A Working Theory of Love

In 1950, Alan Turing, the British mathematician and artificial-intelligence pioneer, proposed a test—which today bears his name—to measure a machine’s ability to pass itself off as human. The test captivates Neill Bassett, a thirty-six-year-old divorced man adrift in Silicon Valley. Bassett, the novel’s narrator, works for a project whose goal is to create a computer program that can process language with a semblance of personality. This personality is to be derived from the voluminous journals of Bassett’s emotionally distant and now dead father. The premise is inventive and engaging, but, as an exploration of love and grief in the tech age, the novel is hampered by Bassett’s attempts at profundity (“To remain in the world is always a gamble”; “I am my only chance at love”), which often feel hollow and unearned. ♦