on. The problem is that much of today's academia has become so ridiculous and so regularly ridiculed that it's hard to make up fiction that matches much of it. Twitter accounts that feature abstracts of real academic work that are both funny and tragic are very difficult to beat.
It's not a bad book for a quick, amusing satirical read about modern day academia.
April 16, 2017
A full review available soon.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews