Showing Turing (A Novel about Computation) by Christos H. Papadimitriou

Our hero is Turing, an interactive tutoring program and namesake (or virtual
emanation?) of Alan Turing, World War II code breaker and father of computer science. In this
unusual novel, Turing's idiosyncratic version of intellectual history from a computational point of
view unfolds in tandem with the story of a love affair involving Ethel, a successful computer
executive, Alexandros, a melancholy archaeologist, and Ian, a charismatic hacker. After Ethel (who
shares her first name with Alan Turing's mother) abandons Alexandros following a sundrenched idyll
on Corfu, Turing appears on Alexandros's computer screen to unfurl a tutorial on the history of
ideas. He begins with the philosopher-mathematicians of ancient Greece -- "discourse, dialogue,
argument, proof... can only thrive in an egalitarian society" -- and the Arab scholar in
ninth-century Baghdad who invented algorithms; he moves on to many other topics, including
cryptography and artificial intelligence, even economics and developmental biology. (These lessons
are later critiqued amusingly and developed further in postings by a fictional newsgroup in the
book's afterword.) As Turing's lectures progress, the lives of Alexandros, Ethel, and Ian converge
in dramatic fashion, and the story takes us from Corfu to Hong Kong, from Athens to San Francisco --
and of course to the Internet, the disruptive technological and social force that emerges as the
main locale and protagonist of the novel.Alternately pedagogical and romantic, Turing (A Novel about
Computation) should appeal both to students and professionals who want a clear and entertaining
account of the development of computation and to the general reader who enjoys novels of
ideas.